Question for Dr. Tabor: Given that the Gospel of Peter was written 150(-ish) years after Jesus died, would you please explain why you consider it authoritative?
There are a lot of assumptions being made here. First would be whether the manuscript found was a copy of an earlier one, or the original itself. If it was actually written by Peter as indicated in the text, then clearly the original couldn't be 150 years after Jesus.
@@nubtube7313 The Gospel of Peter was written in the latter half of the second century. The manuscript found is from a few hundred years later. Obviously it is not the original! My question for Dr. Tabor is based on scholarly consensus of the facts, not on any assumptions on my part.
@@VJacquetteThe statement that it was written in the second century alone is an assumption if you consider the text itself is recounting events that took place at, or around 30 CE. And scholarly consensus translates loosely into best guess by the people in-the-know that are closest to what little information is available. But I get your point and wasn't directing any disrespect towards you.
@@nubtube7313 Peter didn't like Paul nor did he endorse him as a brother. Read the clementine homilies (Preferred) or watch a vid on it , it's interesting. It's definitely not Peter. Research the Apocalypse of Peter you might like that too. That should have been in our bibles not 1/2 Peter they're edited by someone.
@@nubtube7313 You are assuming the possibility that an illiterate fisherman from the back country could read and write. Dr. Tabor NEVER said Peter authored anything. He said the exact opposite.
If your approach is true, then why mention the empty tomb at all? The whole idea is irrelevant. They should have just said "and he was later moved to his final resting place."
Because it is the corpse which is not relevant. Whatever work was supposed to be done was done and all went according to plan, and such the defeated body is irrelevant to the "glory" of the work, which goes on and on.
Because, the more confusing they can make the story, the more miraculous it seems. Also, the cultural deification process at that time and location required the body to "disappear." It is difficult to deify someone once people have seen their "unclean," decomposing corpse. The uncleanliness must be absconded with so that people will always think of them as pure.
Because later the empty tomb account became essential to prove the resurrection of Jesus once those who experienced the sightings were already dead. The gospels were wrietten 40 to 60 years after Jesus' death, when all the apostoles were already dead. So you have in the early tradition the "sightings of Jesus" as a prove of his resurrection but later, when all those people who experienced the sightings were already dead, the prove of the resurrection became the empty tomb. Also as time passed the resurrection of Jesus became more and more physical with many miracolous elements added in the account.
He did, read 1Corinthians 15. Paul explains at length that unless Jesus is resurrected our faith is in vain, but he also explains why it must be spiritual resurrection, not of the flesh, in verse 35-58.
The fact that there are stories about the body being moved & stolen PROVES the resurrection. They had to EXPLAIN the empty tomb. Folks, if Jesus did NOT rise from the dead you are NOT saved‼️ This is a core part of the Gospel 1 Corinthians 15;17-18 DON'T BE DECEIVED -Jesus 17And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. 18Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 19If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable
@@RiseUpUNAFRAID4614 You didn't watch & listen to the video, did you? Btw, please cite the stories that report "the body being stolen". And, please point out to me how stories about the moved & stolen body PROVE the resurrection.
Josephus had the body taken down only after 6 hours. Average time for some to die of crucifixion was 52 to 72 hours. And that is they broke your legs. Jesus did not die. He survived. And left the area with the help of Josephus Then the story was embilashed to make him like every other diety of that time. Dionysus Mithra and others. Not exactly the same but exactly the same premise
Why does Dr.Tabor say in Mark that the man in the tomb is not an angel but a man. Why would a man be hanging out in a tomb? Males no sense. Also if the tomb was only a temporary one why would the woman bring spices to bathe the body? They apparently believed that tomb was the permanent tomb. If the body was moved by some of his followers why would the burial cloths be left there. Makes no sense. If Joseph of Aremathia had arranged to move the body to a permanent spot he more than likely would have told that to his disciples whom he was familiar with. There are lots of holes in Dr. Tabor's narrative.
Certainly, he scrambles the accounts. Jesus' human body terminated by Him, buried and held somewhere until the prophesied 3 days elapsed and then he was raised, God in a transformed body which could eat and was devoid of blood. Not an ordinary human but the first of the new generation (the last Adam) that is the head of the Church the redeemed of the Grace age. More steps than most recognize but not a spiritual resurrection alone. Paul described his contacts with Christ as spiritual since Jesus was already transformed and spoke to him from heaven.@@christianelder4983
You have limited your reading and understanding, I'm afraid, Look just because Jesus didn't rise in the fleshit doesn't take anything away from who he is. First off, you're wrong in your assessment that this was a permanent tomb, It was not. The Jewish holiday of passover was upon them the day Jesus died, Joseph had a tomb that wasn't quite finished nearby, He allowed them to use this as a temporary place of burial until the passover was completed and Jesus's body could be moved to the family tomb in Talpiot just up the road a ways. This is not rocket science or a David Copperfield illusion. It just is. Even Jesus said this flesh must perish.. Why is this so hard to understand unless you're not reading the material and allowing someone else to define Jesus's words.
@christianelder4983 Professor Tabor isn't trying to do any such thing, He is simply giving you the information in a historical context. He's not trying to change your faith, I've been following his work for a long time and I still love my Jesus. I think James Tabor is a wonderfully brilliant scholar of history. It shouldn't shake your faith, but rather amplify it.
Yes he is risen means resurrected. If someone had just moved the body, they would’ve said that someone moved the body to another tomb. Also, who would’ve moved the body? The family? Then the beloved disciple is not James because he has family.
I don't believe the whole tomb story to begin with but if the body was moved, the most likely people to do it would have been the Romans. Since they wanted to make an example of killing Jesus as a pretender to the throne, whoever allowed the body to be taken down probably made a mistake. The Romans might have removed the body from the tomb as a potential rallying point for resistance to Roman rule.
@@ji8044 I don't know if the Romans would move the body since they let Joseph of Arimathea be in charge of it. the Romans wouldn't have bothered with burying the body. They disposed of bodies somewhere else.
He was buried shortly after HE died. Joseph of Arimathea asked pilot for HIS BODY. As by Jewish Law HE was taken to the tomb without washing as HE DIED a violent death. HE was laid out within a shroud. HIS BODY was adorned with Nicodemus’ oil, spices, flowers and coins on HIS EYES, then covered with the other long piece, HIS HEAD had a separate covering and a piece over HIS HEAD to keep HIS MOUTH shut. HE died Friday, buried before the Sabbath which started as we would call it sundown. Sabbath in the ground. Sunday morning HE was out of the tomb. For an up to date comment on THE SHROUD OF JESUS, read the new book written by Dr Gilbert Lavoie. It is fact❤🙏❤️ WOW
Well if you are member of a superstitious cult as described bt Flavius Josephus, stories and myths are to be expected. The last part about family, that’s just stupid frankly.
I have one thing to say about this heresy; John 2:18 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? 19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21 But he spake of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
You just opened My eyes to something intriguing in this verse. Verse 22 says “So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made” How can this be written by the disciple John if this is speaking as someone who isn’t a disciple? If this was really John that wrote this why would he say and his disciples remembered he had said this if he himself is a disciple ? This is a dead give away that whoever this author is, is not John
That's a very thin argument, John is more than a disciple he's also an Apostle who Jesus shared many deeper understandings with. If your busy looking to find fault with the scriptures the devil is more than willing to accommodate you. This is why Paul tells us to take every thought captive to Christ. If you believe in Jesus the witness is in you already. This is why the elect cannot be deceived.
I’ve often felt that main issue with the idea that there is no resurrection in marks gospel (I fully accept that that after verse 8 the text is a latter scribal addition) is that when you take the whole story into account you have Jesus saying that he will suffer and after 3 days rise. (Mk 8:31!33, 9:31b-32, 10:32b-342). To read the last section without that context seems to go against the way we would read any piece of literature. That combined with the mention of going to Galilee to see him there presupposes some sort of ‘being raised’ in a way that can be seen by people on earth. When you bring in the earliest source 1 cor 15, and the Jewish expectations of resurrection. I think you do have the idea of a physical resurrection. That’s not to say it happened but that it seems most likely the early Christian community believed something like a physical resurrection happened and had been witnessed by some of his followers. Just some thoughts.
There's no way to know what Jesus may, or may not have said. "Jewish expectations of resurrection"???? How the hell does that fit in? The Jewish expectations of resurrection was at the end of time, and not before that! Not even for a Messiah because they did not believe he would be killed. Which is what Jesus believed also, which is why he cried out to God, when the heavens did not open and save him.
I simply meant that Jewish expectations would be that resurrection would be a physical reality. I recognize that there is an unexpected aspect in regards to the timing of it (that's pretty clear from the reaction of everyone, even the early Christians haha), but when they use that terminology they do have a certain framework in mind. A good overview might be NT Wright, the resurrection of the son of God @@slik00silk84
What Jesus said or didn't say isn't the issue, the question is about what Mark's author believed Jesus to have said. I'm simply claiming that the author put wrote these to alert us as to how to interpret the ending of the book@@slik00silk84
I'm not arguing that an early Christian understanding of the resurrection is in no way unique (obviously it is in regard to timing etc haha), but that their understanding of it still had boundaries that were set by a Jewish framework of physical resurrection. NT Wright's the resurrection of the Son of God is a good treatment of this @@slik00silk84
The burial can take place during Passover after the first day, since work was not forbidden during the intermediate days, especially after they've offered the Paschal sacrifice already.
@@jeffreyerwin3665 It's true that according to later Jewish law those garments would have been buried too, if they were blood-soaked. But recall two things: (1) Jesus and his followers were not necessarily attached to the details of Rabbinic Tradition. (2) Perhaps those practices were not fully formed and established yet.
@@davidm1149 There is only one gospel - what Christ did at the death burial and resurrection [Gal 1:6 KJV] 6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: [Rom 15:20 KJV] 20 Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation: [Gal 1:7 KJV] 7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. [Rev 14:6 KJV] 6 And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, [Gal 1:8-9 KJV] 8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any [man] preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. [2Co 11:4 KJV] 4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or [if] ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with [him].
@@ronnieturner1356 I thought there were four myself. They tell an encoded story of the 'Christ' (Jesus Christ), the individual soul which has attained the divine mind.
What am I missing here?: 1: "...blocks it up until *after* the Passover..." 2 : "(Not after the Passover,) Saturday evening after sunset...removes the body, burying it in a permanent place...(During Passover.)
And vice versa: Why on Earth would the apostles not have checked with Joseph of Arimathea as resurrection was not suspected initially. His line of reasoning makes no sense. It is reasoning from absences in his texts (and cut off fragments).
Well, in reality, Joseph of Arimithea was Jesus' dad, Joseph. The Roman myths about Jesus required them to diminish Jesus' father and siblings, embellish Mary and put in angels and a virgin birth.
@@geoattoronto What is your source? Or are you are reading information into the text, which is the product of eisegesis and reasoning from absence. The church, that is the witnesses and followers of Christ, who wrote down the gospels, disagrees. People have all sorts of theories, as fantasy is fertile and the demand for additional information great, resulting in gossip, but humans are often incapable of just trusting that those witnesses did not lie. Truth it has been handed down as, so accepting it is trust, which is what belief is. If one can trust parents, why cannot one trust apostles who ask to trust in their transmission? That is a recurring problem with every new generation, not with the facts, nor with the source material.
How can you know it was embellishment? The fragment in the Egyptian fragment breaks off. It is reasoning from absence. It also assumes the followers would not simply have checked with Joseph of Arimathea to find the body (which stretches credulity as living in their era witnessing the events they would have known if it was a temporary/final tomb); and you already mentioned initially no one suspected a supernatural resurrection (another argument why they would have checked with JA, Joseph of Arimathea).
“How can you know it was embellishment?” This is what those from the arts and humanities, like theology, do. They tell stories based on insufficient evidence, ignoring what doesn't mesh with their viewpoint. Certain people love talking nonsense and hate being hemmed in by fact and logic.
@@grasonicus Not complete. Story telling is endemic in the sciences as well, as the philosophy of science is increasingly not taught nor appreciated. Science is rich in assumptions, poor in examining nor understanding the nature of its foundational, initial lies (which is what assumptions are) in each new discipline. Science, even in the Popperian approach, builds a house of lies from not-yet-found-out initial lies. No one disagrees science can be useful, but its truth claims are as unshakable as a house of cards. Don't sneeze and don't look. Moreover, fact and logic does not exclude what is called the supernatural. Excluding the supernatural would be a self-limiting bias based on a preference about how the world should work. Naturalists would do that, but then again naturalists don't know 'nature' is an Ancient Egyptian word meaning 'divine' and that they too study the divine, unwillingly and unwittingly. People trained in the humanities would know this foundational linguistic link between science and theology, that is to say, all science is theology. Proof of their lack of insight in linguistics is that only those without training in the languages, would add 'super' to natural. For what could be the super-divine? As an example in contradistinction, the Devil is intelligent, but not super. To shore up our feeble ability to reason is why science and the humanities were taught together since time immemorial, in the Ancient World, in the Middle ages, right up until the start of the 20th century, when Modernism finally got the upper hand and started to delete the link between the present and the past, playing shenanigans with educational curricula, in order to freely rewrite history without pesky questions by those who can read the source material in the original language. Transmission is not relevant, the early witnesses could not have been right, they tell you. Don't learn Latin nor Greek nor Aramaic nor Hebrew, you geek. And trust your intuition, not transmission, for God's sake. Just allow people to opine, and True history, transmitted, will evaporate like a puff of smoke.
@@discoveringthegardenofeden7882 I practised medicine, mostly at specialist consultant level, and also have a degree in information technology. It's clear you're from an arts and humanities background. It looks like you're familiar with philosophy. The definition of philosophy is, unconstrained speculation. Historical 'science' is not science. Anyone can talk nonsense about the distant past with impunity. In medicine, all treatment modalities are based on present facts. I know how and why penicillin works. When I did surgery, I knew exactly what the problem to be rectified was and how I was going to attempt to rectify it. No idle speculation or blah-blah-blah, just hard facts. Nobody mentioned evolution is my many years of training, and nobody claimed any treatment was based on evolution. Get a comma wrong in programming, and you have problems. Design a circuit wrong, and it doesn't work at all or not as you intended. Do a thought experiment and take away the contributions of science. To make it simple, take away anything depending in any way on electricity, your clothes, for example. They were made in a factory using electricity. No buildings, no roads, no transport, no communication, no Internet. Everyone is left sitting near-naked on the ground, digging for grubs with a stick. Now take away the 'contribution' of the arts and humanities. Life goes on, as usual. Art is entertainment and decoration. Theologians are among the biggest bullshitters alive. There's no Trinity in the Bible, and there's no replacement of the Sabbath with Sunday. Theologians will speak in defence of 1+1+1=1. Only the Catholics can claim logically believing in the Trinity and Sunday holiness. They readily say they don't only believe in the Bible, but also in tradition and what the Pope says. If the Pope says there's a Trinity, there's a Trinity. If the Pope says, 'pray to this statue,' the good Catholic is on his knees, praying in front of the statue before the Pope has finished speaking. Protestants don't have a leg to stand on with the Trinity and Sunday holiness.
@@grasonicus We shouldn't over-romanticize modern medicine. The introduction of Softenon was based on present fact. The introduction of experimental mRNA vaccines is not preceded by long term hereditary studies. Medicine has side-effects, which implies that Bayesian guessing is at the origin of medical decision making, not a perfect understanding, not a complete science. Because it is structured as a profession, money is more important than the patient. The humanities would point out that medicine is an art, not a science. Perfect medicine would not require any surgery ever. Still, I was happy when the knitting needle cought the kidney stone. I would be happier if doctors, in a preventive approach to medicine, just told me not to eat carbs of any form, which, precisely because of how the body deals with them, cause kidney obstructions. On the Trinity. Imagine the phase diagram of water. H2O can manifest itself as three distinct substances. Ice, Liquid water, Vapor (and if you really want plasma and the several ices I, II, III, IV, ... crystallin configurations). That would be a good naturalism based analogy for the trinity. Water + Ice + Vapor = H2O. If arts and humanities would not exist, scientists would not have 'analogy' in their toolkit and they would have trouble understanding why and how the complex concept of a Trinity can be completely natural. Which it is. Thus, humanities are needed to give scientists tools for thinking. And we all benefit. And with regards to reading the Bible: If you haven't studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic, you still have to read this divinely inspired library, a product of the Church Jesus installed himself, for the first time in your life. Reading the Bible in English, is like throwing a white cloth over a statue, and forming an erudite opinion about the stains and pleats in the canvas. Could be interesting, but you wouldn't know what the statue actually looks like. Nor would you be able to read the large plaque underneath that explicitly states what the statue represents, and more. Jesus in the Gospels and Acts states that rhyme, seeing words (Hieroglyphs), study of the letters, playing with the letters and words, and polyglossia (knowing several languages) is required to understand the gospel. Active word play by the reader is required in the analysis of the text. Google something as basic as "boustrophedon" and you'll understand. Take one of the parables regarding lepers. When we use cross-cultural word play typical for the polyglot mediterranean of yesteryear and today, we know the following is correct. Not from conjecture but factually as all ancient literature is rich in wordplay. A leper, in rhyme, is a leopard (this works in Aramaic/Greek as well). That is why the leper crouches before Jesus and the Greek text uses a word that signifies 'Jesus cuddled the leopard' and the others stood back (in awe). So did the disciples stand back because Jesus touched a leper, or because he was cuddling a leopard? The answer... is both. Finding and solving puzzles like these is the reason why I discovered the actual location of the Garden of Eden. If I had world-trip kind of money, I could set up an expedition to this place. Unfortunately I prefer studying over making money. If you are not trained in languages or the humanities, you would not be able, while reading the gospel, to step in the thorns (incongruencies), nor examine them while washing your feet (discovering the puzzle and clue hidden in those incongruencies). The word 'Clue', itself is derived from the Latin for both Nail and Key. You step into it, and then you can solve/fix discover something with it. To understand ancient knowledge, you have to use the tools of their knowledge paradigm. Not the anachronistic reasoning of modernism which does not even try to learn to use their epistemology as it was intended. Only then will you find Truth and arrows to locations hidden in plain sight.
Uh because Mark and Matthew are complete texts that can be compared side by side. Matthew and Luke are considered by all scholars to be derivative texts. What are you talking about! There was no body search. They went back fishing because he was dead, temporary tomb or not. And no, you cannot deduce anything from a broken text other than to say its a broken text. Dr. Tabor isn’t making analysis solely on the Egyptian text. Egyptian text does not take away how the Mark was the original with the remaining being derivative embellishments or additions, or a full account if that makes you feel better. BTW, the Garden of Eden is myth. I bet you believe trump was sent by God as some sort of a messiah. That would be just ridiculous as saying he (or Obama) is THE antichrist depicted in Revelation. (I think trump would be an archetype antichrist like HITLER.)
The "Lost Gospel of Peter" is clearly in error. Whether you believe that Passover fell Tuesday night-Wednesday day, or even Friday night-Saturday day, the Feast is seven days. So it was not yet "over" as the text states. This is spurious and should be disregarded.
At some point you gotta ask yourself, if Mark ended at verse 8 and they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid, who told Mark the story so he could write it down?
ok.. real life kinda flow... they were afraid{this is Significant}, and said nothing... consider There was a look of distress about them, so then peter and run to the tomb... and however long after... as that part of Gospel was being assembled.. and perhaps some ... "So what was that like? questions after fearing The Lord Counted For Love, And Them who feared him he made His Children. So Very Directly.... God Whom We Are To Fear That He Accounts It Love. Your Staff Beauty Is With You And Your Staff Union,... i think the near all Living Soils are uncomfortable with the thought of You Lord Breaking The brotherhood... Father Ancient Of Days Make Brother An Office of Accomplishing, Sister And Mother, Offices Of The Same Accomplishing... in the garden on the mount of olives, the one young man in linen escaped naked.. I remember... perhaps one, the servant Told pour out at Cana... Told by Mother Mary do whatever he tells you to do... Fool or No Fool. I Do say Jesus Christ Is Coming In The Flesh, I simply have no ears listening hearing what I speak.. So Absolutely Typing So Go With Really Trying To Hear What The Beloved Son In Whom God Is Well Pleased says... cause that Listen To Him... Is rBenefit To Every Soul Obedience to Our Father His Fathe The Only Father on earth that is a good name
@@acomputerwiz-nerd5538The earliest versions of Mark that have been found that date to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries. End after the 8th verse in chapter 16. So it seems the verses after verse 8 have been added later
If it were as you say, do you really think Joseph of Arimathea would have moved the body without consulting or telling the apostles? It seems very imporobable to me, not least because he was a Jesus sympathizer and therefore must necessarily have known some of his disciples, Mary Magdalene included. I agree with the rest of the analysis.
The giveaway for me is the way Dr. Tabor uses the Peter text. In his unsupported claim of a second burial, he gives historical value to the Peter text claiming it represents what he believes actually happened, but then leaves out the part of Peter's gospel that says the resurrection and ascension of Jesus occurred before the group of women arrived.
People please think. At the onset, those “disciples” likely went into hiding as mentioned by the Bible. They were no where to be seen. He had a quick burial in a makeshift tomb will the intention to conduct a proper burial with placement in a proper tomb. For the life of me, I don’t know why you people come up with this fiction that Joseph of Arimethea acted stealthy or furtively. lol. Because you all seemingly only want to hear what you want to hear, you ignored the point Dr. Tabor has always stressed. To wit: After Mark, the remaining Gospels were embellished!!!!
What was the significance of the young man the women are said to have encountered at the tomb, being dressed in white? Also, why was he sitting there in the first place?
If you were taking a body in the middle of the night, would you unwrap it and fold everything neatly,setting the head piece aside? Or would you grab and go? He did it this way for them to believe ( wrap their heads around it) asking for a friend.
He did it that way because that's what they did when they weren't finished with a meal so the servants knew U weren't finished eating. In other words it means his coming back
Who knows why they did it, could be lots of reasons. You don't need to "grab and go" in the middle of the night if you have lookouts and plenty of time for it being the middle of the night. Maybe they left it that way to mess with people's heads - which seems to have worked. That's if any of this even happened.
I am sure that you know that the name of the "Gospel of Mark" is really more than that, it mentions that Mark is or was the scribe of Peter. That means that it is actually The Gospel of Peter, recorded by his secretary, Mark. So, when you start with the resurrection as recorded by Mark, it is actually what Peter told him to write about the resurrection. "The other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved" is John, not James. You should note that when Jesus was on the cross he told his mother, in effect, to live with John. John was standing by Mary, Jesus's mother, and Jesus said, "Behold your son." His brother James was not there. Just a week before he had mocked Jesus, and of course, Jesus loved his brother for it is recorded elsewhere that after the resurrection, Jesus went to James to show him that he was God. John often refers to himself in the third person when he is writing about his exchanges with Jesus. Therefore, it should be the same throughout this account. In the last account the "lost" gospel of Peter, I have to ask, "What 12 disciples?!!" Was not Judas Iscariot not dead? That makes 11 disciples. This "Lost Gospel of Peter" is more likely than not, a "Lost Gospel" at all, but rather something like a commentary like you see today where you find a snippet of the true Bible with someone telling you how you should live and what you should consider like the old "My Daily Bread," or the ridiculous "Phone Calls from Jesus." I received my education from professors at Reformed Theological Seminary, Clinton, Mississippi. Some of them participants in the commentary in the New Geneva Study Bible. In the many commentaries it contains I do believe it presents the multiple views on certain topics with fairness and thoroughness, and addresses difficult matters with care. Your video was indeed thought provoking and I appreciate it very much!
Thank you so much Dr. Tabor for sharing all the information you have researched. It is fascinating and adds so much more to this wonderous event. I'm greateful.
Genesis 19 . . . no indication that anyone but Lot recognized the angels were more than ordinary men. And even Lot fed them, offered to wash their feet, gave them shelter and rest overnight. Your assessment of Mark 16:5 being just an ordinary young man fails in like manner. Why do you feel compelled to do that? I have Rabbis who are friends, too, James. It doesn't mean I take on their misgivings.
The Shroud of Turin is another important piece of the puzzle. "A Burst of Conscious Light" by Dr. Andrew Silverman is the most up-to-date and best all around discussion of the science of resurrection. IMO
...this Q. may be dismissed by some as an "Unimportant Detail", but I note that one of the passages you quote from "The Lost Gospel of Peter" speaks of "...we TWELVE Disciples of the Lord..." -- Not. "...the ELEVEN Disciples..." who, as recounted in Matthew 28:16, hastened to Galilee, "...into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them." It's apparent that "The Gospel of Peter" had been written Without knowledge of the Tradition that Judas Escariot had died soon after Jesus H. "...gave up the ghost." -- in one- of two different suicides by hanging -- or that bizarre "Alternate Ending" wherein a mis-step on the farm he'd bought with his Blood Money caused him to 'Spills his Guts'...
It would presumably go further than the death of Judas. Why count him as one of the 12 even if he was still alive if he’s a betrayer? It could mean Peter is a forgery, or there could be other explanations. One is that by the time Peter was written, the group had replaced Judas with a new 12th and the author wrote “us 12” out of habit, effectively. Or it could mean Judas wasn’t a betrayer and that this was a later invention or a tradition that the author of Peter rejected.
@@MasterShake9000 I read the Gospel of Peter some years ago, and my impression is it was written long after the other books that form the New Testament. I've already left a comment about one of the reasons why, basically, the long sophisticated dialog between Jesus and Pilate that would have been impossible to have taken place in the circumstances of all the prior events of that day, plus any actual witnesses who would have needed to record that testimony.
There's a pretty solid case to be made that the entire Judas figure was a later invention and was interpolated into the existing gospels later on. Since we don't have the original manuscripts, of course we can't prove that, but the evidence is pretty compelling. I could give you details if you're interested.
Interesting. As a Christian the question of the physical resurrection is like a non issue in my mind. Even a virgin birth asexual female reproduction is theoretically possible. Jesus volunteering to do what he did inspite of every human inclination he had and creating the world as we know it is by far the most miraculous and awe inspiring part of the gospels to me. The material miracles are besides the point to me.
I find it interesting that Peter's lost gospel mentions "we twelve disciples", when everyone in their tight knit group would've known that Judas committed suicide. Also, it's not lost, the Church knew about it but decided that it was not to be included in the Canon of Scripture. Also, are we just supposed to take Dr. Tabor's word that there was additions to The Gopels? Change the "Dr." to "Pope" then.
Dr. Tabor doesn't make a citation for his claim that Mark ended Mark 16:8, but for that one, I'm surprised you haven't heard of this before: it's pretty common knowledge that all the earliest sources end at Mark 16:8. No serious scholars disagree with this, and even my former Methodist minister would not argue against it. It's so mainstream that even Bibles such as the NIV will often say things like "[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9-20.]" before printing the rest. (In fact, we even have ANCIENT manuscripts that add this same kind of note between Mark 16:8 and the rest, saying that other manuscripts don't include the following verses. We even have one Armenian manuscript made in 989 that contains a note, written between 16:8 and 16:9, that attributes 16:9-20 to "Ariston the Elder/Priest" a first century saint believed to have known the Biblical Peter. In other words, it's like "this last part isn't by Mark, but it's not a forgery: this trusted priest filled in the rest because we all know the real story didn't end here!") Even those denominations or Bibles that DO want to believe Mark's ending is longer have a dilemma, because some old manuscripts contain verses 16:9-20 and others, such as the version accepted by the Coptic Christians, just have a short 16:9 (sometimes called the "conclusio brevior") that differs from the "long version" of Mark 16:9-20. Now, it IS quite possible that the original Mark did NOT end at 16:8 and contained more story that is now lost to us. Many scholars argue this, bolstered by the fact that in the original Greek, Mark 16:8 seems to end with the word "yet" which implies that it is the middle of a sentence! (Though just as in English, sometimes people who spoke Greek colloquially might occasionally end full sentences with a preposition. So this could be an honest error by the original author rather than a sentence fragment.) So if you're a Christian, you have solid historical backing if you want to believe that Mark's message is not supposed to just end abruptly but may have originally contained a stronger message about a resurrection, etc. Your point about the Gospel of Peter and "12 Disciples," however, is a pretty solid attack against its authenticity. I suppose one might argue that the very first thing that happens in Acts 1 is that the 11 remaining disciples, still in Jerusalem, that same day, go into a room and pick Matthias to replace Judas--so maybe the Gospel of Peter just rearranges the order of things slightly from how Luke and Acts do, placing the choosing of Matthias as a disciple to BEFORE they all go to the tomb and see it empty (and why not, especially if it took them 8 days from the burial to get down there?). In this case, they could reference "12 disciples" accurately in that account. However, I don't think we need to prove any of this, because I don't think Dr. Tabor is claiming that all of The Gospel of Peter is authentic. He's claiming that WITHIN the Gospel of Peter, it likely contains a story of Jesus's death that is more-or-less original, and which would predate even the Gospel of Peter or the other canonical Gospels. Certainly the account in the Gospel of Peter is unique and doesn't seem cribbed from the other gospels. Most scholars believe that it probably DOES come either from oral tradition, or from the now-lost "Gospel of the Hebrews," or both. That doesn't make it TRUE, but it does verify that it is ancient. Bear in mind that he is not stating that any gospels, in the Biblical tradition or out of them, are "true" but rather is trying to piece together what might be the closest thing to an accurate story of Jesus's death from the stories that are DEFINITELY additions later.
Judas suicide.... Just thinking aloud - they didn't have instant communication back then. Judas ran off and hanged himself in a field he bought with the money from Jesus' betrayal according to tradition. The field was called Hakeldama after his death, meaning Field of Blood. A monastery occupies the spot now. Going by the picture he might have hung there for more than 2- 3 days. There's a small rocky outcrop/cliff there and if his body fell down that when the rope broke then his bloated belly would have easily burst open. The stink would have been horrible at that point. It doesn't look like a spot that would have been frequently used as a path/road way back then, so he could have hung there undisturbed until the rope broke or been concealed by tree branches during the time, or rocks/boulders after he dropped. The other Apostles were busy worrying and in fear for their lives, but there is nothing that indicates exactly when they found out about his death and replaced him. At that moment they might not have understood exactly what Judas had done yet and considered him still part of the group - the full truth only dawning on them as more information came to them. They were ignorant of everything at the Last Supper and Judas never confessed anything to them. The entire situation is so sketchy that there is room for speculation there. Anyway, there is reasonable evidence to think that the "we twelve disciples" mention in the Peter Gospel is legitimate when you give it thought. That's my two cents.
Stephen took over from Judas position and filled the gap, as he was there from the beginning, from the start of Jesus' mission until his crucifixion and resurrection. As Peter is telling the story in flashback, he could therefore be talking about Stephen as the 12th apostle. by the way: the Gospel of Peter is more legendfully than the 4 gospels. there is no way that it was written before the second century. The author from the gospel of peter -whoever it was - was definitely convinced that Jesus is indeed resurrected and would not accept that Mr. Tabor tries to change the Intention of his gospel. he would probably reply him: My intention was to prove that Jesus is risen, not that his body was stolen or removed. so stop cherry-picking of my gospel verses
I would be interested to know what Tabor thinks the early Christians believed during the time of Nero as mentioned by Tacitus. Because this makes the "legendary" theory more difficult which is what Tabor needs to make his theory reasonable and relevant.
@@donmilland7606 No. Because he is arguing from silence. He assumes a mysterious other gospel truth that surrounds James the Just. And in order to have this he needs the legendary theory to be true. If the legendary theory is true then what does history say these early Christians believed that is now lost to us?
Which begs the question: Where was the location of the tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea, that the body of Jesus was taken to? Was it the Talpiot tomb?
Correct the Talpiot Tomb is where the body was taken to decay and then take his bones and put it in a ossuary. Joseph of Arimathea wouln't own a tomb near the crucifixion site because he didn't attend to have a special tomb just for Jesus being put to death. If he did he would already have the family know about it as they would most likely be buried in the same place as Jesus. Also why would the family of Jesus want to have a tomb and be buried close to a crucifixion site. Lets say Jesus was't crucified and lived a long life and eventually died, would his choice be buried near a tomb of a crucifixion site, probably not! That's why the Talpiot Tomb is the most reasonable canadite for Jesus and his family tomb.
Many scholars doubt the whole tomb story entirely. The purpose of crucifixion was state terrorism, so the Romans would have had no reason to allow the body of Jesus to be taken down from the cross only hours after they put it up. Remember the Romans crucified him because Jesus was a pretender to the throne so treating him respectfully in death would have had the opposite effect of what they wanted to achieve.
The more immediate question is how do we guarantee authenticity of the Talpiot tomb? Clearly someone would have had to enter the tomb to remove the James Ossuary. So can anyone guarantee all of the material found in that tomb wasn't staged?
@@marciamcmahon2247Dr. Tabor's story works off the assumption Joseph of Arimathea didn't realize Passover was fast approaching, and completely overlooks the more likely scenario that he was well aware of that fact when he made arrangements to bury the body in the garden tomb near the place of crucifixion.
Ive managed to get through some of your videos and my question is, what is the purpose of your channel? Is it to try and disprove the Holy Bible? That’s the impression I am getting.
The word "raised" is the common word used throughout the Gospels for being raised from the dead. It is a general rather than specific word and is used for many different kinds of raising up. However, the two words resurrection and raising are used at times for the same thing as in 1st Corinthians 15:12,13. The word for "resurrection" seems to be used for the final resurrection rather than the raising of someone from death - with a few exceptions, Jesus being one since his raising up is the final resurrection for him. Re: John 20. I would take issue that the "other disciple" (almost certainly John) believed that his body had been taken away. Why not Peter, if that were the case? It is virtually self-evident. No, what John believed was that Jesus had been raised from the dead, as the parenthetical comment that follows says.
I really enjoy your teachings. Some might think that it's taking away from Christ but for me it's not. It just reinforces my beliefs. You're bringing back Christ and making him real instead of a myth. I appreciate that. Thank you Dr. Tabor.🤗❤️🤗
As archaeologist and linguist I would recommend not to rely on this so called Gospel of Peter. It is apocryphal and pseudoepigraphal. It was probably written in the mid 2nd century, but the first manuscript dates from the 8th century.
I love church history, and this is intriguing. What sources do you have? I 100% rely on all the books/letters as inspired. So I'm not bothered by asking for your sources. Grace and peace.
Until this video, I had fallen into the mythological camp due to the dating of Pauline texts and the cosmological viewpoint expressed in them. Showing the two canonical works contain a shortened version that have similar features and then finding a third source outside of the canon exhibiting similar themes brings me back from the mythological cliff. I can feel the power of the argument being made. Thank you for sharing this. I’m quickly becoming a fan of your work.
I’m not ready to replace my belief in the physical resurrection doctrine, but this material is intriguing, excellently supported and delivered, and deserves serious consideration. Very well done!
I'm a non-believer, but I appreciate believers like you who are open to different views and understandings of these materials. Informed faith is the best kind of faith.
This dude is pushing an ancient Jewish canard. Don’t be deceived. Before you give up on the core tenant of Christianity- that Jesus rose from the dead- look at the shroud of Turin. It is really Jesus death shroud and it is what convinced them he wasn’t taken away. The shroud was still in the tomb and had Jesus’ image burned into it by LIGHT. This dude doesn’t explain why JofA would have taken the corpse out of the shroud to move his body. And how do you take a decaying corpse out of its shroud without smearing the blood and fluids all over? The shroud shows no smearing. The shroud has 3D information depicting Jesus returning to life and then transforming into pure light. Jesus really is risen!
@@ThaShikushi The informed ones move towards the mystics and what today is being called "non-duality". That's where mature religious practices lie, it seems to me.
Great video. Thought experiment: what if Joseph of Arimathea and Pilate conspired with Jesus and some of his followers to fake his death? 1. Let him get help to carry his cross 2. Though expressing great pain in Mark, he seems very cool in John, for a man who's about to suffer a horrible death 3. Pilate saying he was surprised that Jesus was already dead - so he wasn't on the cross as long as normal. 4. Roman guards before a grave with a Jewish rebel. Like, it would be best if nobody looked inside. 5. Jesus not quite dead in the weeks and months that followed his crucifixion. 6. Jesus telling some of his men not to try to defend him, when he is arrested, and at least one being in on his arrest. Crazy conjecture? Yes. Worse than so many other theories? Well, it does explain a lot of the stories in the new testament. But no, I don't think that is what happened. It's just an illustration to show that you can get pieces to fit together if you want.
Your theory does not explain why the disciples were so sure of the resurrection not only to bet their career on it, but also willing to suffer and die rather than shut up.
Why would Pilate, a Roman procurate conspire with a Jewish prophet whom he'd never previously met when the Sanhedron brought Christ to him to be executed ? It is clear in Matthew that Pilate only reluctantly gave into the Sanhedron's demand that Christ be executed because the crowd demanding Barabus, a zealot imprisoned for killing a Roman soldier, threatened to riot if Barabus was executed for his crime and Jesus set free. Long before the Sanhedron conspired to have Jesus killed he predicted his persecution, crucifiction, and resurrection. So, for there to be a planned ruse between Pilate and Jesus that would have had to have been worked out far in advance. There is zero evidence and no rational political basis for such an alliance. Also, Christ predicted his crucifixion and resurrection before he went to Jerusalem for the Passover. He repeated that prediction when he first confronted the Sanhedron at the Temple. And he warned them that if they persisted in their intention to wage a holy war against the Roman Empire "not one stone would be left upon another." In 70 AD, the zealots did, in fact, start a rebellion that was crushed by the Roman's. 5,000 zealots were crucified in one day and the 2nd Temple was virtually destroyed - all but the West Wall. The Roman Empire was very good at killing people. Crucifixion and other forms of torture were the common means throughout the Empire of exerting absolute Roman authority over millions of people in ways we would find abhorrent and barbaric today. Why do we see the barbarism today that was common place in Christ's day? Because he changed forever the perception of the value of human life, even among nonbelievers who know nothing of Christ.
@@KaoXoni thanks for your feedback. I think my thought experiment does explain even that. Because in my thought experiment, they did see him. And only some, perhaps just Judas, knew of the plot. Again, not really a theory, a thought experiment.
@@KaoXoni so I take it that we are talking about St. Paul and St. Sebastian and others, who died for their Christian faith decades, even centuries, after the crucifixion?
Natsarim 21:15 Those who guarded the tomb, when questioned regarding these things, said, “The disciples came early and carried him away for burial in a proper manner at another place. For he was laid here only because of the Shabbat, and it was not his tomb.” None questioned them further, for this was proper. And the guards were only placed to protect certain bodies from those who would work evil sorceries on them, those who improperly tampered with bodies being put to death. Yoceph of Arimathea
Yes, excellent composition. Why on earth would a "spirit" care about a resuscitated body. In most near death accounts the person has no interest in their physical body. It is as if they have slipped out of a heavy coat which they no longer need and in which they have no further interest.
Exellent composition? Why on Earth would the apostles not have checked with Joseph of Arimathea as resurrection was not suspected initially. His line of reasoning makes no sense. It is reasoning from absences in his texts (and cut off fragments).
@@discoveringthegardenofeden7882 Excellent point. I think that the kicker was the young man who told them to go to Galilee. However, as we would expect there are several versions of what happened. One plausible version is that Joseph came and got the body to bury it. I had not thought of that before. In any case, I never saw that a transfigured body was that big of a deal. If Jesus returned in spirit, that was always good enough for me. I always felt that when anyone died, they continued on in spirit form, so that's what I figured for Jesus. And I never thought that eternal life meant living forever in physical form. I felt that it meant living in a love so profound that it resulted in a perfectly peaceful spirit here and beyond. So, being raised from the dead was no big deal either.
@@discoveringthegardenofeden7882 Oh, excellent handle too. What does it signify? It's my feeling that we are still in the Garden of Eden. We've simply mistaken it for a golf course.
@@brookvalley907 The handle exists because in 2017 I found the location of the Garden of Eden. Every church entrance (before modernist architecture) spells the location, depicted in hieroglyphics. The Phoenicians, Gaul, Persians, Japanese and Ancient Egyptians had/have this knowledge too, in their own traditions. Puzzles with a solution are handed down by religions, as messages in bottles, to be discovered and deciphered by those who spot the bottles on the beach. Or, in Biblical terms: thorns in the feet, after having been stepped upon, feet to be washed AND the extracted thorns to be examined. That is why Jesus commands to wash the feet. The symbol 'thorn' in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs is interesting as well. Jesus came out of Egypt, so the gospels say. He/Christianity brought knowledge from that culture with him. And it was preserved in Christianity.
You best evidence that Mark's account was appended was the fact that you also changed it. How brilliant scientific logic you have. And if Mark's, then also Luke's account, and the resurrection, and the flood, and the fall of man, and heaven, and hell, and judgment, and redemption, and creation. Brilliant.
The question of why didn’t Mary know about Joseph could be answered this way. Things were so sudden with events moving rapidly. No one expected him to be crucified. So Joseph makes a very late appeal and no way to find Mary to tell her. He goes early to recover the body to move it and instructs a servant to stay and wait, knowing Mary would show up as soon as possible to tell her what happened. It’s not like it was all planned in advance and only later was it revealed. The fact that it’s in more than one gospel seems to indicate it was a well known fact later. When you strip away the later mythology of physical resurrection, it does seem plausible. It’s what you’d expect Joseph to do leaving a servant to stay over and wait to tell someone what happened.
@@robertjustinoff845 It sounds like a literary invention saying there were Roman guards protecting the body of someone they just crucified and whipped so badly. I really don’t trust Matthew’s gospel who was so obviously determined to tell a story. He’s the worst of those gospels.
"Ignored?" What our good professor is ignoring in this context is the burial shroud. This relic has important evidence that suggests that Jesus' dead body was not physically removed but , instead, dematerialized while still covered by its shroud.
That does make sense, it would explain why there are such inconsistencies between the accounts regarding the burial and resurrection stories. Look at what it also says in John, that Nicodemus brought some 75 pounds of spices and they spiced and wrapped the body, which could have happened at Joseph's own tomb in the garden area, after they moved it from the 'tempory tomb in Golgotha'. But that story got inserted which made it sound like they spiced the body at Golgotha. This might be why you get the inconsistency of the women seeing where and how the body was laid in the synoptic gospels (at Golgotha) and they go ahead to obtain spices so they can later annoint the body. Apparently having no knowledge of the 75 pounds of spices (as in John) being applied to the body and laid in the tomb (even though they should have as the synoptics have the women see 'where and specifically HOW' the body was laid. Whereas in John there is no mention of the women seeing the body being spiced and then placed in the tomb. So it does makes sense, considering these are honest accounts people put forth, that the body was indeed moved from a tomb at Golgotha to a tomb (in a garden) owned by Joseph of A, and then 'they' spiced the body there, but things got mixed up and inserted where it should never have been.
The mention of the young man wearing a "white robe" leads me to wonder the possibility that he might actually be Jesus. Why are they not asking this young man who he is? And how he knows this information of "They"?
Thanks for the interesting insight. It shows how the disciples not only abounded jesus during his crucifixion but also after easter morning. And if we take the first century jewsh context about the resurrection i.e., resurrection does happen in the future for all and is bodily and not for a single person now, then it’s hard to explain how the first disciples were so convinced that jesus waa bodily raised. Without this strong conviction it’s very hard to explain the rise of the christian movement especially in light of the fate of those messiah pretenders before and after jesus who went through similar endings like jesus. Without the disciples having a strong conviction of the resurrected jesus, it’s hard to explain why the jesus movement didn’t end up like the other messianic movements.
So, Steven is getting stoned to death by an angry mob, yet he has time to either write a dissertation about a vision he has while dying or is able to cogently speak to a sympathizer while being stoned to death. This makes no logical sense at all.
Very interesting! I have wondered for a while if the Gospel of Mark was originally a circular work with Jesus and the man at the tomb telling the women that Jesus would meet them in Galilee to point to and connect to Jesus gathering the disciples in Galilee after his baptism. Could this be the case?
Dr. Ammon Hillman does an amazing job showing what the Greek Septuagint says, he’s a philologist in classical Greek. Way different than what I was taught.
Note that, in John, Mary Magdalene says, "*WE* do not know where they have laid him." So she didn't see the tomb empty of Jesus alone. It's probably that the others weren't quoted and being a male-dominated society, they weren't named in this writer's account because they weren't deemed important to the story.
Strictly speaking, the seas are created at the beginning of Day 3 (Gen 1:9), not on Day 2. The separation of the waters on Day 2 is between the waters below from the waters above, allowing for the expanse of the sky to come into being, sandwiched between these two layers. Granted, the basic elements God intends to populate on Day 5 are present on the Earth by the end of Day 2, however, they are not yet functionally ordered for that purpose according to the narrative. Thus we should conclude that this sort of parallelism wasn't intended to be strict in its formulation. In any case, it does no harm to the overall structure of the narrative.
These are excellent studies of yours, James. I've studied the differences in the synoptic gospels, and these differences appear to be prophetic, prophesy to come. Luke, being written to the Bride of Christ in white, Mark to the left behind lost sheep of Israel and unbelievers, and finally Matthew to the Jews (including the synagogue of satan Jews that Jesus refers to). John is the "whole picture" kind of, for the Kingdom of God. I posted my studies for anyone interested. I think in the 153 Fish Update, and the The Rib Comes Out of the Body, I address some of these things.
Would not touching a corpse make the JoA ritually unclean? Would he have time between the burial and sundown to visit a mikvah and regain his ritual cleanliness in time to partake of the Peshach?
This is by far the best analysis of the lost body hypothesis that I have seen, Bravo! Unfortunately, this theory is fatally flawed as follows: One key assumption in this theory is that Mary the mother of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea never meet from the time that Joseph moves or has the body moved to the time that Mary returns to the Galilee. It is inconceivable that if Joseph meets with Mary, within a few days after Mary cannot find the body, that the subject of the missing body does not come up. So the question is therefore, is it reasonable that they never met in this brief time period. This question can be examined by first identifying a few of Dr. Tabors statements in the transcript of this video: At 2:11 and 2:14 - "have Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James I think that's Jesus mother and" So we have Mary the mother of Jesus in Jerusalem and in the presence of Joseph at the time of the burial. At 14:33 through 14:49 - "of the crucifixion and he grants Joseph to have the body Joseph is probably part of the family there is some later Christian tradition that he's related actually to Mary and that would make sense I'm not saying that's in this text but he has some connection he buys a" So Joseph has some kind of family connection. Finally from 18:19 through 18:26 "and the family weep and mourn his death for seven days through unleavened bread following the Passover they returned to the giley where they began to experience" In Jewish tradition and custom of mourning is called sitting Shiva (7) which is a seven-day period of mourning. This starts at the time of death or knowledge of the death and including this day continues for 7 days. It is customary to visit the family during this period of mourning. To consider that Joseph of Arimathea who has taken charge of the body of Jesus and is a family member does not visit the family during this period of mourning or during their remaining time in Jerusalem, not even once, defies reason. Dr. Tabor states from other videos that he thinks that Jesus died on a Thursday. Then this would have been the first day of Shiva (mourning) leaving the last day at sundown Wednesday the seventh day. According to the text the family would have continued to stay at least another 3 days until the end of the week of Unleven bread and the weekly Sabbath. So this leaves us with one possible out for this theory. Which is first if Joseph only visits the grieving family once before they leave for the Galilee, second if his only visit is before the body is moved and third during this solo visit the plan to move the body after the Sabbath is never discussed then the moved body could continue to be a viable theory but for me three if's and you’re out.
The "sabbath" mentioned at John 19:31 is not the seventh-day (weekly) but is the High Sabbath, i.e., Pesach (what you're calling "Passover"). There's always a "preparation day" before a Sabbath, whether it be annual or weekly. The women who were observing the body as it was hurriedly being entombed were not convinced that what the men had done was sufficient. But it was too late in the day to obtain the proper spices and then return to complete their work, so they had to wait another day, until that Sabbath had passed, to do so. That day would have been Preparation Day for the weekly Sabbath (the sixth day of the week) and, with all their family responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, children, etc) - in addition to obtaining the necessary spices, etc., they apparently again did not have enough time before this Sabbath began to accomplish the task. This explains why the two Miriams came "early," on "the first day of the week... when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre." Since the timeline you've presented doesn't seem to "line up," doesn't that call into question the rest of your thesis?
I grew up a Southern Baptist and when I was about 35 I started to study theology and apologetics and I always kept an open mind. You know the rest, I ended up becoming liberal in theology and then I left religion altogether. The more I studied and researched, the more I saw religion for what it was and I had no need for it. I also enjoyed reading books by Bart D. Ehrman.
In John 20: If Mary Magdalene saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb and then ran, what made her think Jesus was not in there? The verse says nothing about her looking inside.
One thing he didn’t mention, spices were put on and around a corpse to mask its decaying smell. That was done before the burial, not after. There is no need to mask the smell of a decaying corpse once it’s in its final resting place. Also, it’s strange that women would anoint the body of Jesus; a man’s body would be anointed by men and a woman’s by women.
It was well known to the disciples that there were Roman soldiers guarding the tomb. Of course it would be easily assumed "they" the Romans, moved His body.
What explains the sightings, though? A spiritual resurrection? Some psychological effect on the disciples? A fathom of the disciples to cope with the loss of their master like children would conjur up to cope with the loss of a favorite toy or a traumatic experience?
Excellent job professor! I believe most evangelical christians, inlcluding Gary Habermas, believe that Jesus conquered death through a resuscitated body even though this goes against Paul’s authentic letters and the original Gospel Story.
Golgotha means the skull. Annick de Souzenelle (a remarkable writer still alive in her 101 years) and she is the only one mentioning in her books the three baptisms, such as, of water, of fire, and of the skull (golgotha).
That's an original insight I never came across before. Yet still I think there needs to be more proof for the existence of this Joseph of Arimathea and what he did. On extraordinary rare occasions were the crucified ones given the chance to be buried...
Dear Dr James Thanks a lot for the wise insights, however I think that Joseph's party moving the body to a new tomb without him communicating the movement to jesus mother and his disciples is not a possibility in a jewish closely tighted community. I think they all found the tomb empty and were in shock.
If Joseph had not offered to bury the body, what would’ve happened to the body? Maybe he owned the nearby tomb and that is why he offered to bury the body?
Jewish resurrection involves the body, which means mortality is purged from the [original] body. The Rabbis view this as fair since the body should enjoy Olam Ha-Ba as well as the soul.
Pdople who livs today with access to cars can picture a woman trodding through the wilderness before dawn to visit a tomb. This was amazing especially since an earthquake of the dead spirits rising to march on Jerusalem going on at the same time.
So in Mark, Mary arrived at the tomb "when the sun had risen". In John, Mary arrived "while it was still dark". Which is correct? Now apologists will tell you that we'll, when Mary came back with Peter it was light amd that is what Mark meant. Of course Mark says Mary said "nothing to anyone" so kind of hard to square that
This is good evidence that the Beloved Disciple isn't James. Mark has several women discovering the tomb, and they go to tell the disciples. John only says that Mary Magdalene told Peter and the Beloved Disciple. That's fine if the Beloved Disciple is John, or someone else. Mary Magdalene found and told them, while the other women went and told the others. But if Mary the mother of Jesus and James was there, and James is the Beloved Disciple, why would she not be the one to tell James? It's implausible that Mary the mother of Jesus+James would go tell the sons of Zebedee or whoever and leave Mary Magdalene to tell her own son.
One theory is he survived the crucifixion. Bible claims even Pilate marveled that Jesus was already dead late on the afternoon of the crucifixion (Mark 15:43-44). Would explain a lot of other "earthly" details given in the narratives.
3:00 and 4:15. Tabor says that it was a man they saw and "not an angel". In the gospels (and Hebrews) angels appear as men. They are not depicted as beings with wings or anything like that. Hebrews 13:2 says (NIV), "Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it." How could that happen if they looked anything like anything other than human beings. Now you may not believe in angels, but we are talking about how Mark is describing that happened at the tomb. So 4 mins 15 into the video and two clangers so far.
So, a Jew cannot be on a cross during Passover then why rush to crucify him? The whole point of crucifixion was to display the criminal. You could say that the Sanhedrin was so outraged they wanted it done immediately but then why also crucify the two thieves?
Yes James! There was a ‘man’ INSIDE the tomb. The man says Jesus had risen! This is common language for the resurrection of the dead. I don’t need the longer ending of mark to know Jesus was raised from the dead. Very disappointing. I hope and pray for you brother
Seeing your translation of Mark 16:6 as "has been taken up," I checked the Greek and YES! ἠγέρθη is aorist indicative *passive!* - it's an action that has been done *to* him/his corpse. Surely, if the author of Mark had wanted to write, "he is risen" in Greek, wouldn't the perfect tense be the most appropriate to indicate he is still in the risen/lifted up state after the initial event? Similarly, ἐσταυρωμένον in the verse meaning, 'the one having been crucified' is a perfect particle ... that is, the state of 'having been crucified' is also a present state at the time of it being spoken. The author has written it like this to indicate that the young man understood that the crucified state of the body which the women sought, had not changed! If he knew the previously crucified body had undergone a miraculous change, then he would have used the aorist participle, not the perfect participle: but he didn't!
In the book "Christ Returns, Speaks his Truth" Jesus says that he had arranged with Joseph to temporarily place his body in an unused tomb then subsequently take his body to a small cave Jesus had found and used for shelter when he would roam the countryside as a young man.
Interesting, do you think this presumptive core resurrection story pre-dates the account in the 24th chapter or Marcion's Gospel and how do these relate? Does the later part of John's account suggest a reliance on Marcion and embellishes it? Mark ends abruptly, but Marcion tells a short primitive narrative about Jesus appearing here and there to the gathered apostles, whereas Luke and John really run with this. Mark's later interpolations appear to harmonize the story with the Marcion, it seems to me to be more similar than the narratives set out in the other gospels, which is odd since these interpolations apparently post-data Luke and John. I think that much of the confusion between Markian and Marcion priority probably arises from the stricture that we put ourselves in by thinking that what we call Mark is actually a later text from what existed in the first and very early second centuries. The later interpolations were probably nowhere near the only ones and we may have to figure out what this text that became Mark looked like.
Why does John 19:40 say that he was bound in linen strips with the spices when he actually hadn’t been washed by the women yet? The women came on the 1st day of the week to do that. Afterwards they would have used the spices.
The fact of all these various stories surrounding a single event convinces me that it is all legend and myth that was verbally passed down for decades before being recorded Who recorded the stories or where they were recorded is a matter of speculation.
True. My mother came to me in a lucid dream a while after her death and told me, "Isn't it wonderful, they've allowed me to come back." She was younger in appearance. We embraced and I could feel the warmth of her skin on my cheek, and no fear, only I remember thinking, "what am I going to tell my friends, she was dead and she's back." When I think about it, I smile about that observation, I was in my early thirties. There is more to this event of course (I remember it like yesterday and it happens over fourty years ago) but I am telling you about it, in a nutshell.
You believe it's normal for all of the disciples to have a mass hallucination that Jesus was alive? As Jesus said these ppl won't believe even if someone rises from the dead. The issue isn't the evidence it's the heart.
@@JakeLeidahl I have not said that it is normal for all the disciples to have a mass hallucination that Jesus was alive. I was only replying @tausflorianmarcprksen1530 about my vision of my dear dead relative in the period after her death. Leave it at this.
@@letmeconnectmy reply was to both you and the original commentary. You said true to their point. No it's not common for ppl to see their dead relatives. That's a poor explanation of the resurrection of Jesus. I wasn't discrediting your account as the topic of the discussion is Jesus
@@JakeLeidahl You're splitting hairs here. But, I would say as to the topic of the discussion about the bilocation of Jesus, in the 1st century, on the Golgotha, he might have been transformed in the Spirit of God, in the East called the body of light. That sort of transformation happens, according to the buddhist lama Tibetans who were living over 125 years before the birth of Jesus, and stating that a person can get to the energy of a body of light (the jalu) and the process happens during and after the death of the person. Now the person, or a Christ, or a Buddha, has reached a form of consciousness that can enter and bear "higher worlds". Now, you believe it or not; that is according to you own evolution. So, let's leave it at that.
wonder if Mary of Magdala was the one who paid for the spices?...I read somewhere that she may have had the money to support Jesus...from watching various documentaries I came to understand that Mary Magdalene might have been a business woman...dried fish sales I believe.
If the body was moved to another tomb, why would they unwrap the corpse and leave the linen cloth and the napkin? John 20:6-7.
Good point
why would the disciples and Mary not know the body had been moved? Why didn't they go searching?
I wouldn't. In fact, I would have probably wanted to bring some more.
That’s only found in Johns account. N
Because they were bloody and gross and the laundromat wasn't open that early on a Sunday?
Question for Dr. Tabor: Given that the Gospel of Peter was written 150(-ish) years after Jesus died, would you please explain why you consider it authoritative?
There are a lot of assumptions being made here. First would be whether the manuscript found was a copy of an earlier one, or the original itself. If it was actually written by Peter as indicated in the text, then clearly the original couldn't be 150 years after Jesus.
@@nubtube7313 The Gospel of Peter was written in the latter half of the second century. The manuscript found is from a few hundred years later. Obviously it is not the original! My question for Dr. Tabor is based on scholarly consensus of the facts, not on any assumptions on my part.
@@VJacquetteThe statement that it was written in the second century alone is an assumption if you consider the text itself is recounting events that took place at, or around 30 CE. And scholarly consensus translates loosely into best guess by the people in-the-know that are closest to what little information is available. But I get your point and wasn't directing any disrespect towards you.
@@nubtube7313 Peter didn't like Paul nor did he endorse him as a brother. Read the clementine homilies (Preferred) or watch a vid on it , it's interesting. It's definitely not Peter. Research the Apocalypse of Peter you might like that too. That should have been in our bibles not 1/2 Peter they're edited by someone.
@@nubtube7313 You are assuming the possibility that an illiterate fisherman from the back country could read and write. Dr. Tabor NEVER said Peter authored anything. He said the exact opposite.
If your approach is true, then why mention the empty tomb at all? The whole idea is irrelevant. They should have just said "and he was later moved to his final resting place."
Because it is the corpse which is not relevant. Whatever work was supposed to be done was done and all went according to plan, and such the defeated body is irrelevant to the "glory" of the work, which goes on and on.
Because, the more confusing they can make the story, the more miraculous it seems. Also, the cultural deification process at that time and location required the body to "disappear." It is difficult to deify someone once people have seen their "unclean," decomposing corpse. The uncleanliness must be absconded with so that people will always think of them as pure.
Because later the empty tomb account became essential to prove the resurrection of Jesus once those who experienced the sightings were already dead. The gospels were wrietten 40 to 60 years after Jesus' death, when all the apostoles were already dead.
So you have in the early tradition the "sightings of Jesus" as a prove of his resurrection but later, when all those people who experienced the sightings were already dead, the prove of the resurrection became the empty tomb. Also as time passed the resurrection of Jesus became more and more physical with many miracolous elements added in the account.
Here's yet another example of a mortal human being in their own material desire calling out and saying, I have a better idea!
You can say anything in theology to suit your narrative... so by the look of things , did Jesus raise from the dead ???
In Athens when the Greeks laughed at Paul why he didn't clarify to them that he was speaking of spiritual resurrection?
He did, read 1Corinthians 15. Paul explains at length that unless Jesus is resurrected our faith is in vain, but he also explains why it must be spiritual resurrection, not of the flesh, in verse 35-58.
Missing a corpse? Why not go and ask the man who was given custody of the body what he did with it?
The fact that there are stories about the body being moved & stolen PROVES the resurrection. They had to EXPLAIN the empty tomb.
Folks, if Jesus did NOT rise from the dead you are NOT saved‼️ This is a core part of the Gospel 1 Corinthians 15;17-18
DON'T BE DECEIVED
-Jesus
17And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. 18Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 19If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable
@@RiseUpUNAFRAID4614 You didn't watch & listen to the video, did you? Btw, please cite the stories that report "the body being stolen". And, please point out to me how stories about the moved & stolen body PROVE the resurrection.
Josephus had the body taken down only after 6 hours. Average time for some to die of crucifixion was 52 to 72 hours. And that is they broke your legs. Jesus did not die. He survived. And left the area with the help of Josephus Then the story was embilashed to make him like every other diety of that time. Dionysus Mithra and others. Not exactly the same but exactly the same premise
@@RiseUpUNAFRAID4614It was not necessary for Jesus to die for anyone’s sins. HaShem forgave sins throughout the Hebrew Scripture, without sacrifice.
@@alfarrellAlso, there is no evidence that Jesus offered himself as a sin offering. He was arrested, tried, and executed.
Why does Dr.Tabor say in Mark that the man in the tomb is not an angel but a man. Why would a man be hanging out in a tomb? Males no sense. Also if the tomb was only a temporary one why would the woman bring spices to bathe the body? They apparently believed that tomb was the permanent tomb. If the body was moved by some of his followers why would the burial cloths be left there. Makes no sense. If Joseph of Aremathia had arranged to move the body to a permanent spot he more than likely would have told that to his disciples whom he was familiar with. There are lots of holes in Dr. Tabor's narrative.
🤦🏻♂️
The question is - Is Dr Tabor going to hell for trying to diminish the Word, causing others to stumble?
Certainly, he scrambles the accounts. Jesus' human body terminated by Him, buried and held somewhere until the prophesied 3 days elapsed and then he was raised, God in a transformed body which could eat and was devoid of blood. Not an ordinary human but the first of the new generation (the last Adam) that is the head of the Church the redeemed of the Grace age. More steps than most recognize but not a spiritual resurrection alone. Paul described his contacts with Christ as spiritual since Jesus was already transformed and spoke to him from heaven.@@christianelder4983
You have limited your reading and understanding, I'm afraid, Look just because Jesus didn't rise in the fleshit doesn't take anything away from who he is. First off, you're wrong in your assessment that this was a permanent tomb, It was not. The Jewish holiday of passover was upon them the day Jesus died, Joseph had a tomb that wasn't quite finished nearby, He allowed them to use this as a temporary place of burial until the passover was completed and Jesus's body could be moved to the family tomb in Talpiot just up the road a ways. This is not rocket science or a David Copperfield illusion. It just is. Even Jesus said this flesh must perish.. Why is this so hard to understand unless you're not reading the material and allowing someone else to define Jesus's words.
@christianelder4983 Professor Tabor isn't trying to do any such thing, He is simply giving you the information in a historical context. He's not trying to change your faith, I've been following his work for a long time and I still love my Jesus. I think James Tabor is a wonderfully brilliant scholar of history. It shouldn't shake your faith, but rather amplify it.
I feel many who want to disbelieve will be swayed by the argument. The argument here is quibbling.
Yes he is risen means resurrected. If someone had just moved the body, they would’ve said that someone moved the body to another tomb. Also, who would’ve moved the body? The family? Then the beloved disciple is not James because he has family.
I don't believe the whole tomb story to begin with but if the body was moved, the most likely people to do it would have been the Romans. Since they wanted to make an example of killing Jesus as a pretender to the throne, whoever allowed the body to be taken down probably made a mistake. The Romans might have removed the body from the tomb as a potential rallying point for resistance to Roman rule.
@@ji8044 I don't know if the Romans would move the body since they let Joseph of Arimathea be in charge of it. the Romans wouldn't have bothered with burying the body. They disposed of bodies somewhere else.
He was buried shortly after HE died. Joseph of Arimathea asked pilot for HIS BODY. As by Jewish Law HE was taken to the tomb without washing as HE DIED a violent death. HE was laid out within a shroud. HIS BODY was adorned with Nicodemus’ oil, spices, flowers and coins on HIS EYES, then covered with the other long piece, HIS HEAD had a separate covering and a piece over HIS HEAD to keep HIS MOUTH shut. HE died Friday, buried before the Sabbath which started as we would call it sundown. Sabbath in the ground. Sunday morning HE was out of the tomb. For an up to date comment on THE SHROUD OF JESUS, read the new book written by Dr Gilbert Lavoie. It is fact❤🙏❤️ WOW
You need to read the bible. The Romans did not kill Jesus, the jews did. BTW Jesus was NOT a jew!@ji8044
Well if you are member of a superstitious cult as described bt Flavius Josephus, stories and myths are to be expected. The last part about family, that’s just stupid frankly.
I have one thing to say about this heresy; John 2:18 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?
19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?
21 But he spake of the temple of his body.
22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
Thank you! Perfect response.
Well done. This video is nothing but the ancient heresy of Gnosticism rearing up in a new form. Wearisome half-truths.
Amen.
You just opened
My eyes to something intriguing in this verse. Verse 22 says “So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made”
How can this be written by the disciple John if this is speaking as someone who isn’t a disciple? If this was really John that wrote this why would he say and his disciples remembered he had said this if he himself is a disciple ? This is a dead give away that whoever this author is, is not John
That's a very thin argument, John is more than a disciple he's also an Apostle who Jesus shared many deeper understandings with. If your busy looking to find fault with the scriptures the devil is more than willing to accommodate you. This is why Paul tells us to take every thought captive to Christ. If you believe in Jesus the witness is in you already. This is why the elect cannot be deceived.
I’ve often felt that main issue with the idea that there is no resurrection in marks gospel (I fully accept that that after verse 8 the text is a latter scribal addition) is that when you take the whole story into account you have Jesus saying that he will suffer and after 3 days rise. (Mk 8:31!33, 9:31b-32, 10:32b-342). To read the last section without that context seems to go against the way we would read any piece of literature. That combined with the mention of going to Galilee to see him there presupposes some sort of ‘being raised’ in a way that can be seen by people on earth. When you bring in the earliest source 1 cor 15, and the Jewish expectations of resurrection. I think you do have the idea of a physical resurrection. That’s not to say it happened but that it seems most likely the early Christian community believed something like a physical resurrection happened and had been witnessed by some of his followers.
Just some thoughts.
There's no way to know what Jesus may, or may not have said.
"Jewish expectations of resurrection"???? How the hell does that fit in? The Jewish expectations of resurrection was at the end of time, and not before that! Not even for a Messiah because they did not believe he would be killed. Which is what Jesus believed also, which is why he cried out to God, when the heavens did not open and save him.
... or the presupposition and context provided the needed justification for the later additions/embellishments for reinforcement. 🤷♂
I simply meant that Jewish expectations would be that resurrection would be a physical reality. I recognize that there is an unexpected aspect in regards to the timing of it (that's pretty clear from the reaction of everyone, even the early Christians haha), but when they use that terminology they do have a certain framework in mind. A good overview might be NT Wright, the resurrection of the son of God @@slik00silk84
What Jesus said or didn't say isn't the issue, the question is about what Mark's author believed Jesus to have said. I'm simply claiming that the author put wrote these to alert us as to how to interpret the ending of the book@@slik00silk84
I'm not arguing that an early Christian understanding of the resurrection is in no way unique (obviously it is in regard to timing etc haha), but that their understanding of it still had boundaries that were set by a Jewish framework of physical resurrection. NT Wright's the resurrection of the Son of God is a good treatment of this @@slik00silk84
And who would move the body during Passover?
The burial can take place during Passover after the first day, since work was not forbidden during the intermediate days, especially after they've offered the Paschal sacrifice already.
@@jeffreyerwin3665 It's true that according to later Jewish law those garments would have been buried too, if they were blood-soaked. But recall two things: (1) Jesus and his followers were not necessarily attached to the details of Rabbinic Tradition. (2) Perhaps those practices were not fully formed and established yet.
The gospels are telling an allegorical story, not literal history fgs.
@@davidm1149 There is only one gospel - what Christ did at the death burial and resurrection
[Gal 1:6 KJV] 6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
[Rom 15:20 KJV] 20 Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation:
[Gal 1:7 KJV] 7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
[Rev 14:6 KJV] 6 And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,
[Gal 1:8-9 KJV] 8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any [man] preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
[2Co 11:4 KJV] 4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or [if] ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with [him].
@@ronnieturner1356 I thought there were four myself. They tell an encoded story of the 'Christ' (Jesus Christ), the individual soul which has attained the divine mind.
What am I missing here?:
1: "...blocks it up until *after* the Passover..."
2 : "(Not after the Passover,) Saturday evening after sunset...removes the body, burying it in a permanent place...(During Passover.)
You are missing that the end of a day and the beginning of a new one is in the evening. The Sabath starts friday evening.
Why would Joseph of Arimathea take the body of Jesus and rebury it without informing the relatives of Jesus etc?
And vice versa: Why on Earth would the apostles not have checked with Joseph of Arimathea as resurrection was not suspected initially. His line of reasoning makes no sense. It is reasoning from absences in his texts (and cut off fragments).
@@discoveringthegardenofeden7882 Cont..... I certainly wouldn't take a corpse without informing their loved ones etc.
you're are 100% correct.
Well, in reality, Joseph of Arimithea was Jesus' dad, Joseph. The Roman myths about Jesus required them to diminish Jesus' father and siblings, embellish Mary and put in angels and a virgin birth.
@@geoattoronto What is your source? Or are you are reading information into the text, which is the product of eisegesis and reasoning from absence.
The church, that is the witnesses and followers of Christ, who wrote down the gospels, disagrees.
People have all sorts of theories, as fantasy is fertile and the demand for additional information great, resulting in gossip, but humans are often incapable of just trusting that those witnesses did not lie. Truth it has been handed down as, so accepting it is trust, which is what belief is. If one can trust parents, why cannot one trust apostles who ask to trust in their transmission? That is a recurring problem with every new generation, not with the facts, nor with the source material.
They didn't have text messages in those days
How can you know it was embellishment? The fragment in the Egyptian fragment breaks off. It is reasoning from absence. It also assumes the followers would not simply have checked with Joseph of Arimathea to find the body (which stretches credulity as living in their era witnessing the events they would have known if it was a temporary/final tomb); and you already mentioned initially no one suspected a supernatural resurrection (another argument why they would have checked with JA, Joseph of Arimathea).
“How can you know it was embellishment?” This is what those from the arts and humanities, like theology, do. They tell stories based on insufficient evidence, ignoring what doesn't mesh with their viewpoint.
Certain people love talking nonsense and hate being hemmed in by fact and logic.
@@grasonicus Not complete. Story telling is endemic in the sciences as well, as the philosophy of science is increasingly not taught nor appreciated. Science is rich in assumptions, poor in examining nor understanding the nature of its foundational, initial lies (which is what assumptions are) in each new discipline. Science, even in the Popperian approach, builds a house of lies from not-yet-found-out initial lies. No one disagrees science can be useful, but its truth claims are as unshakable as a house of cards. Don't sneeze and don't look.
Moreover, fact and logic does not exclude what is called the supernatural. Excluding the supernatural would be a self-limiting bias based on a preference about how the world should work. Naturalists would do that, but then again naturalists don't know 'nature' is an Ancient Egyptian word meaning 'divine' and that they too study the divine, unwillingly and unwittingly. People trained in the humanities would know this foundational linguistic link between science and theology, that is to say, all science is theology. Proof of their lack of insight in linguistics is that only those without training in the languages, would add 'super' to natural. For what could be the super-divine? As an example in contradistinction, the Devil is intelligent, but not super.
To shore up our feeble ability to reason is why science and the humanities were taught together since time immemorial, in the Ancient World, in the Middle ages, right up until the start of the 20th century, when Modernism finally got the upper hand and started to delete the link between the present and the past, playing shenanigans with educational curricula, in order to freely rewrite history without pesky questions by those who can read the source material in the original language.
Transmission is not relevant, the early witnesses could not have been right, they tell you. Don't learn Latin nor Greek nor Aramaic nor Hebrew, you geek. And trust your intuition, not transmission, for God's sake.
Just allow people to opine, and True history, transmitted, will evaporate like a puff of smoke.
@@discoveringthegardenofeden7882 I practised medicine, mostly at specialist consultant level, and also have a degree in information technology. It's clear you're from an arts and humanities background. It looks like you're familiar with philosophy. The definition of philosophy is, unconstrained speculation.
Historical 'science' is not science. Anyone can talk nonsense about the distant past with impunity.
In medicine, all treatment modalities are based on present facts. I know how and why penicillin works. When I did surgery, I knew exactly what the problem to be rectified was and how I was going to attempt to rectify it. No idle speculation or blah-blah-blah, just hard facts. Nobody mentioned evolution is my many years of training, and nobody claimed any treatment was based on evolution.
Get a comma wrong in programming, and you have problems. Design a circuit wrong, and it doesn't work at all or not as you intended.
Do a thought experiment and take away the contributions of science. To make it simple, take away anything depending in any way on electricity, your clothes, for example. They were made in a factory using electricity. No buildings, no roads, no transport, no communication, no Internet. Everyone is left sitting near-naked on the ground, digging for grubs with a stick.
Now take away the 'contribution' of the arts and humanities. Life goes on, as usual. Art is entertainment and decoration.
Theologians are among the biggest bullshitters alive. There's no Trinity in the Bible, and there's no replacement of the Sabbath with Sunday. Theologians will speak in defence of 1+1+1=1. Only the Catholics can claim logically believing in the Trinity and Sunday holiness. They readily say they don't only believe in the Bible, but also in tradition and what the Pope says. If the Pope says there's a Trinity, there's a Trinity. If the Pope says, 'pray to this statue,' the good Catholic is on his knees, praying in front of the statue before the Pope has finished speaking. Protestants don't have a leg to stand on with the Trinity and Sunday holiness.
@@grasonicus We shouldn't over-romanticize modern medicine.
The introduction of Softenon was based on present fact. The introduction of experimental mRNA vaccines is not preceded by long term hereditary studies. Medicine has side-effects, which implies that Bayesian guessing is at the origin of medical decision making, not a perfect understanding, not a complete science. Because it is structured as a profession, money is more important than the patient. The humanities would point out that medicine is an art, not a science. Perfect medicine would not require any surgery ever. Still, I was happy when the knitting needle cought the kidney stone. I would be happier if doctors, in a preventive approach to medicine, just told me not to eat carbs of any form, which, precisely because of how the body deals with them, cause kidney obstructions.
On the Trinity. Imagine the phase diagram of water. H2O can manifest itself as three distinct substances. Ice, Liquid water, Vapor (and if you really want plasma and the several ices I, II, III, IV, ... crystallin configurations). That would be a good naturalism based analogy for the trinity. Water + Ice + Vapor = H2O.
If arts and humanities would not exist, scientists would not have 'analogy' in their toolkit and they would have trouble understanding why and how the complex concept of a Trinity can be completely natural. Which it is.
Thus, humanities are needed to give scientists tools for thinking. And we all benefit.
And with regards to reading the Bible: If you haven't studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic, you still have to read this divinely inspired library, a product of the Church Jesus installed himself, for the first time in your life.
Reading the Bible in English, is like throwing a white cloth over a statue, and forming an erudite opinion about the stains and pleats in the canvas. Could be interesting, but you wouldn't know what the statue actually looks like. Nor would you be able to read the large plaque underneath that explicitly states what the statue represents, and more.
Jesus in the Gospels and Acts states that rhyme, seeing words (Hieroglyphs), study of the letters, playing with the letters and words, and polyglossia (knowing several languages) is required to understand the gospel. Active word play by the reader is required in the analysis of the text. Google something as basic as "boustrophedon" and you'll understand.
Take one of the parables regarding lepers. When we use cross-cultural word play typical for the polyglot mediterranean of yesteryear and today, we know the following is correct. Not from conjecture but factually as all ancient literature is rich in wordplay.
A leper, in rhyme, is a leopard (this works in Aramaic/Greek as well). That is why the leper crouches before Jesus and the Greek text uses a word that signifies 'Jesus cuddled the leopard' and the others stood back (in awe). So did the disciples stand back because Jesus touched a leper, or because he was cuddling a leopard? The answer... is both.
Finding and solving puzzles like these is the reason why I discovered the actual location of the Garden of Eden. If I had world-trip kind of money, I could set up an expedition to this place. Unfortunately I prefer studying over making money.
If you are not trained in languages or the humanities, you would not be able, while reading the gospel, to step in the thorns (incongruencies), nor examine them while washing your feet (discovering the puzzle and clue hidden in those incongruencies).
The word 'Clue', itself is derived from the Latin for both Nail and Key. You step into it, and then you can solve/fix discover something with it.
To understand ancient knowledge, you have to use the tools of their knowledge paradigm. Not the anachronistic reasoning of modernism which does not even try to learn to use their epistemology as it was intended. Only then will you find Truth and arrows to locations hidden in plain sight.
Uh because Mark and Matthew are complete texts that can be compared side by side. Matthew and Luke are considered by all scholars to be derivative texts. What are you talking about! There was no body search. They went back fishing because he was dead, temporary tomb or not. And no, you cannot deduce anything from a broken text other than to say its a broken text. Dr. Tabor isn’t making analysis solely on the Egyptian text. Egyptian text does not take away how the Mark was the original with the remaining being derivative embellishments or additions, or a full account if that makes you feel better. BTW, the Garden of Eden is myth. I bet you believe trump was sent by God as some sort of a messiah. That would be just ridiculous as saying he (or Obama) is THE antichrist depicted in Revelation. (I think trump would be an archetype antichrist like HITLER.)
The "Lost Gospel of Peter" is clearly in error. Whether you believe that Passover fell Tuesday night-Wednesday day, or even Friday night-Saturday day, the Feast is seven days. So it was not yet "over" as the text states. This is spurious and should be disregarded.
At some point you gotta ask yourself, if Mark ended at verse 8 and they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid, who told Mark the story so he could write it down?
Mark.
You’ve gotta be joking right?
ok.. real life kinda flow... they were afraid{this is Significant}, and said nothing... consider There was a look of distress about them, so then peter and run to the tomb... and however long after... as that part of Gospel was being assembled.. and perhaps some ... "So what was that like? questions after fearing The Lord Counted For Love, And Them who feared him he made His Children. So Very Directly.... God Whom We Are To Fear That He Accounts It Love. Your Staff Beauty Is With You And Your Staff Union,... i think the near all Living Soils are uncomfortable with the thought of You Lord Breaking The brotherhood... Father Ancient Of Days Make Brother An Office of Accomplishing, Sister And Mother, Offices Of The Same Accomplishing...
in the garden on the mount of olives, the one young man in linen escaped naked.. I remember... perhaps one, the servant Told pour out at Cana... Told by Mother Mary do whatever he tells you to do...
Fool or No Fool. I Do say Jesus Christ Is Coming In The Flesh, I simply have no ears listening hearing what I speak.. So Absolutely Typing So Go With Really Trying To Hear What The Beloved Son In Whom God Is Well Pleased says... cause that Listen To Him... Is rBenefit To Every Soul Obedience to Our Father His Fathe The Only Father on earth that is a good name
Where is Tabor’s evidence that Mark ended at verse 8?
@@acomputerwiz-nerd5538The earliest versions of Mark that have been found that date to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries. End after the 8th verse in chapter 16.
So it seems the verses after verse 8 have been added later
If it were as you say, do you really think Joseph of Arimathea would have moved the body without consulting or telling the apostles? It seems very imporobable to me, not least because he was a Jesus sympathizer and therefore must necessarily have known some of his disciples, Mary Magdalene included. I agree with the rest of the analysis.
The giveaway for me is the way Dr. Tabor uses the Peter text. In his unsupported claim of a second burial, he gives historical value to the Peter text claiming it represents what he believes actually happened, but then leaves out the part of Peter's gospel that says the resurrection and ascension of Jesus occurred before the group of women arrived.
People please think. At the onset, those “disciples” likely went into hiding as mentioned by the Bible. They were no where to be seen. He had a quick burial in a makeshift tomb will the intention to conduct a proper burial with placement in a proper tomb. For the life of me, I don’t know why you people come up with this fiction that Joseph of Arimethea acted stealthy or furtively. lol. Because you all seemingly only want to hear what you want to hear, you ignored the point Dr. Tabor has always stressed. To wit: After Mark, the remaining Gospels were embellished!!!!
What was the significance of the young man the women are said to have encountered at the tomb, being dressed in white? Also, why was he sitting there in the first place?
I wondered about that, too.
If you were taking a body in the middle of the night, would you unwrap it and fold everything neatly,setting the head piece aside? Or would you grab and go? He did it this way for them to believe ( wrap their heads around it) asking for a friend.
He did it that way because that's what they did when they weren't finished with a meal so the servants knew U weren't finished eating. In other words it means his coming back
Who knows why they did it, could be lots of reasons.
You don't need to "grab and go" in the middle of the night if you have lookouts and plenty of time for it being the middle of the night.
Maybe they left it that way to mess with people's heads - which seems to have worked.
That's if any of this even happened.
Conspiracy theory alert: So Joseph of Arimathea conspired to create the resurrection myth?
@@expatexpat6531 So you believe the story? There's no proof it even happened.
@@GravityBoy72If you read my text carefully you will see I refer to it as a myth.
I am sure that you know that the name of the "Gospel of Mark" is really more than that, it mentions that Mark is or was the scribe of Peter. That means that it is actually The Gospel of Peter, recorded by his secretary, Mark. So, when you start with the resurrection as recorded by Mark, it is actually what Peter told him to write about the resurrection.
"The other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved" is John, not James. You should note that when Jesus was on the cross he told his mother, in effect, to live with John. John was standing by Mary, Jesus's mother, and Jesus said, "Behold your son." His brother James was not there. Just a week before he had mocked Jesus, and of course, Jesus loved his brother for it is recorded elsewhere that after the resurrection, Jesus went to James to show him that he was God. John often refers to himself in the third person when he is writing about his exchanges with Jesus. Therefore, it should be the same throughout this account.
In the last account the "lost" gospel of Peter, I have to ask, "What 12 disciples?!!" Was not Judas Iscariot not dead? That makes 11 disciples. This "Lost Gospel of Peter" is more likely than not, a "Lost Gospel" at all, but rather something like a commentary like you see today where you find a snippet of the true Bible with someone telling you how you should live and what you should consider like the old "My Daily Bread," or the ridiculous "Phone Calls from Jesus."
I received my education from professors at Reformed Theological Seminary, Clinton, Mississippi. Some of them participants in the commentary in the New Geneva Study Bible. In the many commentaries it contains I do believe it presents the multiple views on certain topics with fairness and thoroughness, and addresses difficult matters with care.
Your video was indeed thought provoking and I appreciate it very much!
Thank you so much Dr. Tabor for sharing all the information you have researched. It is fascinating and adds so much more to this wonderous event. I'm greateful.
Genesis 19 . . . no indication that anyone but Lot recognized the angels were more than ordinary men. And even Lot fed them, offered to wash their feet, gave them shelter and rest overnight. Your assessment of Mark 16:5 being just an ordinary young man fails in like manner. Why do you feel compelled to do that? I have Rabbis who are friends, too, James. It doesn't mean I take on their misgivings.
The Shroud of Turin is another important piece of the puzzle. "A Burst of Conscious Light" by Dr. Andrew Silverman is the most up-to-date and best all around discussion of the science of resurrection. IMO
...this Q. may be dismissed by some as an "Unimportant Detail", but I note that one of the passages you quote from "The Lost Gospel of Peter" speaks of "...we TWELVE Disciples of the Lord..." -- Not. "...the ELEVEN Disciples..." who, as recounted in Matthew 28:16, hastened to Galilee, "...into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them."
It's apparent that "The Gospel of Peter" had been written Without knowledge of the Tradition that Judas Escariot had died soon after Jesus H. "...gave up the ghost." -- in one- of two different suicides by hanging -- or that bizarre "Alternate Ending" wherein a mis-step on the farm he'd bought with his Blood Money caused him to 'Spills his Guts'...
It would presumably go further than the death of Judas. Why count him as one of the 12 even if he was still alive if he’s a betrayer?
It could mean Peter is a forgery, or there could be other explanations. One is that by the time Peter was written, the group had replaced Judas with a new 12th and the author wrote “us 12” out of habit, effectively. Or it could mean Judas wasn’t a betrayer and that this was a later invention or a tradition that the author of Peter rejected.
@@MasterShake9000 I read the Gospel of Peter some years ago, and my impression is it was written long after the other books that form the New Testament. I've already left a comment about one of the reasons why, basically, the long sophisticated dialog between Jesus and Pilate that would have been impossible to have taken place in the circumstances of all the prior events of that day, plus any actual witnesses who would have needed to record that testimony.
There's a pretty solid case to be made that the entire Judas figure was a later invention and was interpolated into the existing gospels later on. Since we don't have the original manuscripts, of course we can't prove that, but the evidence is pretty compelling. I could give you details if you're interested.
The missing gospel of Peter found in Egypt mentions 12 disciples. There were only 11 at that point though...
Interesting. As a Christian the question of the physical resurrection is like a non issue in my mind. Even a virgin birth asexual female reproduction is theoretically possible. Jesus volunteering to do what he did inspite of every human inclination he had and creating the world as we know it is by far the most miraculous and awe inspiring part of the gospels to me. The material miracles are besides the point to me.
Finally a sensible comment, thank you.
Great podcast! Really enjoyed the insights into the scriptural narrative. Plus a wonderful presentation.😊
I find it interesting that Peter's lost gospel mentions "we twelve disciples", when everyone in their tight knit group would've known that Judas committed suicide.
Also, it's not lost, the Church knew about it but decided that it was not to be included in the Canon of Scripture.
Also, are we just supposed to take Dr. Tabor's word that there was additions to The Gopels? Change the "Dr." to "Pope" then.
I commented the same thing about the 12. Took a minute to find someone else that recognized that too
Dr. Tabor doesn't make a citation for his claim that Mark ended Mark 16:8, but for that one, I'm surprised you haven't heard of this before: it's pretty common knowledge that all the earliest sources end at Mark 16:8. No serious scholars disagree with this, and even my former Methodist minister would not argue against it. It's so mainstream that even Bibles such as the NIV will often say things like "[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9-20.]" before printing the rest.
(In fact, we even have ANCIENT manuscripts that add this same kind of note between Mark 16:8 and the rest, saying that other manuscripts don't include the following verses. We even have one Armenian manuscript made in 989 that contains a note, written between 16:8 and 16:9, that attributes 16:9-20 to "Ariston the Elder/Priest" a first century saint believed to have known the Biblical Peter. In other words, it's like "this last part isn't by Mark, but it's not a forgery: this trusted priest filled in the rest because we all know the real story didn't end here!")
Even those denominations or Bibles that DO want to believe Mark's ending is longer have a dilemma, because some old manuscripts contain verses 16:9-20 and others, such as the version accepted by the Coptic Christians, just have a short 16:9 (sometimes called the "conclusio brevior") that differs from the "long version" of Mark 16:9-20.
Now, it IS quite possible that the original Mark did NOT end at 16:8 and contained more story that is now lost to us. Many scholars argue this, bolstered by the fact that in the original Greek, Mark 16:8 seems to end with the word "yet" which implies that it is the middle of a sentence! (Though just as in English, sometimes people who spoke Greek colloquially might occasionally end full sentences with a preposition. So this could be an honest error by the original author rather than a sentence fragment.) So if you're a Christian, you have solid historical backing if you want to believe that Mark's message is not supposed to just end abruptly but may have originally contained a stronger message about a resurrection, etc.
Your point about the Gospel of Peter and "12 Disciples," however, is a pretty solid attack against its authenticity. I suppose one might argue that the very first thing that happens in Acts 1 is that the 11 remaining disciples, still in Jerusalem, that same day, go into a room and pick Matthias to replace Judas--so maybe the Gospel of Peter just rearranges the order of things slightly from how Luke and Acts do, placing the choosing of Matthias as a disciple to BEFORE they all go to the tomb and see it empty (and why not, especially if it took them 8 days from the burial to get down there?). In this case, they could reference "12 disciples" accurately in that account.
However, I don't think we need to prove any of this, because I don't think Dr. Tabor is claiming that all of The Gospel of Peter is authentic. He's claiming that WITHIN the Gospel of Peter, it likely contains a story of Jesus's death that is more-or-less original, and which would predate even the Gospel of Peter or the other canonical Gospels. Certainly the account in the Gospel of Peter is unique and doesn't seem cribbed from the other gospels. Most scholars believe that it probably DOES come either from oral tradition, or from the now-lost "Gospel of the Hebrews," or both. That doesn't make it TRUE, but it does verify that it is ancient. Bear in mind that he is not stating that any gospels, in the Biblical tradition or out of them, are "true" but rather is trying to piece together what might be the closest thing to an accurate story of Jesus's death from the stories that are DEFINITELY additions later.
Judas suicide.... Just thinking aloud - they didn't have instant communication back then. Judas ran off and hanged himself in a field he bought with the money from Jesus' betrayal according to tradition. The field was called Hakeldama after his death, meaning Field of Blood. A monastery occupies the spot now. Going by the picture he might have hung there for more than 2- 3 days. There's a small rocky outcrop/cliff there and if his body fell down that when the rope broke then his bloated belly would have easily burst open. The stink would have been horrible at that point. It doesn't look like a spot that would have been frequently used as a path/road way back then, so he could have hung there undisturbed until the rope broke or been concealed by tree branches during the time, or rocks/boulders after he dropped.
The other Apostles were busy worrying and in fear for their lives, but there is nothing that indicates exactly when they found out about his death and replaced him. At that moment they might not have understood exactly what Judas had done yet and considered him still part of the group - the full truth only dawning on them as more information came to them. They were ignorant of everything at the Last Supper and Judas never confessed anything to them. The entire situation is so sketchy that there is room for speculation there. Anyway, there is reasonable evidence to think that the "we twelve disciples" mention in the Peter Gospel is legitimate when you give it thought. That's my two cents.
@@d.m.collins1501 👍 _!!!_
Stephen took over from Judas position and filled the gap, as he was there from the beginning, from the start of Jesus' mission until his crucifixion and resurrection. As Peter is telling the story in flashback, he could therefore be talking about Stephen as the 12th apostle. by the way: the Gospel of Peter is more legendfully than the 4 gospels. there is no way that it was written before the second century. The author from the gospel of peter -whoever it was - was definitely convinced that Jesus is indeed resurrected and would not accept that Mr. Tabor tries to change the Intention of his gospel. he would probably reply him: My intention was to prove that Jesus is risen, not that his body was stolen or removed. so stop cherry-picking of my gospel verses
I would be interested to know what Tabor thinks the early Christians believed during the time of Nero as mentioned by Tacitus. Because this makes the "legendary" theory more difficult which is what Tabor needs to make his theory reasonable and relevant.
You don’t think Dr. Tabor analysis isn’t reasonable?
@@donmilland7606 No. Because he is arguing from silence. He assumes a mysterious other gospel truth that surrounds James the Just. And in order to have this he needs the legendary theory to be true. If the legendary theory is true then what does history say these early Christians believed that is now lost to us?
Which begs the question: Where was the location of the tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea, that the body of Jesus was taken to? Was it the Talpiot tomb?
Correct the Talpiot Tomb is where the body was taken to decay and then take his bones and put it in a ossuary. Joseph of Arimathea wouln't own a tomb near the crucifixion site because he didn't attend to have a special tomb just for Jesus being put to death. If he did he would already have the family know about it as they would most likely be buried in the same place as Jesus. Also why would the family of Jesus want to have a tomb and be buried close to a crucifixion site. Lets say Jesus was't crucified and lived a long life and eventually died, would his choice be buried near a tomb of a crucifixion site, probably not! That's why the Talpiot Tomb is the most reasonable canadite for Jesus and his family tomb.
Many scholars doubt the whole tomb story entirely. The purpose of crucifixion was state terrorism, so the Romans would have had no reason to allow the body of Jesus to be taken down from the cross only hours after they put it up. Remember the Romans crucified him because Jesus was a pretender to the throne so treating him respectfully in death would have had the opposite effect of what they wanted to achieve.
The more immediate question is how do we guarantee authenticity of the Talpiot tomb? Clearly someone would have had to enter the tomb to remove the James Ossuary. So can anyone guarantee all of the material found in that tomb wasn't staged?
Joseph’s tomb is the garden tomb nearby the Golgotha .
@@marciamcmahon2247Dr. Tabor's story works off the assumption Joseph of Arimathea didn't realize Passover was fast approaching, and completely overlooks the more likely scenario that he was well aware of that fact when he made arrangements to bury the body in the garden tomb near the place of crucifixion.
Ive managed to get through some of your videos and my question is, what is the purpose of your channel? Is it to try and disprove the Holy Bible? That’s the impression I am getting.
The word "raised" is the common word used throughout the Gospels for being raised from the dead. It is a general rather than specific word and is used for many different kinds of raising up. However, the two words resurrection and raising are used at times for the same thing as in 1st Corinthians 15:12,13. The word for "resurrection" seems to be used for the final resurrection rather than the raising of someone from death - with a few exceptions, Jesus being one since his raising up is the final resurrection for him.
Re: John 20. I would take issue that the "other disciple" (almost certainly John) believed that his body had been taken away.
Why not Peter, if that were the case? It is virtually self-evident. No, what John believed was that Jesus had been raised from the dead, as the parenthetical comment that follows says.
Great seminar! I'd call this a seminal work on the Resurrection of Jesus- very informative.
I really enjoy your teachings. Some might think that it's taking away from Christ but for me it's not. It just reinforces my beliefs. You're bringing back Christ and making him real instead of a myth. I appreciate that.
Thank you Dr. Tabor.🤗❤️🤗
Always thought-provoking and 777% interesting! Love your work ❤
As archaeologist and linguist I would recommend not to rely on this so called Gospel of Peter. It is apocryphal and pseudoepigraphal. It was probably written in the mid 2nd century, but the first manuscript dates from the 8th century.
I love church history, and this is intriguing. What sources do you have? I 100% rely on all the books/letters as inspired. So I'm not bothered by asking for your sources. Grace and peace.
Jesus body was not risen. It simply disappeared by the power of God. In Javanese or Indonesian language, it's called "MOKSA"
Great work, James, as always. It's just a shame that you have only 58K subscribers.
Not a great work at all, sorry. It's deception.
@@marinaharmon5775 James is an impartial expert, unlike Christians, who may be biased because of their faith.
Until this video, I had fallen into the mythological camp due to the dating of Pauline texts and the cosmological viewpoint expressed in them. Showing the two canonical works contain a shortened version that have similar features and then finding a third source outside of the canon exhibiting similar themes brings me back from the mythological cliff. I can feel the power of the argument being made. Thank you for sharing this. I’m quickly becoming a fan of your work.
I’m not ready to replace my belief in the physical resurrection doctrine, but this material is intriguing, excellently supported and delivered, and deserves serious consideration. Very well done!
I'm a non-believer, but I appreciate believers like you who are open to different views and understandings of these materials. Informed faith is the best kind of faith.
This dude is pushing an ancient Jewish canard. Don’t be deceived.
Before you give up on the core tenant of Christianity- that Jesus rose from the dead- look at the shroud of Turin. It is really Jesus death shroud and it is what convinced them he wasn’t taken away. The shroud was still in the tomb and had Jesus’ image burned into it by LIGHT. This dude doesn’t explain why JofA would have taken the corpse out of the shroud to move his body.
And how do you take a decaying corpse out of its shroud without smearing the blood and fluids all over? The shroud shows no smearing.
The shroud has 3D information depicting Jesus returning to life and then transforming into pure light. Jesus really is risen!
@@ThaShikushi lol! That's how you become an unbeliever.
@@nsbd90now Many do, but not everyone. I still prefer an informed believer over an ignorant one.
@@ThaShikushi The informed ones move towards the mystics and what today is being called "non-duality". That's where mature religious practices lie, it seems to me.
Interesting insight, thanks James.
Great video.
Thought experiment: what if Joseph of Arimathea and Pilate conspired with Jesus and some of his followers to fake his death?
1. Let him get help to carry his cross
2. Though expressing great pain in Mark, he seems very cool in John, for a man who's about to suffer a horrible death
3. Pilate saying he was surprised that Jesus was already dead - so he wasn't on the cross as long as normal.
4. Roman guards before a grave with a Jewish rebel. Like, it would be best if nobody looked inside.
5. Jesus not quite dead in the weeks and months that followed his crucifixion.
6. Jesus telling some of his men not to try to defend him, when he is arrested, and at least one being in on his arrest.
Crazy conjecture? Yes.
Worse than so many other theories? Well, it does explain a lot of the stories in the new testament. But no, I don't think that is what happened. It's just an illustration to show that you can get pieces to fit together if you want.
Your theory does not explain why the disciples were so sure of the resurrection not only to bet their career on it, but also willing to suffer and die rather than shut up.
Why would Pilate, a Roman procurate conspire with a Jewish prophet whom he'd never previously met when the Sanhedron brought Christ to him to be executed ? It is clear in Matthew that Pilate only reluctantly gave into the Sanhedron's demand that Christ be executed because the crowd demanding Barabus, a zealot imprisoned for killing a Roman soldier, threatened to riot if Barabus was executed for his crime and Jesus set free.
Long before the Sanhedron conspired to have Jesus killed he predicted his persecution, crucifiction, and resurrection. So, for there to be a planned ruse between Pilate and Jesus that would have had to have been worked out far in advance. There is zero evidence and no rational political basis for such an alliance.
Also, Christ predicted his crucifixion and resurrection before he went to Jerusalem for the Passover. He repeated that prediction when he first confronted the Sanhedron at the Temple. And he warned them that if they persisted in their intention to wage a holy war against the Roman Empire "not one stone would be left upon another."
In 70 AD, the zealots did, in fact, start a rebellion that was crushed by the Roman's. 5,000 zealots were crucified in one day and the 2nd Temple was virtually destroyed - all but the West Wall.
The Roman Empire was very good at killing people. Crucifixion and other forms of torture were the common means throughout the Empire of exerting absolute Roman authority over millions of people in ways we would find abhorrent and barbaric today.
Why do we see the barbarism today that was common place in Christ's day? Because he changed forever the perception of the value of human life, even among nonbelievers who know nothing of Christ.
@@KaoXoni thanks for your feedback. I think my thought experiment does explain even that.
Because in my thought experiment, they did see him. And only some, perhaps just Judas, knew of the plot.
Again, not really a theory, a thought experiment.
@@KaoXoni ps: what carreers? I thought they had left their families and jobs to walk with Jesus. Are we taking about the Twelve?
@@KaoXoni so I take it that we are talking about St. Paul and St. Sebastian and others, who died for their Christian faith decades, even centuries, after the crucifixion?
Natsarim 21:15 Those who guarded the tomb, when questioned regarding these things, said, “The disciples came early and carried him away for burial
in a proper manner at another place. For he was laid here only because of the Shabbat, and it was not his tomb.” None questioned them further,
for this was proper. And the guards were only placed to protect certain bodies from those who would work evil sorceries on them, those who
improperly tampered with bodies being put to death. Yoceph of Arimathea
This text has a lot of details that seems to match with what Dr. Tabor found out. But it seems to be very unknown. Can you tell me more about it?
Yes, excellent composition. Why on earth would a "spirit" care about a resuscitated body. In most near death accounts the person has no interest in their physical body. It is as if they have slipped out of a heavy coat which they no longer need and in which they have no further interest.
Exellent composition? Why on Earth would the apostles not have checked with Joseph of Arimathea as resurrection was not suspected initially. His line of reasoning makes no sense. It is reasoning from absences in his texts (and cut off fragments).
@@discoveringthegardenofeden7882 Excellent point. I think that the kicker was the young man who told them to go to Galilee. However, as we would expect there are several versions of what happened. One plausible version is that Joseph came and got the body to bury it. I had not thought of that before.
In any case, I never saw that a transfigured body was that big of a deal. If Jesus returned in spirit, that was always good enough for me. I always felt that when anyone died, they continued on in spirit form, so that's what I figured for Jesus.
And I never thought that eternal life meant living forever in physical form. I felt that it meant living in a love so profound that it resulted in a perfectly peaceful spirit here and beyond. So, being raised from the dead was no big deal either.
@@discoveringthegardenofeden7882 Oh, excellent handle too. What does it signify? It's my feeling that we are still in the Garden of Eden. We've simply mistaken it for a golf course.
@@discoveringthegardenofeden7882 There is nothing to say they didn't. That fits with grieving Jesus's death.
@@brookvalley907 The handle exists because in 2017 I found the location of the Garden of Eden. Every church entrance (before modernist architecture) spells the location, depicted in hieroglyphics. The Phoenicians, Gaul, Persians, Japanese and Ancient Egyptians had/have this knowledge too, in their own traditions.
Puzzles with a solution are handed down by religions, as messages in bottles, to be discovered and deciphered by those who spot the bottles on the beach.
Or, in Biblical terms: thorns in the feet, after having been stepped upon, feet to be washed AND the extracted thorns to be examined. That is why Jesus commands to wash the feet. The symbol 'thorn' in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs is interesting as well. Jesus came out of Egypt, so the gospels say. He/Christianity brought knowledge from that culture with him. And it was preserved in Christianity.
You best evidence that Mark's account was appended was the fact that you also changed it. How brilliant scientific logic you have. And if Mark's, then also Luke's account, and the resurrection, and the flood, and the fall of man, and heaven, and hell, and judgment, and redemption, and creation. Brilliant.
Wonderful reply. Absolutely spot on.
100%
The evidence is from the earliest manuscripts. Yeesh!
The question of why didn’t Mary know about Joseph could be answered this way. Things were so sudden with events moving rapidly. No one expected him to be crucified. So Joseph makes a very late appeal and no way to find Mary to tell her. He goes early to recover the body to move it and instructs a servant to stay and wait, knowing Mary would show up as soon as possible to tell her what happened. It’s not like it was all planned in advance and only later was it revealed. The fact that it’s in more than one gospel seems to indicate it was a well known fact later. When you strip away the later mythology of physical resurrection, it does seem plausible. It’s what you’d expect Joseph to do leaving a servant to stay over and wait to tell someone what happened.
So how did Joseph overcome the guards assigned to guard the tomb.
@@robertjustinoff845 It sounds like a literary invention saying there were Roman guards protecting the body of someone they just crucified and whipped so badly. I really don’t trust Matthew’s gospel who was so obviously determined to tell a story. He’s the worst of those gospels.
Fascinating, Dr Tabor. Many thanks for all your hsrd work to discover the truth.
"Ignored?" What our good professor is ignoring in this context is the burial shroud. This relic has important evidence that suggests that Jesus' dead body was not physically removed but , instead, dematerialized while still covered by its shroud.
That does make sense, it would explain why there are such inconsistencies between the accounts regarding the burial and resurrection stories.
Look at what it also says in John, that Nicodemus brought some 75 pounds of spices and they spiced and wrapped the body, which could have happened at Joseph's own tomb in the garden area, after they moved it from the 'tempory tomb in Golgotha'. But that story got inserted which made it sound like they spiced the body at Golgotha.
This might be why you get the inconsistency of the women seeing where and how the body was laid in the synoptic gospels (at Golgotha) and they go ahead to obtain spices so they can later annoint the body. Apparently having no knowledge of the 75 pounds of spices (as in John) being applied to the body and laid in the tomb (even though they should have as the synoptics have the women see 'where and specifically HOW' the body was laid.
Whereas in John there is no mention of the women seeing the body being spiced and then placed in the tomb.
So it does makes sense, considering these are honest accounts people put forth, that the body was indeed moved from a tomb at Golgotha to a tomb (in a garden) owned by Joseph of A, and then 'they' spiced the body there, but things got mixed up and inserted where it should never have been.
The mention of the young man wearing a "white robe" leads me to wonder the possibility that he might actually be Jesus. Why are they not asking this young man who he is? And how he knows this information of "They"?
The physical body is just a temporary home for the soul. This interpretation is consistent with that as well as the shroud of Turin.
That sounds like psychobabble to me
Thanks for the interesting insight. It shows how the disciples not only abounded jesus during his crucifixion but also after easter morning. And if we take the first century jewsh context about the resurrection i.e., resurrection does happen in the future for all and is bodily and not for a single person now, then it’s hard to explain how the first disciples were so convinced that jesus waa bodily raised. Without this strong conviction it’s very hard to explain the rise of the christian movement especially in light of the fate of those messiah pretenders before and after jesus who went through similar endings like jesus. Without the disciples having a strong conviction of the resurrected jesus, it’s hard to explain why the jesus movement didn’t end up like the other messianic movements.
So, Steven is getting stoned to death by an angry mob, yet he has time to either write a dissertation about a vision he has while dying or is able to cogently speak to a sympathizer while being stoned to death. This makes no logical sense at all.
Would the family not know that Joseph would move the body?
Very good analysis. Brings much needed clarity to a very murky story. Thank you.
Very interesting! I have wondered for a while if the Gospel of Mark was originally a circular work with Jesus and the man at the tomb telling the women that Jesus would meet them in Galilee to point to and connect to Jesus gathering the disciples in Galilee after his baptism. Could this be the case?
Dr. Ammon Hillman does an amazing job showing what the Greek Septuagint says, he’s a philologist in classical Greek. Way different than what I was taught.
Note that, in John, Mary Magdalene says, "*WE* do not know where they have laid him." So she didn't see the tomb empty of Jesus alone. It's probably that the others weren't quoted and being a male-dominated society, they weren't named in this writer's account because they weren't deemed important to the story.
Strictly speaking, the seas are created at the beginning of Day 3 (Gen 1:9), not on Day 2. The separation of the waters on Day 2 is between the waters below from the waters above, allowing for the expanse of the sky to come into being, sandwiched between these two layers. Granted, the basic elements God intends to populate on Day 5 are present on the Earth by the end of Day 2, however, they are not yet functionally ordered for that purpose according to the narrative. Thus we should conclude that this sort of parallelism wasn't intended to be strict in its formulation. In any case, it does no harm to the overall structure of the narrative.
These are excellent studies of yours, James. I've studied the differences in the synoptic gospels, and these differences appear to be prophetic, prophesy to come. Luke, being written to the Bride of Christ in white, Mark to the left behind lost sheep of Israel and unbelievers, and finally Matthew to the Jews (including the synagogue of satan Jews that Jesus refers to). John is the "whole picture" kind of, for the Kingdom of God. I posted my studies for anyone interested. I think in the 153 Fish Update, and the The Rib Comes Out of the Body, I address some of these things.
Would not touching a corpse make the JoA ritually unclean? Would he have time between the burial and sundown to visit a mikvah and regain his ritual cleanliness in time to partake of the Peshach?
He would have to wait until second Passover a month later
This is by far the best analysis of the lost body hypothesis that I have seen, Bravo!
Unfortunately, this theory is fatally flawed as follows:
One key assumption in this theory is that Mary the mother of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea never meet from the time that Joseph moves or has the body moved to the time that Mary returns to the Galilee. It is inconceivable that if Joseph meets with Mary, within a few days after Mary cannot find the body, that the subject of the missing body does not come up.
So the question is therefore, is it reasonable that they never met in this brief time period.
This question can be examined by first identifying a few of Dr. Tabors statements in the transcript of this video:
At 2:11 and 2:14 - "have Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James I think that's Jesus mother and"
So we have Mary the mother of Jesus in Jerusalem and in the presence of Joseph at the time of the burial.
At 14:33 through 14:49 - "of the crucifixion and he grants Joseph to have the body Joseph is probably part of the family there is some later Christian tradition that he's related actually to Mary and that would make sense I'm not saying that's in this text but he has some connection he buys a"
So Joseph has some kind of family connection.
Finally from 18:19 through 18:26 "and the family weep and mourn his death for seven days through unleavened bread following the Passover they returned to the giley where they began to experience"
In Jewish tradition and custom of mourning is called sitting Shiva (7) which is a seven-day period of mourning. This starts at the time of death or knowledge of the death and including this day continues for 7 days. It is customary to visit the family during this period of mourning. To consider that Joseph of Arimathea who has taken charge of the body of Jesus and is a family member does not visit the family during this period of mourning or during their remaining time in Jerusalem, not even once, defies reason.
Dr. Tabor states from other videos that he thinks that Jesus died on a Thursday. Then this would have been the first day of Shiva (mourning) leaving the last day at sundown Wednesday the seventh day. According to the text the family would have continued to stay at least another 3 days until the end of the week of Unleven bread and the weekly Sabbath.
So this leaves us with one possible out for this theory. Which is first if Joseph only visits the grieving family once before they leave for the Galilee, second if his only visit is before the body is moved and third during this solo visit the plan to move the body after the Sabbath is never discussed then the moved body could continue to be a viable theory but for me three if's and you’re out.
The "sabbath" mentioned at John 19:31 is not the seventh-day (weekly) but is the High Sabbath, i.e., Pesach (what you're calling "Passover"). There's always a "preparation day" before a Sabbath, whether it be annual or weekly. The women who were observing the body as it was hurriedly being entombed were not convinced that what the men had done was sufficient. But it was too late in the day to obtain the proper spices and then return to complete their work, so they had to wait another day, until that Sabbath had passed, to do so. That day would have been Preparation Day for the weekly Sabbath (the sixth day of the week) and, with all their family responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, children, etc) - in addition to obtaining the necessary spices, etc., they apparently again did not have enough time before this Sabbath began to accomplish the task. This explains why the two Miriams came "early," on "the first day of the week... when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre." Since the timeline you've presented doesn't seem to "line up," doesn't that call into question the rest of your thesis?
I grew up a Southern Baptist and when I was about 35 I started to study theology and apologetics and I always kept an open mind. You know the rest, I ended up becoming liberal in theology and then I left religion altogether. The more I studied and researched, the more I saw religion for what it was and I had no need for it. I also enjoyed reading books by Bart D. Ehrman.
In John 20: If Mary Magdalene saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb and then ran, what made her think Jesus was not in there? The verse says nothing about her looking inside.
Why would a man be sitting in the tomb if he were not an angel? They said he was dressed in white, and angels are dressed and white.
Maybe it was a servant of Joseph of Arimathea to inform the others that the body was reburried. Remember: they had not cellphone at the time ;-)
One thing he didn’t mention, spices were put on and around a corpse to mask its decaying smell. That was done before the burial, not after. There is no need to mask the smell of a decaying corpse once it’s in its final resting place. Also, it’s strange that women would anoint the body of Jesus; a man’s body would be anointed by men and a woman’s by women.
It was well known to the disciples that there were Roman soldiers guarding the tomb. Of course it would be easily assumed "they" the Romans, moved His body.
Thank you Dr. Tabor
What explains the sightings, though? A spiritual resurrection? Some psychological effect on the disciples? A fathom of the disciples to cope with the loss of their master like children would conjur up to cope with the loss of a favorite toy or a traumatic experience?
Excellent job professor! I believe most evangelical christians, inlcluding Gary Habermas, believe that Jesus conquered death through a resuscitated body even though this goes against Paul’s authentic letters and the original Gospel Story.
Hello Dr. Tabor, we at Prophecy Roundtable would like to interview you about the Essenes. Would you be willing to join us some Thursday evening?
I have always wondered why Mark ended so abruptly. I believe there was more but it was destroyed.
Golgotha means the skull. Annick de Souzenelle (a remarkable writer still alive in her 101 years) and she is the only one mentioning in her books the three baptisms, such as, of water, of fire, and of the skull (golgotha).
So obviously there is no historical evidence that the tomb was unused because for this we are using Mark as the truth?
That's an original insight I never came across before. Yet still I think there needs to be more proof for the existence of this Joseph of Arimathea and what he did. On extraordinary rare occasions were the crucified ones given the chance to be buried...
Dear Dr James
Thanks a lot for the wise insights, however I think that Joseph's party moving the body to a new tomb without him communicating the movement to jesus mother and his disciples is not a possibility in a jewish closely tighted community. I think they all found the tomb empty and were in shock.
Awesome great news glad they got out.
If Joseph had not offered to bury the body, what would’ve happened to the body? Maybe he owned the nearby tomb and that is why he offered to bury the body?
Jewish resurrection involves the body, which means mortality is purged from the [original] body. The Rabbis view this as fair since the body should enjoy Olam Ha-Ba as well as the soul.
The week in the gospel of Peter and the 40 days mentioned in Acts brings us to Shavuot (7 weeks from firstfruits [not easter]), May be a better fit.
Pdople who livs today with access to cars can picture a woman trodding through the wilderness before dawn to visit a tomb. This was amazing especially since an earthquake of the dead spirits rising to march on Jerusalem going on at the same time.
So in Mark, Mary arrived at the tomb "when the sun had risen". In John, Mary arrived "while it was still dark". Which is correct? Now apologists will tell you that we'll, when Mary came back with Peter it was light amd that is what Mark meant. Of course Mark says Mary said "nothing to anyone" so kind of hard to square that
This is good evidence that the Beloved Disciple isn't James.
Mark has several women discovering the tomb, and they go to tell the disciples. John only says that Mary Magdalene told Peter and the Beloved Disciple.
That's fine if the Beloved Disciple is John, or someone else. Mary Magdalene found and told them, while the other women went and told the others.
But if Mary the mother of Jesus and James was there, and James is the Beloved Disciple, why would she not be the one to tell James? It's implausible that Mary the mother of Jesus+James would go tell the sons of Zebedee or whoever and leave Mary Magdalene to tell her own son.
One theory is he survived the crucifixion. Bible claims even Pilate marveled that Jesus was already dead late on the afternoon of the crucifixion (Mark 15:43-44). Would explain a lot of other "earthly" details given in the narratives.
3:00 and 4:15. Tabor says that it was a man they saw and "not an angel". In the gospels (and Hebrews) angels appear as men. They are not depicted as beings with wings or anything like that. Hebrews 13:2 says (NIV), "Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it." How could that happen if they looked anything like anything other than human beings.
Now you may not believe in angels, but we are talking about how Mark is describing that happened at the tomb.
So 4 mins 15 into the video and two clangers so far.
So, a Jew cannot be on a cross during Passover then why rush to crucify him? The whole point of crucifixion was to display the criminal. You could say that the Sanhedrin was so outraged they wanted it done immediately but then why also crucify the two thieves?
It is foretold and confirmed that the disciples scattered each to their own. Jesus lives. I have felt his hands.
Yes James! There was a ‘man’ INSIDE the tomb. The man says Jesus had risen! This is common language for the resurrection of the dead. I don’t need the longer ending of mark to know Jesus was raised from the dead. Very disappointing. I hope and pray for you brother
Seeing your translation of Mark 16:6 as "has been taken up," I checked the Greek and YES! ἠγέρθη is aorist indicative *passive!* - it's an action that has been done *to* him/his corpse.
Surely, if the author of Mark had wanted to write, "he is risen" in Greek, wouldn't the perfect tense be the most appropriate to indicate he is still in the risen/lifted up state after the initial event? Similarly, ἐσταυρωμένον in the verse meaning, 'the one having been crucified' is a perfect particle ... that is, the state of 'having been crucified' is also a present state at the time of it being spoken. The author has written it like this to indicate that the young man understood that the crucified state of the body which the women sought, had not changed! If he knew the previously crucified body had undergone a miraculous change, then he would have used the aorist participle, not the perfect participle: but he didn't!
In the book "Christ Returns, Speaks his Truth" Jesus says that he had arranged with Joseph to temporarily place his body in an unused tomb then subsequently take his body to a small cave Jesus had found and used for shelter when he would roam the countryside as a young man.
Then again, 483 other books that claim to come directly from Jesus, say other things.
Interesting, do you think this presumptive core resurrection story pre-dates the account in the 24th chapter or Marcion's Gospel and how do these relate? Does the later part of John's account suggest a reliance on Marcion and embellishes it? Mark ends abruptly, but Marcion tells a short primitive narrative about Jesus appearing here and there to the gathered apostles, whereas Luke and John really run with this. Mark's later interpolations appear to harmonize the story with the Marcion, it seems to me to be more similar than the narratives set out in the other gospels, which is odd since these interpolations apparently post-data Luke and John. I think that much of the confusion between Markian and Marcion priority probably arises from the stricture that we put ourselves in by thinking that what we call Mark is actually a later text from what existed in the first and very early second centuries. The later interpolations were probably nowhere near the only ones and we may have to figure out what this text that became Mark looked like.
Why does John 19:40 say that he was bound in linen strips with the spices when he actually hadn’t been washed by the women yet? The women came on the 1st day of the week to do that. Afterwards they would have used the spices.
So was it only a few hours that Paul persecuted Christians before his vision?
The fact of all these various stories surrounding a single event convinces me that it is all legend and myth that was verbally passed down for decades before being recorded Who recorded the stories or where they were recorded is a matter of speculation.
It’s quite normal to have visions of your dead relatives in the period after death.
True. My mother came to me in a lucid dream a while after her death and told me, "Isn't it wonderful, they've allowed me to come back." She was younger in appearance. We embraced and I could feel the warmth of her skin on my cheek, and no fear, only I remember thinking, "what am I going to tell my friends, she was dead and she's back." When I think about it, I smile about that observation, I was in my early thirties. There is more to this event of course (I remember it like yesterday and it happens over fourty years ago) but I am telling you about it, in a nutshell.
You believe it's normal for all of the disciples to have a mass hallucination that Jesus was alive? As Jesus said these ppl won't believe even if someone rises from the dead. The issue isn't the evidence it's the heart.
@@JakeLeidahl I have not said that it is normal for all the disciples to have a mass hallucination that Jesus was alive. I was only replying @tausflorianmarcprksen1530 about my vision of my dear dead relative in the period after her death. Leave it at this.
@@letmeconnectmy reply was to both you and the original commentary. You said true to their point. No it's not common for ppl to see their dead relatives. That's a poor explanation of the resurrection of Jesus. I wasn't discrediting your account as the topic of the discussion is Jesus
@@JakeLeidahl You're splitting hairs here. But, I would say as to the topic of the discussion about the bilocation of Jesus, in the 1st century, on the Golgotha, he might have been transformed in the Spirit of God, in the East called the body of light. That sort of transformation happens, according to the buddhist lama Tibetans who were living over 125 years before the birth of Jesus, and stating that a person can get to the energy of a body of light (the jalu) and the process happens during and after the death of the person. Now the person, or a Christ, or a Buddha, has reached a form of consciousness that can enter and bear "higher worlds". Now, you believe it or not; that is according to you own evolution. So, let's leave it at that.
Did I miss it or did you leave out the most important part? Where’s the corpse? Another question,, what of the Shroud of Turin?
Makes no sense. The women would have known that the burial place was temporary and that the body would be removed.
I am unclear. Is the presenter denying the physical resurrection?
That is Dr. Tabor's theology.
wonder if Mary of Magdala was the one who paid for the spices?...I read somewhere that she may have had the money to support Jesus...from watching various documentaries I came to understand that Mary Magdalene might have been a business woman...dried fish sales I believe.