Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page 93
Revival or Resurrection? 93 shows that the early Christians were speaking of two different things. Whenever they spoke of the revival of Jesus as from the dead and were confronted by the sceptical regarding the sheer absurdity of the idea, they took refuge in the notion of resurrec- tion, which could be philosophically and logically explained. Corinthians, in particular, presents an excellent opportunity to study the dilemma of putting one’s feet in two different boats. Finally returning to the evidence of the early Christian’s en- counters with Jesus Christ as , we are left with no option but to believe that the Jesus as who appeared soon after the Crucifixion to many of his disciples and friends, who spoke to them, who accompanied them and moved gradually away from the scene of the Crucifixion, mostly under the cover of night was certainly not a resurrected person but one who could only be taken as a person who was either physically revived from the dead, or one who never died but was miraculously recovered from a state of near death. He was so near, indeed, to death that his state could be compared to the state of Jonah as in the belly of the fish. We have no doubt in our minds that this latter option is the only acceptable one. To make it easier for Christians to understand our point of view I will present a similar hypothetical case. The same story is repeated in real life today. An attempt is made to kill someone by crucifying him and he is supposed to be dead as a result. After- wards, the same person is seen moving about by some of his close associates. They also observe that his physical body visibly carries the marks of crucifixion. He is then recaptured by the Law and presented to a court of justice with a demand from the prosecu-