Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 6
The International Conference on the Deliverance of Jesus from the Cross commenced with a recitation of a passage from the. Holy Quran. Ladies and Gentlemen!. MAY I welcome you all to this International Conference on. The Deliverance of Jesus from the Cross. The sole purpose of the. Conference is to arrive at the truth so that our faith in it may be enhanced. That truth concerns Jesus Christ, on whom be the peace of God, and in particular centres around his death. . The Jews claimed that they had compassed the death of. Jesus on the cross, and that, therefore, he had become accursed in accordance with the pronouncement contained in Deuteronomy, Chapter 21 verse 23: 66 and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God. ”. Thus the Jewish Encyclopaedia states: "The very form of his punishment would disprove those claims in Jewish eyes. No Messiah that Jews could recognise could suffer such a death; an insult to God. ” (Targum Rashi). Similarly, Hans Joachim Schoeps in his book "The Jewish Christian Argument" remarks: "If God could not look on in anguish while Abraham sacrificed his son, would he then have suffered his own son to be killed, without destroying the entire world?". The position of the Orthodox Church, developed over a period, came to be that Jesus was not only the son of God but was God the Son, i. e. the second person of the trinity, and that he suffered death upon the cross to atone for the sins of mankind. They believe that he rose up from the dead on the third day following his crucifixion and went about in his physical body to meet his disciples and then ascended to heaven in the same physical body. . These two opposing views have attracted a series of conjectures in respect of the birth, ministry, death, resuscitation, 6