Where Did Jesus Die? — Page xx
? xx Holy Quran that Jesus was one of His messengers, sent to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel whom God out of His mercy, saved from the accursed death designed by his opponents; and caused him to die a natural death like other divine prophets. If, therefore, we can prove, that Jesus did not die on the cross, but was taken down in a state of unconsciousness, that he lived afterward to complete his mission eventually to die a natural death, we prove also that both the Jews and the Christians are mis- taken in an essential part of their beliefs. It is no exaggeration to say that present-day Christianity, founded on the ‘accursed’ death of Jesus, will surely crumble down at once. In taking the Gospels as evidence of the truth of our conten- tion that Jesus did not die on the cross, we must bear in mind the following points: 1. The Councils of Nicea and Laodicea, writes Thomas Paine 1 , were held about 350 years after the time that Christ is said to have lived; and the books that now compose the New Testament were then voted by ‘yeas’ and ‘nays’ as we now vote for a law. A great many that were offered had a majority of ‘nays’ and were rejected. This is the way in which the New Testament came into being: ‘Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made should be considered as the Word of God, and which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes were voted to be the Word of 1. The Age of Reason.