Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 180
Apostles remained with him? All these are interesting questions. A number of recent studies by European and other scholars leave no doubt that Jesus was taken down alive from the cross, while he was in a state of deep swoon. To cite a few instances, one may refer to Robertson Graves and Joshua Podro's "The Nazarene Gospel Restored" (1954), and "Jesus in Rome" (1957) which treat of this theme and I quote from a note in Jesus in Rome: Jesus, though officially crucified in A. D. 30, escaped alive, probably to Parthia, and in A. D. 35 was seen on the road to Damascus by St. Paul-who had been sent there to bring him back for a second crucifixion. St. Ignatius wrote to the Smyrneans, not earlier than A. D. 70, that he “both knew and believed" Jesus to be still alive and in the flesh. A passage of Suetonius's Twelve Caesars, referring apparently to A. D. 49, reports Jesus as having raised disturbances in Rome "at the instigation of Chrestus", a synonym for "Christus". The authors compare this passage with an early Talmudic account of the Messiah's having been seen among the beggars at the gate of Rome. They suggest that if this was a prophecy that the Messiah must raise the standard of Jesus, his visit to Rome had been undertaken in fulfilment of national liberation in the enemy citadel. What eventually became of Jesus, they leave an open question; though critically discussing Muslim and pre-Muslim accounts of his appearance in India about A. D. 50, and of his burial by St. Thomas at Srinagar not later than the year 72. (Jesus in Rome) The authors were unaware of what the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement had written years before in his book “Jesus in India”, 172