Within hours there would be another miraculous encounter ... On the road between Jerusalem and the town of Emmaus ... a stranger approached the men. ibid.
The third appearance was an upper room in ... Jerusalem ... The men who would become known as the Apostles went into hiding. ibid.
The story of Thomas may be the most memorable and inspiring of all the appearances of Jesus. ibid.
In the years 325 A.D. Constantine summoned his new Bishops to the city of Nicaea ... Their version of the resurrection story was made official. ibid.
According to the Book of John the resurrected Jesus travelled even further ... to the sea of Galilee. ibid.
What did the Apostles see on that fortieth day when Jesus called them to the Mount of Olives? ibid.
There have even been people convinced that Jesus survived and travelled to the mountain kingdoms of Kashmir. Did Jesus Die? commentary Bernard Hill, BBC 2007
How has it happened that so many Christian theologians have managed to interpret the Bible in ways that once would have been seen as heretical? ibid.
There grew a legend that the Knights Templar had discovered Jesus’ bones In Jerusalem. That they had brought them back to France. ibid.
Some historians go even further and suggest that Jesus and Mary [Magdalene] might have married and they might even have had children. ibid.
Could Jesus have been taken to India as a child and taught to be a priest? ibid.
In his book The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ Notovitch translated this manuscript and it tells of a divine child called Esa, born in the first century to a poor family in Israel. Esa came to India at the age of fourteen where he learned the laws of Buddhism before returning to Israel at the age of 29. ibid.
The later teachings and miracles of Jesus have uncanny parallels with the teachings and miracles of the Buddha. ibid.
The belief that the dead can rise from their dreamless slumbers ... pre-dates the most famous resurrection story. Excavating the Empty Tomb, National Geographic 2016
The last twelve verses were never part of the original Gospel of Mark ... verses 9 through 20 – or the long ending as it’s called – radically break the train of thought at verse 8 ... The writing style of the Long Ending isn’t the same. ibid.
Reasons for rejecting Mark 16:9-20: missing from many early manuscripts; contradicts Mark as well as Matthew, Luke and John; language is foreign to the rest of Mark; obsession with belief in Jesus; Eusebius and Jerome claim it is spurious, showing up in few copies; embellishment to stories was ubiquitous in ancient times. ibid.
Matthew was simply copying Mark’s copy almost verbatim with some key theological edits and embellishments. ibid.
Mark: the first gospel has all the earmarks of a work of fiction. ibid.
How did Mark know what Jesus said [Garden of Gethsemane] if everybody was asleep? ibid.
Drawn details and motifs from Homer’s Odyssey, Mark also draws from the Greek mythologies, the Greek translation of the Jewish Old Testament known as the Septuagint as well as contemporary traditions about Jesus. ibid.
We will see Mark improve the scenes and motifs he copies from the Odyssey. ibid.
Mark takes Homer’s hidden identity technique to its limit. ibid.
Why would God incarnate need to give demons a verbal warning? ibid.
Whereas ‘Nobody’ [Odysseus] is equal to zero men, ‘Legion’ [demons to Jesus] is equal to 2,000 [sic] men. ibid.
The number of parallels between the Cyclops’ tale and the tale of the demon-possessed man are many and they are unique as well as sequential. ibid.
Mark treats the Sea of Galilee as if it were the Mediterranean. ibid.
A woman meets a stranger; the stranger is recognised; some liquid is spilled; the woman anoints the hero; the scene shifts immediately to the hero’s enemies [Homer cf. Mark]. ibid.
The strange case of the inseparable James and John ... said to be brothers ... They are always referred to together and in the same order ... and even speaking together. ibid.
Was Mark casting James and John as a Christianised version of Castor and Polydeuces? ibid.
The common motif in these is that the body could not be found [cf. Enoch & Moses & Elijah et al]. ibid.
Many Greek, Roman and Jewish heroes were thought to have ascended directly into heaven after they went missing. ibid.
Was Matthew recording exactly what Jesus said or was he simply lifting phrases from the Book of [Psalms &] Isaiah? ibid.
Matthew copies the Septuagint verbatim ... This caused Matthew to create the hilarious prophecy fulfilment of Jesus straddling two donkeys at the same time [cf. Zachariah]. ibid.
Numerous other parallels and blunders we could list. ibid.
The entire 21st chapter of John is a later addition by someone other than the original author. ibid.
Mark 13:30: I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. ibid.
If we could create a narrative showing Jesus ascribing immortality to one of his disciples, then as long as that disciple was alive, Jesus’s prediction would still be alive and valid. The 21st chapter of John accomplishes this. ibid.
There is no extant copy of John without the 21st chapter. ibid.
The Gospels have been heavily embellished and edited over time. ibid.
Verses 9-20 of chapter 16 [Mark] were a later addition to the story. ibid.
Luke 22: 43-44 were never part of the original Gospel … Inserted later: Luke 24:12 and Luke 24:51. ibid.
I John 5:7 [For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, The Word, And the Holy Ghost: and these three are one] was inserted into that epistle at a later time ... John 5:4 was never part of the Gospel of John. ibid.
Clear embellishment and later re-modelling. Even entire scenes and chapters. ibid.
Hundreds of years of copying. ibid.
The practise of tomb veneration is ubiquitous. ibid.
The first Christians did not regard the place where Jesus had been laid as having any special significance because no grave was thought to contain Jesus’ earthly remains. ibid.
Why was Jesus’ tomb never worshipped until the fourth century? ibid.
There was never an empty tomb to venerate. ibid.
There was never a Jesus of Nazareth at all. As I’ve intimated thus far in this series, the historical Jesus did not exist until Mark brought him down to Earth in his Homeric allegory written sometime shortly after the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 C.E. and only after the Gospel story gained wide circulation in the 2nd century did the absences ... become problematic for the Church fathers. ibid.
The ubiquitous motif of the hero. ibid.
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from Thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness of death. Algernon Charles Swinburne, Hymn to Proserpine, 1866
Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen and hidden her head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall do down to thee dead. ibid.
In 1980 archaeologists investigated an apparently unremarkable tomb under a building site outside Jerusalem. They found a number of ancient bone boxes or ossuaries and a series of names that sparked a sensational claim: that this unremarkable tomb could contain the remains of Jesus Christ, his family, and shocking evidence he wasn’t resurrected. But married? And that he even had a son. Lost Tomb of Jesus? Discovery 2007
‘Jesus, Son of Joseph’: this find sparked an international archaeological drama. ibid.
It was the names apparently etched on the bone-boxes inside that captivated those who formulated the sensational Jesus tomb theory. As well as the ‘Jesus, son of Joseph’ translation there were several other interpretations of names that led to the stunning suggestion Talpiut could be the family tomb of Jesus Christ. There was Maria in Hebrew, a form of Mary; another name was interpreted as Mariamne, written in Greek – perhaps another form of Mary. There was also a Jose in Hebrew, a nickname for Joseph. ibid.
But recently an ossuary appeared on the Israeli antiquities market bearing the inscription ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’ ... But subsequent investigations have cast grave doubts over the so-called James ossuary. ibid.
Another more controversial theory is Jesus and Mary Magdalene could have been married. ibid.