He is Alive!

Or are dem bones de real bones?

Mark 16

 

          Last year the build up to Easter featured the DaVinci Code.  This year it has a new attraction, The Lost Tomb of Jesus written and directed by Emmy Award-winning journalist Simcha Jacobovici and produced by James Cameron, director of Titanic and The Terminator, and aired on the Discovery the first week in March, Sunday exactly five weeks ago.  It by the way had more viewers than any Discovery program in the past year and a half.

          The conclusion of this special?  I quote from the home page of the official jesusfamilytomb.com website:  "An incredible archaeological discovery in Israel changes history and shocks the world.  Tombs with the names The Virgin Mary, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene and Judah, their son, are found and an investigation begins."  Do you see what they are saying?  They have found the tomb of the Virgin Mary, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene and Judah their son!  Wow!  That is an awesome find.  This discovery is going to change history and shock the world.  And what an appropriate moment – to bring it out right at Easter time, the time when we celebrate the day of what we always thought was Christ’s resurrection.  How to change the truth of Easter?  Actually, how do you eliminate Easter?  Very simple. Just bring out the bones!  And now, according to the official jesusfamilytomb.com website, we have the bones!  Jesus did not rise from the dead.  Sorry people.

          So what is this overwhelming statistical certainty and archaeological proof that changes history and shocks the world?  Apparently it includes DNA evidence that Jesus was married and that his remains were buried alongside his “wife,” Mary Magdalene.  And, by the way, they had a son, named, of all things, “Judah or Judas.”

 

          So what is this history-changing find?  Well the “discovery” is of ossuaries, bone boxes, to store in a tomb.  The boxes have names on them, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, Jose, Matthew, Judas, Mariamne and Salome, with the names written in three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and Mary written in the Latinized form as Maria.  If I read the story correctly, there are no bones in any of these boxes, and there were many others buried in this family tomb, as many as 35 people, but the “discovery” rests on this combination of names etched on these burial boxes.

          The website said that the names of the Virgin Mary, Jesus of Nazareth, and Mary Magdalene were inscribed on the boxes.  But “Virgin” doesn’t appear, “Nazareth” doesn’t appear, “Magdalene” doesn’t appear on any box.  So what you have is this collection of empty ossuaries with Jewish names, very common Jewish names.

          When you read of “an incredible archaeological discovery in Israel that changes history” you get the impression that this is a rather recent archaeological find.  So it is rather surprising to find out that the tomb was discovered in 1980, and that the archaeologists who unearthed the tomb didn’t think the names on the ossuaries were very significant.  The documentary on the Discovery Channel implies that Amos Kloner, who discovered and excavated the tomb, agrees with their conclusions.  But he doesn’t.  Here’s what Kloner told the Jerusalem Post:  "It makes a great story for a TV film, but it's completely impossible.  It's nonsense."

          A month ago, the jesusfamilytomb.com website apparently changed the size of their claim.  Here’s what they now say:  "An incredible archaeological discovery in Israel changes history and shocks the world. Tombs with the names Maria, Jesus son of Joseph, Mariamne e Mara, and Judah, their son, are found and an investigation begins."  Do you see the difference?  We now have “Maria,” instead of “Mary,” and “Virgin.”  We now have “Jesus son of Joseph” instead of “Jesus of Nazareth.  And Mariamne instead of Mary Magdalene.  Things are in flux!

          The documentary on the Discovery channel actually developed from a book entitled, The Jesus Family Tomb.  You can buy that book on Amazon.com.  Here are excerpts from the promo of the book: “The Jesus Family Tomb tells the story of what may very well be the greatest archaeological find of all time—the discovery of the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth . . .”

          “This is a story that is destined to grab international headlines and raise fundamental questions about the historical Jesus. Are the ‘Jesus’ and ‘Mary’ referred to in these inscriptions the Jesus and Mary Magdalene of the gospels?  Readers are taken on a remarkable journey: from telling statistical analysis, to a time_bending trip across two millennia, and an investigation of the patinas and DNA of the tombs that makes an episode of CSI look mundane.”

          “A riveting combination of history, archaeo_logy, and theology, this book will change the way we think about God, religion, and everything we have learned about the life and death of Jesus.”

          Wow!  Quite a book, isn’t it?  What does it all mean?  Well, to write a book like this you have to ignore certain pieces of evidence and jump at others.  For example, the authors down play the fact that all the bones are missing from these boxes, and that the DNA comes from scrapings of residue, known as mitochondria DNA, and that all the tests demonstrated was that whatever bones were in the “Jesus” box and the “Mariamne” box had different DNA.  From that they jump to the conclusion that they were married. 

          The fact that Joseph and Jesus are named is to be expected because they were two of the most popular names of the first century.  Before these boxes were discovered, there were at least 3 or 4 other ossuaries uncovered that have been identified with a father named Joseph and a son named Jesus.

          And the name, “Mary?”  Two of these boxes have the name, “Mary.”  That was the most common female name of the era.  “Every fourth person was a Mary” at that time.  And there are many other reasons for rejecting this “discovery” as anything of value or truth.  What we have is another Easter farce.  As Amos Kloner said, the archaeologist who actually discovered the tomb, “it’s completely impossible.  It’s nonsense.”

          Why is there such a desire to find the “truth” about Jesus?  Why do we go from one sensational story to another, full of breathless claims of how Jesus was married and had a son, or that He might be Himself the son of a Roman soldier, or that He might have survived the Crucifixion, and escaped to France and raised a family?  We rarely see this kind of docudrama on Mohammed or Confucius, or other religious leaders.  Why Jesus? 

          Here’s the answer: Because Jesus is the foundation of Christianity.  You want to attack Christianity?  Attack Jesus.  And specifically, the resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of Christianity.  How so?  If He didn’t rise from the dead, He lied.  Yes, maybe He had good intentions.  And yes, He was a great teacher, and lived a great life, even if He made mistakes.  But if He cannot be trusted to speak the truth on this issue (His resurrection), perhaps He can’t be trusted when He speaks on sin and salvation and eternal life.

          When someone mis states a minor matter, we don’t worry about it.  I ate dinner last night at 5:30, or it might have been 6 or 6:15.  Who cares?  That’s a minor matter.  But I am the son of Sara H. Jarvinen.  You would think I would get that one right.  That’s a major issue.  I’m not the son of Bilha K. Zereshkiti.  When Jesus claims that He is the Son of God, that’s a big issue.  And when someone doesn’t have it right on the big issues, we have legitimate grounds to worry about the other things they say.  Can they be trusted? 

          Many of Jesus’ statements were big ones.  “I will be crucified and rise again in 3 days” is a big one.  And Jesus repeated it at least 4 times in the gospels.  If He is wrong on that, do you think we can trust Him with the claim that He is the Son of God?  Or that He has power on earth to forgive sins?  Or that He is the resurrection and the life?  The bread of life?  The light of the world?   The Way, the Truth, and the Life?  Half the statements Jesus made seemed to be big ones.

          That’s why the resurrection is so critical.  It validated everything He said and did.  If the resurrection is not true, much of what Jesus said and promised, collapses.  Gerald O-Collins, a theologian, puts it this way: “In a profound sense, Christianity without the resurrection is not simply Christianity without its final chapter.  It is not Christianity at all” (Strobel, 206).  The resurrection is the foundation of our faith.

          Do you have trouble accepting the resurrection?  Are you bothered by the thought of Someone really dying and then really disappearing from His tomb?  Guess what?  The disciples had trouble too.  Do you see their response in verse Mark 16:11?  They didn’t believe Mary’s report.  And in verse 13 they didn’t believe the report of the other two disciples.  Isn’t that terrible that His own disciples didn’t believe?  No, I think that God sort of expected massive hang ups here because the resurrection is such an unbelievable event.  There is nothing in history to match it.  I mean, no one has ever come back from the dead, have they?  God knew that this event, more than anything Jesus said or did, would be questioned and challenged. 

          If God expected massive hang ups here, what did He do to help people over the hump?  Did He make it clear?  I think He did.  Is it a situation where you have to close your eyes, grit your teeth, and take by “faith” no matter what the data shows?  I don’t think so.  What IS the evidence?

          Let’s look at it from three points of view, the death of Christ, the burial of Christ, and the disappearance of Christ’s body.  These are usually the three areas where questions of unbelief arise.  Let’s talk about Death, Burial, Disappearance.  Not DVD, but DBD.

 

I.  Death – Christ actually died. 

          It is important to recognize that His death was not faked.  He didn’t just pass out.  Some say that what really happened was that He was knocked unconscious, and hustled into a tomb, and the coolness of the tomb woke Him up and enabled Him to regain strength and come back out.  There is nothing new to this line of thought.  As early as the Koran in the 7^th century, people argued against the death of Christ.  In fact, Ahmadiya Muslims contend that Jesus fled to India.  To this day there is a shrine that supposedly marks his real burial place in Srinagar, Kashmir (Strobel, The Case for Christ, 192).  In 1929 D. H. Lawrence wove this theme into a short story in which he suggested that Jesus had fled to Egypt, where he fell in love with the priestess Isis.  In 1965 Hugh Schonfield’s best seller, The Passover Plot alleged that Christ had a complicated scheme to escape the cross alive.  Donovan Joyce argued for the swoon theory in 1972 in The Jesus Scroll, and in 1982, Holy Blood, Holy Grail added the twist that Pilate had been bribed to allow Jesus to be taken down from the cross before He died.  How do we know that Christ really died?  Three pieces of evidence.

 

          A.  He was brutally tortured.  Each gospel records that Pilate “scourged” Jesus (Matt 27:26; Mark 15:15; Luke 23:16, and John 19:1).   That word “scourge” speaks of a Roman beating, or flogging.  “Roman floggings were known to be terribly brutal.  They usually consisted of thirty-nine lashes but frequently were a lot more than that, depending on the mood of the soldier applying the blows.”

          “The soldier would use a whip of braided leather thongs with metal balls woven into them.  When the whip would strike the flesh, these balls would cause deep bruises or contusions, which would break open with further blows.  And the whip had pieces of sharp bone as well, which would cut the flesh severely.”

          “The back would be so shredded that part of the spine was sometimes exposed by the deep, deep cuts.  The whipping would have gone all the way from the shoulders down to the back, the buttocks, and the back of the legs.  Eusebius, a 3^rd century historian said, ‘the sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.’” (From Strobel, The Case for Christ, 195)

          Victims would die just from the shock of what that torture did to their bodies, something called “hypovolemic” shock -- shock that comes from loss of large amounts of blood.  This is probably what happened to Jesus as he staggered and collapsed while carrying the cross.  Because of the awful effect of this beating, Jesus was probably in serious to critical condition before they put Him on the cross.

          If you saw the movie, the Passion of Christ, you had some indication of the torture He endured.  But that probably was not the half of the pain He suffered.  His body was basically shredded.

 

          B.  The Cross had only one purpose — death, as painfully as possible.

He was nailed to the cross with 5-7 inch spikes through his wrists, the place where the median nerve runs.  This is the largest nerve going out to the hand, and it would be crushed by the nail, producing pain similar to what happens when you bang your elbow and hit your funny bone, which is your “ulna” nerve.  Picture a pair of pliers squeezing and crushing that nerve.  The effect would be similar to what Christ experienced.  Out of that pain, which was beyond description, a new word was coined: “excruciating,” which means “out of the cross.”

          Crucifixion was a death by asphyxiation.  You couldn’t exhale unless you could push up with your feet.  And every time you pushed up with your feet, you were in terrible pain, from the nail in your feet, and by scraping your back on the coarse wood of the cross.  After awhile you just couldn’t push up any more.  And the way to speed up the death was to break the victim's legs so he couldn’t breathe.

 

          C.  Roman soldiers were expert executioners.  Even though the Roman soldiers didn’t go to medical school, and even though their knowledge of medicine and anatomy was primitive, they were experts in killing people – that was their job, and they did it very well.  In addition, the incentive to do the task well was heightened by the fact that if the prisoner didn’t die, but somehow escaped, the responsible soldiers would themselves be put to death.  Capital punishment for failure to accomplish daily employment tasks!  How’s that for employer motivation?

          When the Roman soldier came to Christ, he realized that Christ had already died, and he pierced His side, which brought out blood and water, indicating that Christ died by heart failure, cardiac arrest.  Thus we have a person in hypovolemic shock from massive blood loss, who has had a spear thrust into his heart, and pronounced dead by the professional Roman executioners.  And someone says to you, “oh, He just fainted.”  Do you see why that statement doesn’t fit the data?  Not with Roman soldiers in charge.  They knew what they were doing, and they knew that He was dead.

          It is important that Christ died.  As the Good Shepherd, He gave His life for His sheep.  As the LAMB OF GOD, He paid for our sins and bore the sins of the world through His death.  He was the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins.

          We really have only two choices here – He died or He didn’t die.  The “didn’t die” conclusion doesn’t fit the data.  Jesus really died.

 

II.  Burial – Christ’s body was buried in a known location.

          History tells us that as a rule, crucified criminals were left on the cross to be devoured by birds or were thrown into a common grave.  But Jesus’ body was preserved and placed in a well known tomb, the tomb of a wealthy, high government official.  This is why the Roman guards could find and set up their security system. They knew where the tomb was located.

 

          A.  The tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea.  Joseph was a member of the very council, the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of Israel, that voted to condemn Jesus.  This fact is mentioned in all four gospels.  Joseph had just finished building a new tomb in a garden right “in the place where He was crucified.”  Joseph went and requested of Pilate the body and buried it in his new tomb. 

          So the body didn’t just disappear into the darkness.  It would be easier to invent a story of resurrection if the body were hidden away in some unknown place.  But almost everyone knew Joseph – along with the other 70 members of the Sanhedrin.  And probably people would have known the location of his tomb.

 

          B.  The tomb was physically secured.  There was a slanted grove that led down to a low entrance, and a large disk-shaped stone was rolled down this groove and lodged into place across the door.  A smaller stone was then used to secure the disk.  Although it would be easy to roll this big disk down the groove, it would take several men to roll the stone back up in order to reopen the tomb.  In that sense it was quite secure.

 

          C.  The tomb was guarded by troops.  Matthew 27 states that Pilate assigned troops to guard the tomb because of the fear voiced by the Jewish leaders who remembered that Jesus had predicted that He would rise again the third day.  So they were sent over and placed on duty around the clock.

          Here is the evidence.  Christ actually died.  Christ’s body was placed in a secured and known location.  The data is very clear: Jesus was really dead when His body was placed in Joseph’s tomb and the body was actually under the official guard of Roman troops.

          These two pieces of data set the scene.  It’s like God saying to everyone at that time, “alright, are you ready?  Everyone in their place on stage?”  Once you accept the data that Jesus really died and was really buried in Joseph’s tomb, then the next event is mind-boggling.

III.  Disappearance – Christ’s body is not in Joseph’s tomb.

          Something happened early on a Sunday morning in the year 30 AD.  The tomb was vacated and it has been empty ever since.  Let me make three statements:

 

          A.  Joseph’s tomb was vacated - Whatever you think or do, that tomb is empty.  You have to explain an empty tomb.  The apostle John says that it was the empty tomb that first convinced him that Christ was alive.  He went to the tomb and saw the strips of linen and the burial cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head, but Jesus himself was nowhere to be found.  John saw that, and believed (John 20:3-8).

          Kirsopp Lake argues in 1907, that the women merely went to the wrong tomb.  They got lost and a caretaker at an unoccupied tomb said, “You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth.  He is not here,” and they left, afraid.

          The weakness of this theory is that once they started announcing that Christ was alive, the Jewish authorities would have been only too happy to take them back to the right tomb and introduce the population to the real body and shut down the preaching.  The easiest way to eliminate the talk about Christ’s resurrection was to produce the body.  But that was what they couldn’t do.  Why not?

          Maybe the disciples stole the body.  Maybe they bribed the guards, or drugged them, or sneaked around them when they were sleeping and noiselessly rolled the stone up the hill, packed up the body and crept out.  That’s the story the soldiers were paid to peddle (Matt 28:13).  J. P. Moreland says, that to his knowledge, no New Testament scholar, regardless of how skeptical he is about the supernatural elements in Christianity, considers this suggestion as remotely possible.  For one thing, the disciples had nothing to gain by lying and starting a new religion.  They faced hardship, ridicule, hostility, and martyrs' deaths.  Each one paid for their resurrection message with their own life.  Why would they die for a lie?  Not one of them changed his message.  Besides, those who lie for personal gain do not stick together very long, especially when hardship decreases the benefits (Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 171-172).

          So one is left with very few other ways of reading the data.  One possible angle is to argue that the story of the resurrection was a later legend, and that by the time it developed, people were unable to disprove it, because the location of the tomb had been forgotten (Strobel, 221).

          No, the disciples began preaching the resurrection of Christ within 50 days of the event – on the day of Pentecost, in Jerusalem where it happened, to crowds of Jews who would know or be able to verify the details.  We’re talking about something that happened on the 18^th of February, if we were to announce the resurrection of Christ for the first time today.

          To me this is a huge issue.  If the women had gone to the wrong tomb, if the disciples had stolen the body, or if in any way the body was still there, do you think that the Jewish leaders or the Roman leaders would have stopped looking until they found the body?  How do you shut down the preaching of these disciples?  Simple.  The bones.  Find the bones.  Everything the disciples preached hinged on the fact that the bones were not there.  Just produce a bone.  Interrupt the preaching and lead the listeners on a field trip to the tomb.  Why didn’t they do that? 

          You know, finding the bones of Jesus in the year 2007 is so ridiculous when you realize how passionately the Jewish leaders wanted to find those bones.  They would have done anything to produce the body, because that would have immediately stopped the preaching and nipped Christianity in the bud.  But they couldn’t.  And we are to believe that James Cameron, 2000 years later, has found what they so desperately desired!  It makes me wonder how much money Cameron was promised for this venture.

          Think of the evidence strewn around by 8 am on that Easter morning.  (1)  There was a broken Roman Seal.  That tomb had been sealed shut.  The seal stood for the power and authority of the Roman Empire.  You break a seal and the consequences are severe.  The FBI and CIA of the Roman Empire were called into action to find the man or men responsible.  When apprehended, they were automatically executed by crucifixion upside down.  There was an official seal broken.  Who was executed?  No one.  Why not?

          (2)  The Roman Guards were baffled, but not executed.  These Roman Guards were not just 2 guys in metal miniskirts, lounging around the tomb.  This was a highly disciplined team, trained to protect a person or object.  If they fell asleep or if they went AWOL, the penalty was death.  Dr. George Currie, who studied the military discipline of the Romans, wrote that fear of punishment "produced flawless attention to duty, especially in the night watches."  The disciples stole the body?  Not with the Roman Guards there.  One of the ironic things is that the Jewish authorities bribed the Roman guards to propagate the "stolen body" notion.  As a result the Guards were going around spouting this multi-oxymoron: “we were asleep” (that’s illegal, they should be dead for that.  How can they be alive saying they fell asleep on their watch?), “and the disciples came” (its rather impossible to identify anyone with your eyes closed), “and stole the body” (an incredible admission from guards commissioned to protect it from theft).  Do you see how ridiculous their statement is?  The fact that they are alive to say it contradicts what they say!

          But what is left unsaid is tremendously significant: “the tomb is empty and we are making no moves to go find the body.”  Why not?  If the disciples stole the body, and had only a half hour or hour head start, surely the Roman guards could find the body.  They could enter any house they wanted; they could for sure have wrung a confession out of the disciples in court, but none of that.  Why?  Because they knew that the tomb was supernaturally empty, and there wasn’t anything they could do about it.

          What comes shouting through the confession of the guards, the men who were officially assigned to the spot, watching the tomb 24/7, is that Whoever was there is no longer there!  That tomb is empty!  This is from the guards who were there!

          The evidence is clear that the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea, which contained the body of Jesus of Nazareth, has been empty for 2000 years now.  Josephus, the Jewish historian, speaks of an empty tomb.  Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, put forth the suggestion that the Christian movement was of God.  Why would he have said this if there was a body in the tomb? or if the Sanhedrin had known where the bones were?

 

          B.  Many people saw Christ.  The disciples didn’t believe the resurrection.  Far from being ingenious craftsmen of a legend, they didn’t even believe it to be possible.  They heard His prophecies that He would suffer and die and be raised the 3^rd day, but it never dawned upon them that He meant it.  So when it came time for the events to take place, the disciples were caught by surprise as much as the unbelieving world.  And most of them weren’t convinced by the empty tomb or the reports of the women that Jesus was missing.  They were not convinced until they had a personal encounter with Him.  It was when He appeared in the room with them and ate with them, it was when He broke bread with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, or when He had that beach breakfast in John 21, or when He invited Thomas, the most skeptical of the disciples, to touch His scars, that the disciples concluded that Jesus was alive.

          Paul says that Jesus appeared to 500 at one time, most of whom were still living at the time he wrote.  As if to say, “check with them if you still have questions.”

          Now if you were part of a jury and you had the testimony of hundreds of reliable, level-headed people who all said they saw alive and recognized a certain person – and those people were even willing to die rather than change their story – wouldn’t you believe them?  Sir Edward Clark, a British lawyer, wrote, “As a lawyer, I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter day.  To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling” (David Feddes, 14-15).

          Do you see what he is saying?  He concludes that courts convict people on less evidence than there is for the resurrection of Christ.

 

          C.  He transforms lives today.  Christ didn’t just appear to Peter and Thomas and Paul, He transformed them.  Paul was once a proud, self-righteous man who helped imprison and kill Christians, but the living Christ transformed him into the greatest missionary who ever lived.

          Peter denied Christ, but less than 6 weeks later became the bold preacher on the day of Pentecost.

          You have two choices here.  He arose from the dead or He didn’t arise from the dead.  If He didn’t arise, if His bones are the ones found by Discovery channel, then what does that mean for you and me?  Paul said it exactly in I Cor 15:17, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still under condemnation.”  You are believing a lie.  I remind you again of O-Collins statement: “In a profound sense, Christianity without the resurrection is not simply Christianity without its final chapter.  It is not Christianity at all” (Strobel, 206).

          It’s the resurrection that vindicates Christ’s identity and teaching.  Is He God?  Not if He is still dead.  Did He speak truth?  Not if He promised He would rise from the dead and didn’t.  It all comes down to the question:  "IS JESUS ALIVE OR DO WE STILL HAVE HIS BONES?"  Sometimes we make things more complicated than they really are, but this matter isn't complicated at all.  If Jesus Christ is alive, you'd be foolish not to become a Christian.  And if He's dead, you'd be foolish to believe in Him.  There's no in-between.  It's all or nothing (from David Feddes, 4).

          If He is alive, then all those other things He said are true – He is the only way to the Father, He is the provider of life, He is the Door to life, the Good Shepherd.  All of these statements rise or fall together.  If Christ was incorrect on one issue, that’s enough evidence to question every issue.  And His most impossible claim was that He was going to rise again.