{"id":53378,"date":"2016-03-30T22:03:35","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T04:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=53378"},"modified":"2016-03-30T13:49:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T20:49:17","slug":"the-other-side-of-the-historical-facts-of-the-crucifixion-and-resurrection-of-jesus-the-historical-facts-by-dr-v-j-m-de-silva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/03\/30\/the-other-side-of-the-historical-facts-of-the-crucifixion-and-resurrection-of-jesus-the-historical-facts-by-dr-v-j-m-de-silva\/","title":{"rendered":"The other side\u00a0 of\u00a0 the historical facts of\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe Crucifixion and\u00a0 Resurrection of\u00a0 Jesus- the Historical Facts by Dr. V.J.M de Silva \u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charles.S.Perera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

This is to state what is controversial\u00a0 of the metaphysical implications of the historical facts as\u00a0 V.J.M.de Silva\u00a0 states in his article\u00a0 in the Island of\u00a0 24 March,2016.<\/p>\n

I liked reading the article, because Dr. V.J.M. de Silva writes what he believes\u00a0 to assure himself\u00a0 of his faith, without\u00a0 forgetting the controversial issues which an ordinary \u00a0Christian will not pay heed to lest he would be disappointed, ..blessed are those who have not seen, but yet believed.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no problem accepting a historical Jesus. Crucifixion of Jesus is not a debated issue. But the problem is in accepting a God let alone a historical one. That is important as it is to that God in the Holy Bible\u00a0 that the New Testament\u00a0 turns to give Jesus a paternity.\u00a0 Therefore more than the resurrection the selling of Jesus for 30 pieces of silver by his beloved disciple Judas Iscariot\u00a0 is more relevant\u00a0 as a corner of Christian faith.<\/p>\n

If not for that betrayal, there would not have been\u00a0 a resurrection.\u00a0 It is to push their own point of view as historical and correct that\u00a0 the Christian writers\u00a0 take such\u00a0 painful efforts to deny other probable historical facts as incorrect\u00a0 insinuations against Christianity.<\/p>\n

The disciples willingness to die\u00a0 for the truth of resurrection cannot be adduced\u00a0 as\u00a0 historical proof\u00a0 of the appearance of Jesus after Crucifixion, as we know that there are many who actually die\u00a0 to prove their love for God. Could that be taken as proof of the historical\u201d existence of a loving God ?<\/p>\n

At least one amoung the disciples did not believe in the truth of resurrection .\u00a0 Disciple Thomas was an ordinary man\u00a0 not na\u00efve and easily tricked. When his friends said that Jesus had appeared to them he refused to believe, and the writer of the New Testament cleverly makes Jesus appear in to the room through the locked door to face the group of disciples,\u00a0 to \u00a0\u00a0tell Thomas that \u2026 blessed are those\u00a0 who have not seen and yet have believed.\u201d\u00a0 That is what the writers of the New Testament want all faithful Christians to do-to believe without questioning what appears to be improbable.<\/p>\n

More than\u00a0 a historical Jesus, the question is why\u00a0 it\u00a0 was necessity for a\u00a0 Jesus\u201d\u00a0 to affirm Christian faith, when there was the\u00a0 God Almighty , unless of course there\u00a0 was a problem with the God of the\u00a0 Bible, who was only the God of the Jews the Israelites.\u00a0 The rest of the Europeans could not claim God as theirs or of everyone as\u00a0 God had his chosen people and turned away from others.<\/p>\n

Therefore, is it not correct to assume that to correct this anomaly the rest of the Europeans down from early Romans had to move away from the\u00a0 Bible as the Old Testament, and accept the story of the New Testament giving the God of the Bible a son to create a whole\u00a0 European Christian faith around him ?<\/p>\n

Even the empty grave cannot be made a historical issue without making it a part of the\u00a0 miracle of resurrection. Because it is said that\u00a0 Christianity would never have got off the ground if Jesus\u2019\u00a0 corpse was still in the tomb.\u00a0 All that the Roman and Jewish authorities had to do, was to go to the tomb and view the corpse and debunk the resurrection.\u201d See how well the Greek writers of the New Testament had imagined\u00a0 to meet every possible arguments against casting doubt about their story.<\/p>\n

The Israelites do not accept that the God had a son, nor do the Muslims as a matter of fact accept Jesus as the \u00a0son of God.\u00a0 There is so much to explain but my intention is not to prove one and disprove the other but\u00a0 to\u00a0 speak of the thoughts that arose in my mind as I read the Bible and the New Testament in search of an existing God.<\/p>\n

Early Greeks and Romans had no God, \u00a0Zeus was their God. But it was the later Roman Piso family that got \u00a0the New Testament written \u00a0in Greek,\u00a0 trying to distance the God of the Bible and accept Jesus as their saviour to make it a spring board for a new Christian faith for non Israelite Europeans.\u00a0 The New Testament was written 100 to 300 years after the death of Jesus.<\/p>\n

That was convenient for conquering European nations, beginning with later Romans to take with them a new faith to replace those of the conquered people. Historical Jesus was a man born to a man and a woman-Joseph and Mary. Those days the men lived for a long time, and they may therefore have had strong spermatozoid.\u00a0 Abraham was 100 when\u00a0 Sarah conceived Isaac.\u00a0 Mary was perhaps 12 or\u00a0 13 when she gave birth to Jesus, and Joseph was 100 years.<\/p>\n

There is therefore good reason to believe Joseph was the father of Jesus. The Roman writers of the New Testament had\u00a0 to make Jesus the son of God and wrote passionately about an\u00a0 immaculate conception. The New Testaments uses miracles – 37 of them\u00a0 reported to have been performed by Jesus to make the faithful believe he was\u00a0 the son of God. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead.\u00a0 He turned water into wine\u00a0 so on and so forth. There had to be miracles performed by Jesus to prove to the faithful he was the son of God.<\/p>\n

But God who created man in his own image never showed himself to man.\u00a0 When Moses asked God to show himself to him, the God said no man can\u00a0 see his\u00a0 face and live.\u00a0 When the Christians say they believe in God, what they say is they believe in the Prophets, because the God of the Bible did not speak to any one directly.\u00a0 He spoke through his prophets.<\/p>\n

There were about 72 prophets in the Bible.\u00a0 And it is only through them that God spoke\u201d to the faithful. \u00a0\u00a0The God did not appear directly to the prophets either , but spoke to them only in \u00a0visions and in dreams.\u00a0 Therefore the faithful have to believe the Prophets to believe that the God appeared to them in their visions or in their dreams.\u00a0 If they do not believe the Prophets they cannot believe in a God.\u00a0 Therefore what Christians believe are the Prophets.<\/p>\n

It is to the credit of Dr. de Silva that \u00a0he\u00a0 mentions, \u2026.The metaphysical implications of these historical facts are no doubt controversial. Christians accept this as a miracle. Once God\u2019s existence is accepted as a possibility, miracle cannot be dismissed out of hand; they become matters for investigation.\u201d He writes to the\u00a0 Christian faithful and not to convert or convince others of the truth about Christianity.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0 I disagree when he says that, Ancient people rellied on verbal transmissions for passing along what happened, until it was written down. When there is a long interval between the occurrence of events and their recording, distortions\u00a0 could easily occur. This cannot be said of the Christian gospels.\u201d\u00a0 This depends on how verbal\u00a0 transmissions had been organised, there is atleast one \u00a0religion which\u00a0 has its religious philosophies intact despite verbal transmission.<\/p>\n

Then there is also the Swoon theory referred to by\u00a0 Dr. de Silva, according to which, Jesus did not die on the cross, but was taken for dead, and later recovered. \u2026\u2026.It was first propounded by the anti-Christian philosopher Celsus I the 2nd<\/sup> Century AD\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

But one important fact about the New Testament and the life of Jesus have been carefully left out by our learned writer.\u00a0 It is the missing years of Jesus. The New Testament\u00a0 is completely silent on the 18 lost of years of Jesus or the so called hidden years of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0 The ministry of Jesus lasted only for three years, that is\u00a0 from his thirtieth year to the 33rd<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

What Dr. de Silva had left out \u00a0is perhaps historical evidence of Jesus of Nazareth spending his lost years in the New Testament\u201d in a Hindu Temple\u00a0 Jaganath in Puri and then in a Buddhist Monastery in\u00a0 Himalayas in Ladakh, India where there is said to\u00a0 be\u00a0 written evidence in an ancient scroll The life of Saint Issa, the Best of the Sons of Men\u201dwhich\u00a0 answers the questions on the missing years of,Jesus. This\u00a0 ancient scroll\u00a0 some say mysteriously disappeared later. Issa is how Jesus had been called in the Muslim and Hindu worlds.<\/p>\n

This ancient scroll has even mentioned how Jesus had exhorted the Hindus to stop worshipping idols and give up the Caste system. Has that journey of Jesus to the East\u00a0 been conveniently omitted from the New Testament ?<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/paul-davids\/jesus-lost-years-may-fina_b_179513.html<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charles.S.Perera This is to state what is controversial\u00a0 of the metaphysical implications of the historical facts as\u00a0 V.J.M.de Silva\u00a0 states in his article\u00a0 in the Island of\u00a0 24 March,2016. I liked reading the article, because Dr. V.J.M. de Silva writes what he believes\u00a0 to assure himself\u00a0 of his faith, without\u00a0 forgetting the controversial issues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}