A claim that Jesus didn't die on the cross?

[Forte]

I was reading an online Koran (muslim.org/english-quran/quran.htm if I’m allowed to link) and on Surah 4:157-158 the footnotes give New Testament “proof” that Jesus didn’t die on the cross. Most of it is just junk, in my humble opinion, but I’m not sure how to refute the claim that even Pontius Pilate was surprised that Jesus was dead.

The scripture in question, Mark 15:44, is that Pontius Pilate was surprised Jesus was already dead. Just to clarify, was Pilate surprised that Jesus died so soon, or was he surprised that they cruicifed Jesus so soon after being sentenced to crucifixion, or what?

Some clarification would be much appreciated.

 

[Trishie]

Dear Forte,

You might find it helpful to read the bible accounts of Jesus’ death. Between them they build up the picture of the whole truth. If you read sources other than the bible of course they will want to discount the truth for a preferred truth.
God’s kindest blessings to you.

Matthew 27:52 to 28:20,
Luke 23:44 to 24:12
John 19:29 to 20:18
Mark 15:33 to 16:8

Jesus had been tortured, hung from the cross by nails. The flogging was absolutely brutal. Unless He pushed up on the nails in His foot, in dreadful pain, and dragged up in the nails in His wrists in agony, He simply would have suffocated, unable to breathe. He was so weak that unlike the others, He couldn’t carry the cross, but fell under it and another had to carry it for Him. For three hours on the cross He dragged himself up on His trembling arms to breath, In the end He no longer had the strength to do so. The others with Him hadn’t been brutalized so their legs were broken so that they could no longer pull themselves up against their body-weight in order to breathe, Therefore as He had already done, they suffocated.

I think that in our time this scriptures are probably quite relevant for us!

“Have nothing to do with the pointless philosophical discussions and antagonistic beliefs of the ‘knowledge’ which is not knowledge at all; by adopting this, some have gone right away from the faith. Grace be with you.” [1 Timothy 6 20-21]

 

[NHInsider]

Pilate was surprised because typically crucifixion took several days to kill the condemned. Therefore the guard - to be sure - pierced His side. The Bible is actually pretty explicit on this point.

 

[BryanM27]

I was reading an online Koran (muslim.org/english-quran/quran.htm if I’m allowed to link) and on Surah 4:157-158 the footnotes give New Testament “proof” that Jesus didn’t die on the cross. Most of it is just junk, in my humble opinion, but I’m not sure how to refute the claim that even Pontius Pilate was surprised that Jesus was dead.

The scripture in question, Mark 15:44, is that Pontius Pilate was surprised Jesus was already dead. Just to clarify, was Pilate surprised that Jesus died so soon, or was he surprised that they cruicifed Jesus so soon after being sentenced to crucifixion, or what?

Some clarification would be much appreciated.

What is also important to note is that regardless of the Biblical proof you find, Muslims will still say that Jesus was saved from his death and ascended into Heaven. They will point to the Bible and say that after Simon of Cyrene is ordered to carry the cross for Jesus, no mention is made that it was ever returned to Jesus.

 

[The_GreyPilgrim]

What is also important to note is that regardless of the Biblical proof you find, Muslims will still say that Jesus was saved from his death and ascended into Heaven. They will point to the Bible and say that after Simon of Cyrene is ordered to carry the cross for Jesus, no mention is made that it was ever returned to Jesus.

The Bible is explicit that it is Jesus that was nailed to the cross, not Simon.

Muslims should also note the Pharisee’s taunting of Jesus on the cross( i.e. "He saved others, why doesn’t He save Himself if He is the Son of God…). If Simon was the one on the cross how do they explain this? The teachings they were referring to were Jesus’, not Simon’s.

And are they trying to say that the Romans were so inept in their duties that they, who followed these two from the Antonia to Golgatha, couldn’t tell the difference between Jesus and Simon when it came to who they had to crucify?

It just defies logic.

 

[Nine_Two]

The Muslim belief was nothing new and originates with other neoplatonist texts which Mohammed would have had.

 

[BryanM27]

The Bible is explicit that it is Jesus that was nailed to the cross, not Simon.

Muslims should also note the Pharisee’s taunting of Jesus on the cross( i.e. "He saved others, why doesn’t He save Himself if He is the Son of God…). If Simon was the one on the cross how do they explain this? The teachings they were referring to were Jesus’, not Simon’s.

And are they trying to say that the Romans were so inept in their duties that they, who followed these two from the Antonia to Golgatha, couldn’t tell the difference between Jesus and Simon when it came to who they had to crucify?

It just defies logic.

Their logic is that God saved Jesus from death, and when you try to point to those verses they will start to point to the “inaccuracies” of the Bible and say that the people at the crucifixion did not recognize Simon, but instead they saw Jesus.

 

[The_GreyPilgrim]

Their logic is that God saved Jesus from death, and when you try to point to those verses they will start to point to the “inaccuracies” of the Bible and say that the people at the crucifixion did not recognize Simon, but instead they saw Jesus.

And I would say that they’re begging the question. We have secular data from Roman historians and the matyrologies that plainly speak of “Jesus the Nazorean” as the one crucified under Pilate. Trajan mentions Jesus explicitly during Ignatius’ trial as “the one who was crucified under Pontius Pilate”.(Rod Bennet’s “The Four Witnesses” page 114).

Mohammed got his information on Christ 600+ years removed from these records from a heretical sect of “christians”.

And if it was Simon that died on the cross instead of Jesus. Then the apostles lied when they said they saw Him raised from the dead. That would make them the most diabolical liars ever. On top of the fact that all of the Apostles were matyred save John. And during their trials none of them, during all of their torments, let THAT cat out of the bag. You would think that the one thing that would be easiest to admit-that Jesus wasn’t the Son of God, that He wasn’t crucified or rasied from the dead, was the one thing that never was admitted. They went to their deaths with that confession. It courageous for one to die for the truth, it offends logic to even think that these men died defending a lie.

 

[BryanM27]

And I would say that they’re begging the question. We have secular data from Roman historians and the matyrologies that plainly speak of “Jesus the Nazorean” as the one crucified under Pilate. Trajan mentions Jesus explicitly during Ignatius’ trial as “the one who was crucified under Pontius Pilate”.(Rod Bennet’s “The Four Witnesses” page 114).

Mohammed got his information on Christ 600+ years removed from these records from a heretical sect of “christians”.

And if it was Simon that died on the cross instead of Jesus. Then the apostles lied when they said they saw Him raised from the dead. That would make them the most diabolical liars ever. On top of the fact that all of the Apostles were matyred save John. And during their trials none of them, during all of their torments, let THAT cat out of the bag. You would think that the one thing that would be easiest to admit-that Jesus wasn’t the Son of God, that He wasn’t crucified or rasied from the dead, was the one thing that never was admitted. They went to their deaths with that confession. It courageous for one to die for the truth, it offends logic to even think that these men died defending a lie.

Hence why after a semester of Islam I still remain Catholic.

 

[MartinJordan]

Islam has many facts wrong, and this is simply another one of them. They don’t even trust fully the Jewish books which also for example say that Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac when the Islamists insist it was Ismael (where the Koran can’t even confirm it).

So it continues…nothing new IMHO.

MJ

 

[Publisher]

I believe it was first told among Christians that it was Judas who was crucified instead of Jesus. Some Gnostic sects taught that Jesus was spared and a “Simon” was crucified in his stead.

Perhaps it was followers of this group of Christians that put the idea into Muhammed’s head that another died instead of Jesus. In the second to the sixth centuries the proto-orthodox/catholics groups fought to secure their claim of “orthodoxy” and brand all who disagreed with them “heretic”…this story was “old” by the time it reached Muhammed.

 

[Davidcameron]

There is really just ONE reason for the denial of Jesus’ death on the cross.

**- THE REJECTION OF THE SALVATION GRACE OF GOD - **

.

 

[KyivAndrew]

I believe Muslims do not have a theology of Redemption with God like we do with Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross for us to be saved from sin. Hence, their rejection of Jesus as being Crucified, or for that matter being the Son of God.

Muslim writings on Christ come hundreds of years after Christ walked, and, indeed, early Christians believed Islam as sprouting from a mixture of heretical Chrisitianity, arab tribal religion, and Judaism into one mix.

 

[ginoparadela]

I think Islam rejects the Crucifixion since Muhammad was not learned in Christian theology during His ministry - Muhammad probably did not know how to read and write! He was probably influenced by Christian Docetism - a belief that Christ could not have been Crucified because he was not made of flesh (An Early Heresy).

 

[sedonaman]

If Jesus died on the cross, there is no need for Islam OR Mohammed.

 

[Esdra]

And I would say that they’re begging the question. We have secular data from Roman historians and the matyrologies that plainly speak of “Jesus the Nazorean” as the one crucified under Pilate. Trajan mentions Jesus explicitly during Ignatius’ trial as “the one who was crucified under Pontius Pilate”.(Rod Bennet’s “The Four Witnesses” page 114).

Mohammed got his information on Christ 600+ years removed from these records from a heretical sect of “christians”.

And if it was Simon that died on the cross instead of Jesus.

Then the apostles lied when they said they saw Him raised from the dead.

**Why can’t that be possible in your eyes that the disciples saw Christ, although He wasn’t crucified?
This is very easy possible: If Christ wasn’t a human & a god (like the Christians say), but a god, he of course could appear the disciples and the 12.
I think this was the core idea, “stolen” from a heretic sect. (see above!)

Or another possibility: If he wasn’t crucified but Simon (or Jude) - he also, of course, could appear the disciples because he didn’t die! - Then he was a human, a prophet like Muhammed! And then he was lifted up into heaven, like Muhammed…

So they (the Apostels) didn’t lie. Always remember: Muslims claim that there are many mistakes in the Holy Bible (and of course also in the Scriptures of the Jews!)! And that the Qu’ran is the only true Holy Book.

To conclude: I think it is quite difficult to argue with Muslims about religion. Because they will always say the the Bible is wrong!
Any ideas how one could evengelize Muslims?**

That would make them the most diabolical liars ever. On top of the fact that all of the Apostles were matyred save John. And during their trials none of them, during all of their torments, let THAT cat out of the bag. You would think that the one thing that would be easiest to admit-that Jesus wasn’t the Son of God, that He wasn’t crucified or rasied from the dead, was the one thing that never was admitted. They went to their deaths with that confession. It courageous for one to die for the truth, it offends logic to even think that these men died defending a lie.

 

[Holly3278]

This is easily refuted. They base this claim on what they call the “fact” that the Bible has been “mistranslated” so many times that it is no longer reliable. It is true that Protestants have mistranslated the Bible so many times that we can no longer trust some of their Bibles completely and not to mention the fact that most Protestant Bibles are missing 7 books. But the Catholic Church is the only Church that has the rightful claim to “owning” or creating Holy Scripture as inerrant and keeping it that way.

Before we go any further, let’s define the term I just used. The term is, “inerrant”. Here is the definition from the USCCB’s website which hosts the whole Catechism of the Catholic Church along with a glossary from which this definition comes:

**INERRANCY: **The attribute of the books of Scripture whereby they faithfully and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to have confided through the Sacred Scriptures (107).

See the following article for link to the CCC’s Glossary on USCCB:

usccb.org/catechism/text/glossary.shtml

Also see this quote from the article on the Bible from New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia which contains both an Imprimatur and a Nihil Obstat, meaning that it is a reliable source of Catholic doctrine:
New Advent's article on the Bible:

The inerrancy of the Bible follows as a consequence of this Divine authorship. Wherever the sacred writer makes a statement as his own, that statement is the word of God and infallibly true, whatever be the subject-matter of the statement.

See the following link for the article:

newadvent.org/cathen/02543a.htm

Now that we have defined what inerrancy means, let’s look at all of the inerrant Scriptures of the Bible (of which none of the canonical Scriptures are errant):

drbo.org/cgi-bin/s?t=2&q=crucified&b=drb

The above is a link to all passages in the New Testament with the word “crucified” in them using the Douay-Rheims Bible. As you can see, Jesus talks about His crucifixion extensively within Scripture. And since we know that Scripture is inerrant and cannot err that the Muslims are wrong. The Bible has never been mistranslated when done so authoritatively by the Church such as in the case of Jerome’s translation, the Latin Vulgate, which was then translated into the Douay-Rheims and finally into the Challoner-Rheims by Bishop Challoner back in the 19th Century. (NOTE: I refer to the passage above as from the Douay-Rheims but it is actually from the Douay-Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims. The language had to be updated and so Bishop Challoner took on this bold endeavor and did so. )

As far as proving the inspiration and therefore inerrancy of the Bible, it is possible to defend this doctrine using quotes from the Early Church Fathers and such. Here are some links below to assist you with this:

staycatholic.com/ecf_tradition.htm

[catholic.com/library/Proving_Inspiration.asp](http://www.catholic.com/library/Proving_Inspiration.asp)

And finally, here are a couple articles about translations of the Bible to help defend the various Catholic translations:

catholic.com/library/Bible_Translations_Guide.asp

catholic.com/thisrock/1994/9404fea1.asp

usccb.org/nab/bible/prefaceold.htm

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a1.htm

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a2.htm

Also, there are a number of documents produced by Vatican II about the inerrancy of Scripture and they are also related to Scripture as a whole. I could not currently find the articles as I don’t know what the names of them are off hand. Regardless, they are available on vatican.va/.

God Bless,
Holly

 

[Cdizk]

And I would say that they’re begging the question. We have secular data from Roman historians and the matyrologies that plainly speak of “Jesus the Nazorean” as the one crucified under Pilate. Trajan mentions Jesus explicitly during Ignatius’ trial as “the one who was crucified under Pontius Pilate”.(Rod Bennet’s “The Four Witnesses” page 114).

Since when? As far as I knew, there was no actual proof of a historical Jesus.

 

[MelanieAnne]

I was reading an online Koran (muslim.org/english-quran/quran.htm if I’m allowed to link) and on Surah 4:157-158 the footnotes give New Testament “proof” that Jesus didn’t die on the cross. Most of it is just junk, in my humble opinion, but I’m not sure how to refute the claim that even Pontius Pilate was surprised that Jesus was dead.

The scripture in question, Mark 15:44, is that Pontius Pilate was surprised Jesus was already dead. Just to clarify, was Pilate surprised that Jesus died so soon, or was he surprised that they cruicifed Jesus so soon after being sentenced to crucifixion, or what?

Some clarification would be much appreciated.

Crucifixion was a brutal, painful method of execution where the victim usually ultimately died of asphixiation. (sp?) It was a kindness on the part of the executioners to break the victim’s legs to accelerate death because otherwise the person being executed would continue to push themselves up, and inflate the lungs, prolonging death. With broken legs they could not do that. This is probably hard for most modern persons to even come to grips with. Indeed, the entire idea of crucifixion is very foreign to us.

The situation of Jesus was different, since He had been relentlessly beaten, and was bleeding profusely as a result of the beatings, prior to His execution by crucifixion, so much so that He had trouble carrying His cross. His crucifixion was not “ordinary” as He had been severely weakened physically prior to the actual crucifixion. As a result, His physical body succumbed to the effects of crucifixion much sooner than would ordinarily be expected. This is just a logical, biological fact.

I do agree with the poster that Mohammed would have had to nullify the death and resurrection of Jesus in order to promulgate Islam. Mohammed obtained the relevant texts from an “angel” and the New Testament warns about such things. There can be NO OTHER Gospel, even if it comes from an “angel”, according to the New Testament. Yet both Islam and Mormonism share this source ~ new scripture from an Angel. The New Testament warned of this and called it false.

 

[Esdra]

This is easily refuted. They base this claim on what they call the “fact” that the Bible has been “mistranslated” so many times that it is no longer reliable. It is true that Protestants have mistranslated the Bible so many times that we can no longer trust some of their Bibles completely and not to mention the fact that most Protestant Bibles are missing 7 books.
**
Wait. The Catholic Church has also not some of the Books of the Septuagint! How many were they? Ah wait - 6 (or 7- depending whether you count the Psalms of Solomon or not!)** Have a look here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint

But the Catholic Church is the only Church that has the rightful claim to “owning” or creating Holy Scripture as inerrant and keeping it that way.

Before we go any further, let’s define the term I just used. The term is, “inerrant”. Here is the definition from the USCCB’s website which hosts the whole Catechism of the Catholic Church along with a glossary from which this definition comes:

See the following article for link to the CCC’s Glossary on USCCB:

usccb.org/catechism/text/glossary.shtml

Also see this quote from the article on the Bible from New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia which contains both an Imprimatur and a Nihil Obstat, meaning that it is a reliable source of Catholic doctrine:

See the following link for the article:

newadvent.org/cathen/02543a.htm

Now that we have defined what inerrancy means, let’s look at all of the inerrant Scriptures of the Bible (of which none of the canonical Scriptures are errant):

drbo.org/cgi-bin/s?t=2&q=crucified&b=drb

The above is a link to all passages in the New Testament with the word “crucified” in them using the Douay-Rheims Bible. As you can see, Jesus talks about His crucifixion extensively within Scripture. And since we know that Scripture is inerrant and cannot err that the Muslims are wrong. The Bible has never been mistranslated when done so authoritatively by the Church such as in the case of Jerome’s translation, the Latin Vulgate, which was then translated into the Douay-Rheims and finally into the Challoner-Rheims by Bishop Challoner back in the 19th Century. (NOTE: I refer to the passage above as from the Douay-Rheims but it is actually from the Douay-Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims. The language had to be updated and so Bishop Challoner took on this bold endeavor and did so. )

As far as proving the inspiration and therefore inerrancy of the Bible, it is possible to defend this doctrine using quotes from the Early Church Fathers and such. Here are some links below to assist you with this:

staycatholic.com/ecf_tradition.htm

[catholic.com/library/Proving_Inspiration.asp](http://www.catholic.com/library/Proving_Inspiration.asp)

And finally, here are a couple articles about translations of the Bible to help defend the various Catholic translations:

catholic.com/library/Bible_Translations_Guide.asp

catholic.com/thisrock/1994/9404fea1.asp

usccb.org/nab/bible/prefaceold.htm

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a1.htm

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a2.htm

Also, there are a number of documents produced by Vatican II about the inerrancy of Scripture and they are also related to Scripture as a whole. I could not currently find the articles as I don’t know what the names of them are off hand. Regardless, they are available on vatican.va/.

God Bless,
Holly

Hi

and you really think that I could evangelize a Muslim if I tell him that the Catholic Holy Bible is inerrant?!
He will never the less claim that the Bible has been mistranslated so often in the past! - And not only the Bible, but also the Thorah and the other Holy Scriptures of the Jews. And he will finally say:

Surah 109 - Al Kafirun THOSE WHO REJECT FAITH

1 Say : O ye that reject Faith!
**
2** I worship not that which ye worship,

3 Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

4 And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship,
**
5** Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

**6 **To you be your Way, and to me mine.

Nothing against you, but you seem quite fundamentalistic…


Esdra