the most famous human being in all of history was a first century jewish revolutionary his name was jesus christians believe jesus was crucified died and on the third day rose from the dead and ascended into heaven but for two thousand years there have been those who've challenged the truth of this biblical story and some have died for expressing those doubts from jerusalem to the villages of southern france from the wildness of distant kashmir to the exotic philippines we shall try to solve this two thousand-year-old mystery we'll take a journey that asks did jesus really die on the cross the story of christianity features not only the most famous name in history but also the most famous event in history the crucifixion for some or even many true believers the fact that jesus was crucified died rose again and ascended into heaven can be literal truth but throughout history there have always been those sometimes christians who've asked awkward questions would a man die after only six hours on the cross was he drugged what really happened in the sepulcher and if jesus didn't descend into heaven then where did he go for many christians these questions risk undermining the whole basis of christianity and are extremely controversial the most crucial part of the story which all christians are expected to believe is the idea that jesus rose from the dead the resurrection the resurrection is actually the primary story at the heart of christianity without which you wouldn't have a movement you could have christianity without the virgin birth however none of them tells it without a resurrection story despite the best efforts of the church the resurrection of jesus and his later ascension into heaven have for two thousand years been fertile ground for heresy some people suggest that jesus was rescued from the crucifixion and escaped to live a secret life in southern france some have been convinced that jesus survived and traveled to the mountain kingdoms of kashmir where he lived to the age of 80. with the help of leading historians and theologians we will examine these most controversial theories to understand what happened to jesus after the crucifixion we need first to look at the facts of his life but what is historical fact what is the evidence almost all we currently think we know about jesus comes from the four gospels matthew mark luke and john but matthew and john are the only gospel writers who were members of the twelve disciples the only ones who could have been present at the events they described the four gospels were all apparently written between 40 and 100 years after the crucifixion which roman history tells us happened around 30 a. d but despite the fact that we know them by those four names modern biblical scholars cannot be absolutely sure who really wrote them originally all these gospels circulated anonymously there were no names attached to them until almost 200 and the christian theologian who came up with the idea of having a new testament was roundly condemned as a heretic whoever did really write the four gospels the description of jesus death in all of them is brutal every year at easter christians in the philippines reenact the crucifixion of jesus they actually volunteer to be crucified they do it because they believe it will help them to purge their sins for the onlookers it's a bloody reminder of what happened to jesus 2000 years ago crucifixion was the most cruel and atrocious punishment that the romans could inflict and it was inflicted only for treason and only on slaves if you were a noble man and you were a traitor then normally you were strangled something much simpler and much easier and much less painful after condemnation the beam the crossbeam was strapped to the shoulders of the criminal and he paraded through the streets with his arms stretched out at the place of execution then nails were hammered into the hands and the feet in the philippines they do use real nails they do experience the real pain that jesus felt but a man nailed to a cross does not die from his wounds he dies surprisingly from hanging suffocation your arms the chest is compressed it's hard to breathe without supporting your weight with your legs over time the strain and the pain make that impossible and you're unable to breathe in the philippines the volunteers are brought down from their crosses within an hour death from crucifixion takes much longer often several days the only way to hasten death on the cross was to break the legs making it immediately impossible to support your weight and therefore to breathe but the gospels are all agreed that jesus died after only three to six hours the crucifixion began at the third hour and it was the third hour and they crucified him some claim that the gospel according to luke has the shortest crucifixion it was about the sixth hour and when jesus had cried with a loud voice he gave up the ghost matthew and mark have jesus surviving a little longer and about the ninth hour jesus cried out the disciples wanted to take jesus body down from the cross immediately but the roman governor pontius pilate wasn't convinced that he was dead and pilate marveled if he were already dead pilate was reassured by the centurion but this was the same centurion who had earlier said truly this man was the son of god jesus body was then laid in a tomb donated by a rich man joseph of arimathea this joseph and a man called nicodemus came to minister to the body they came to jesus by night and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes about a hundred pounds weight these accounts when viewed as a historical rather than a sacred record may raise questions why did jesus die so quickly why did joseph and nicodemus take so many herbs into the tomb so it's perhaps not surprising that some people have even dared to ask whether pilate was right to have his doubts whether jesus really did die on the cross that jesus might not have died on the cross is an explosive idea particularly for christians in our journey to understand the truth about jesus life and death we need to look further at the biblical accounts of the resurrection it was here in jerusalem that jesus was crucified and according to the scriptures rose again from the dead but in jerusalem one is forced to remember that we do not live on a christian planet hundreds of millions of jews and muslims may accept that jesus lived and died in first century palestine but only christians believe he rose from the dead this is the church of the holy sepulchre in jerusalem built upon what was supposed to be the tomb in which jesus was laid after the crucifixion this according to devout christians is the exact site of the resurrection and if anything can be described as the cornerstone of the christian faith it is the resurrection the resurrection of jesus as far as all the christian churches are concerned is absolutely fundamental to the faith and there's no question in my mind that it's ever going to be changed the resurrection may be fundamental to the faith but in our examination of what really happened it's hard to find solid historical evidence the four gospels all tell different stories when we read the resurrection narratives uh it's like reading four different reports of the same football game in four rather different newspapers and the fact that actually there may be some disagreement about whether it was a foul or not doesn't mean that there wasn't a game and that somebody didn't win it and so on if one of them says there were two angels and another one says there was one angel if one of them says mary magdalene was there all by herself and somebody else says mary magdalene is there with one or two other women um then these are the sorts of variations that you expect to get like the different newspaper reports the football match um and they're not something that should worry you to the point of saying therefore nothing happened that would be quite a false conclusion but in the earliest versions of the earliest gospel mark there are no resurrection appearances at all the gospel simply ends with the discovery of an empty tomb the last verses of mark which do contain resurrection stories were added 200 years later none of the gospel stories is cnn in jerusalem in the year 30.
the gospels are written in the form of historical biography so many people have assumed that they are exactly that but they're that's not actually what they are they're written to demonstrate to people the importance and the meaning of jesus and his teaching that was what they're for and they do that very well but they're not primarily interested in what actually happened back there matthew and luke do have resurrection appearances but they don't agree about the details in matthew jesus meets the women near the tomb and then meets his disciples just one time and that is on a mountain in galilee in luke jesus meets two unnamed disciples who do not recognize him and then with the eleven remaining disciples before leaving them in a village outside jerusalem the last gospel john has many different resurrection stories for many modern scholars these variations suggest that the stories were not written to tell of a miraculous event but with an entirely different and political motive for it was the supposed witnesses of the resurrection who became the leaders of the early church even to this day the pope claims his authority in a direct unbroken line of ordination from peter the first disciple said to have seen the risen christ some scholars go so far as to suggest that the story of the resurrection was also created as an extraordinary psychological tool to bring in new converts if it hadn't been for the resurrection of jesus and his rising from the dead victorious from the dead we wouldn't be celebrating christmas it's a bit like when you go into the army the first thing we want is to take over your body so symbolic leaders you're going to shave all your hair as long as you give in on this we got you we got your body which is what we want in one sense sometimes the churches some churches at least do the same we're going to tell you something unbelievable that you got to believe when they could just relax if you believe it then you will believe that they alone control heaven that without them you cannot get into heaven and then they've got you you've left your brains in the parking lot that's a statement that may be offensive to many christians it would certainly be offensive to the worshipers at the toronto airport church who take their belief in the literal truth of the resurrection of jesus very seriously indeed for these christians the risen christ is an active part of the church and they believe that in 1994 jesus blessed their church with a miraculous healing mission since then thousands of churches around the world have claimed to be touched by what became known as the toronto blessing glorious coming into the room and in toronto in a splendid new church built by contributions from the faithful the congregation continue to celebrate their belief in the resurrected christ here on an almost weekly basis they claim that their faith has the power to miraculously heal so god's gonna heal you right now there it goes and the neck is healed in jesus name don't you like it i like it bless you brother today it seems to me that there are many people who will strongly defend the literal truth of the resurrection many others who are christians are not christians believe that perhaps you know those who die may be alive in some way that jesus who died might be in some sense alive whatever one means by that and there are many others who take it as a as an image of hope because after all the talking about the resurrection of jesus has a great deal to do with what we think about life after death or for that matter our own prospects the problem for the church in the 21st century in a technological and secular age is that some people find it hard to believe in the literal truth of the miracles let alone the miracle of the resurrection since the 18th century we we've lived in a climate where people have distinguished between faith and belief so the whole effect of science on religion really has been to throw religion back to prove what we can believe in but week in and week out congregations gather in christian churches and recite together an ancient creed from the latin word credo meaning i believe we believe in one god the father the almighty we believe in one god the father the almighty for our sake he was crucified under pontius pilate at the climax of the creed all christians affirmed their belief in the resurrection on the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead but whatever is said in church many christian theologians no longer consider the resurrection to be an historical fact and this has not just been a problem of the 21st century a thousand years ago a group of devout christians in southern france also held unorthodox heretical views in the 11th and 12th centuries the cathars a deeply religious group believed that all material things were the work of the devil they saw jesus as an angel who certainly could not have been physically crucified and certainly would not have been resurrected as a physical body it was actually in response to the cathar heresy that the church created the inquisition in 1244 the last 200 of the cathars were rounded up and burned at the stake as heretics the church has always reacted strongly against anyone who doubted the truth of the resurrection because that doubt insinuates that the very literal and physical gospel descriptions of the death and resurrection of jesus are fabrications but there is one story also set in france at about the same time as the catholics which suggests that another christian group made a discovery which really might reveal that the resurrection story was not true in the 13th century this whole area was a stronghold of the knights templar a strict religious and military order of warrior monks local historian thierry lacour has spent the last 12 years uncovering the history of the knights templar in this region the templars came to this region there are traces of them all over the countryside down there at the bottom there are ruins of an old templar command post the knights templar were committed to poverty chastity and the protection of pilgrims on route to the holy land but their main purpose was to keep jerusalem and the holy sites of christianity free from the forces of islam during the years they were in the holy land the templars built their own castles but they buried their dead in graveyards they excavated near to the original temple of solomon and certainly during this time they were thought to have discovered great treasures eventually the templars were forced to leave the holy land in 1186 they returned to france suddenly the templars remained powerful rich and incredibly secretive so it's not surprising that people speculated about them and they grew a legend that the knights templar had discovered jesus bones in jerusalem that they had brought them back to france and they had buried them somewhere near here the legend that a thousand years ago the templars might have found an ossuary box containing jesus bones has led modern scholars to a small church in the village of renle chateau writer richard andrews is convinced that there are clues here that might reveal what exactly the templars did find during their excavations in jerusalem one can ask a question did the templars find relics an oscar full of bones that they thought were possibly the bones of jesus now if they had found these it would have been a shock to the system because the templars were good christians this would challenge the whole doctrine of resurrection because here are mortal remains so we ask a second question why should the templars risk being accused of heresy and bringing the bones that they thought were jesus back to this area the answer was simple if they had found something which they believed were the bones of christ they needed a safe location you could hide a church in these mountains let alone a small ocean you can get lost in these mountains today imagine what it was like a thousand years ago in the late 19th century the local priest here called behringer sonia claimed to have found ancient documents and whatever they were he certainly became very rich afterwards richard andrews has found clues among these parchments using elaborate geometry and transferring symbols from ancient paintings onto equally ancient maps all in the hope of finding a templar treasure trove the clues that we found point to um a map in the form of a hexagram which is also known as the seal of solomon but it is the star of david this map points to a specific site now we know that the priest very sonya became fabulously wealthy but we are sure that he didn't actually find what he was looking for we couldn't deduce perhaps that sonya received money from patrons to look for a location in the area that might reveal perhaps the bones of christ whatever it is we do know one thing for sure the secret that sony a was giving clues to was heretical sony a died in 1917 and took his secret with him to the grave that hasn't stopped enthusiasts like thierry lacont from continuing to search on the basis of richard's work and trying to solve the mystery using local maps on which the geometric lines from sony's original parchments have been transposed thierry has found further evidence of the templar's presence here and he believes he's closing in on the location where the templars could have buried the bones of jesus there you have the summit of mount cardinal and there are two cedars there about 10 meters distance between them they form an alignment traversing the valley of ren arriving at the plateau where there's a rock with a cross i lined up the compass i took a long time and i made a lot of mistakes but i was convinced i'd find something a cedar or another cross and then i found a cross it took me 12 years to find this cross even if the knights templar did bring jesus bones in an oscar box back here from the holy land it seems unlikely that thierry lacont or richard andrews would ever find them in these mountains however there have been those who've gone back to the original gospel stories of jesus death and resurrection and come up with more credible but no less startling conclusions about what exactly happened two thousand years ago you read the story of the empty tomb and on friday someone is killed and on sunday they're gone from the tomb and you ask the question what might have happened either god raised him from the dead which is the traditional christian affirmation or the body was carried away by someone body stolen but there is another possibility the gospels describe how after his resurrection jesus ate drank and thomas could touch his wounds it's therefore perhaps not surprising that some people who've looked for natural explanations of miracles have suggested that jesus was alive because he didn't die on the cross there are many versions of that story one came up in a book years ago called the passover plot which suggested that he had been sedated on the cross that he was removed quite early and therefore could well have survived that's certainly a possibility the disciples did manage to give jesus some kind of substance on a sponge they filled a sponge with vinegar and put it upon hyssop and put it to his mouth and jesus immediately died after taking this substance when jesus had received the vinegar he said it is finished but oddly enough it isn't necessary to suggest that jesus was sedated or drugged by whatever was on the sponge in order to believe that he could have survived there are stories of people who did survive crucifixion the jewish historian josephus wrote of one of his own friends surviving crucifixion in palestine in the first century he's traveling out to a village named tacoa to scout land for a roman camp and he notices that three of his friends are hanging on crosses so he requests that they be allowed to that they be brought down and titus the roman general gives him permission the three are brought down immediately and given medical care and two of them died but the third survived so is it possible that jesus survived certainly his crucifixion was speedily executed perhaps too speedily when you look at the story of jesus and how he was executed by the romans he's on the cross for six hours the assumption is that he's dead the roman soldiers checked the body there were two others crucified according to the gospel accounts and they broke the legs of those to hasten their death because the sabbath day was coming when they came to jesus they said he he's already dead presumably uh his body's motionless he's quit breathing they then prepare the body and put him in a tomb and presumably it's sealed up and he's dead for all practical purposes uh the question though is is he clinically dead the question of clinical death is certainly raised by the fact that the herbs which joseph of arimathea took into the tomb with the body of jesus were aloes these are healing not embalming herbs we do have stories both from the modern world and from the ancient world where people appear to be dead and for all practical purposes they are dead that is they're not responding to the outside world but then they do in fact revive or come back we call it resuscitation but if you want to press the language that would be resurrection the idea that jesus might have survived the crucifixion rather than risen from the dead seems provocative but all the gospels are quite clear that the disciples saw jesus as if he were alive if jesus did survive it does not necessarily mean that the resurrection story was a hoax or a deliberate falsehood at the end of the 19th century the english writer samuel butler in his book on the resurrection came up with the theory that if jesus had collapsed into a shock-induced coma on the cross and then recovered in the tomb he and his disciples would actually have thought his recovery was a miraculous resurrection that still has great credibility if you see it in the light for instance of more contemporary development look at the near-death experience in the united states something like 13 million people in the united states say they've had near-death experiences they've seen this white light they believe it to be some form of miracle so the idea that in the first century when they had none of this scientific insight and they had none of these hospitals or whatever to save them that people thought it actually makes a lot of sense doesn't make them fraudsters or shysters it actually makes them genuine people who thought they'd witnessed a miracle whatever the circumstances if jesus was alive then he and his disciples face a serious problem if jesus was placed in the tomb and somehow was revived he himself would certainly think that was an act of the grace of god i came right to the bars of death and was brought back but now there's a practical problem it's a political problem actually romans basically do one thing to messiahs they crucify them if jesus did indeed survive crucifixion either through resurrection as the bible tells us or more controversially through resuscitation then he is once more a condemned man the bible is said to solve this problem with a miracle called the ascension jesus is taken bodily into heaven but the interesting fact is that the ascension does not actually appear in the original form of the gospels the ascension references in mark are among the verses which as we've seen were added 200 years later there is one line in luke which reads and was carried up into heaven but again this does not appear in all bibles it was in fact inserted simply because the ascension is referred to in a later book of the bible the acts of the apostles and it's always been assumed that luke was the author of the acts there's no ascension in matthew and john's gospel ends with the enigmatic words and there are also many other things which jesus did the which if they should be written everyone i suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written so what was it that jesus did one of the stories that emerges from this question depends upon the idea that jesus relationship with mary magdalene was a very special one if you read john's gospel the first person who saw the risen christ i. e the first christian was mary magdalene so i think when the church tries to sideline the idea that jesus had relationships with women that he had close relationships i mean it's laughable really i mean it's part of this problem that they always say that the thing that non-believers find hardest about jesus was his divinity and the thing that christians always find hardest about jesus was his humanity i mean he was he was a man i'm i'm perfectly happy with the concept that jesus had a relationship with mary magdalene that it was long and important and you know was one of the dominant things in his life he was human the idea of course that jesus may have had a very special relationship with mary may be offensive to many christians but some historians have gone even further they've suggested that jesus and mary might have married that they might even have had children so if we're trying to find out where in his flight from the romans jesus could have gone perhaps we should start by finding out where mary went there is a tradition that some years after the crucifixion mary magdalene came to the carmilla region of the south of france here she lived and died and the basilica saint marie madeleine is a shrine to her memory this was the center of what became known as the cult of the magdalene the cult of the magdalene was very powerful in france up until the middle ages the faithful wanted to believe in a mother figure and the church were very anxious that they should not believe in mary magdalene as having been a mother figure for obvious reasons which were that she might have been the spouse of christ that she might have had his child that she might have produced a bloodline the local legend describes how mary magdalene came here with her brother lazarus and her sister martha and a few companions if the relationship between jesus and mary was as close as some sources suggest perhaps one of those companions traveling incognito for fear of arrest by the romans was jesus himself jesus could have taken at caesarea or one of the smaller ports at the syrian coast and he could have left for another life and he could well have arrived as a lot of people believe in this part of france and begun a new life he could even abort his family with him so these stories could have a historical foundation after her death mary magdalene's relics were placed in a sarcophagus and then hidden it was not until 1279 that they were rediscovered and this basilica was built for their safe keeping sealed within the crypt in the center of the church is what is claimed to be the skull of mary magdalene the idea that jesus went to the south of france may seem far-fetched after all if any of the stories were true it's hard to believe that the original writers of the gospels could have completely eradicated all of the evidence if the faithful knew that jesus was in fact still alive surely they would have shared that knowledge and surely they must have hoped that at some time in the future it would have been safe for jesus to return and evidence for that hope should be somewhere in the original text the disciples were expecting jesus to return they were expecting what has become known as the second coming and this was not necessarily going to be a miraculous return jesus definitely went away whatever view of resurrection you take resuscitation or divine miracle and the traditional sense of belief in resurrection he goes away he says i'm going away the disciples say can we come he says no and he says i'm going to come again now what's interesting about that is normally if someone says they're going away they're going to come back and you're sort of looking at your watch or your calendar wondering okay you said he went away he's going to come back you'd take it in that everyday sense the concept of the heavenly second coming of jesus returning on the day of judgment was only created after it was clear that jesus had not returned in that everyday sense but if jesus did decide to leave palestine france still doesn't seem like a likely destination it was after all a roman colony some claim that if jesus did survive the crucifixion his first priority would be to escape from the clutches of the romans jesus i think would have to leave the territory and we have to ask the question where would he go and you just look at a map palestine is on the far eastern border of the roman empire if you go west you're going right into the heart of roman territory where we have our 15 legions stationed around the world if you go east you're crossing over into parthia and you're going towards persia eventually in india and afghanistan that direction but apart from escaping re-arrest why would jesus travel east and how would he get there if jesus did want to travel east away from the roman empire the journey from israel was surprisingly easy by land or by sea on the silk route or the spice route it's an accepted fact for instance that the disciple thomas traveled to india and founded a christian church there the great tradition of the indian church is that it was founded by thomas the apostle to travel to india would be no problem he just had to go down to gaza and link up with one of the spice trains returning and then from yemen get a boat to india it would have been a very simple easy procedure that was done regularly and there's another reason why jesus might have been tempted to go east but to understand that we have to go back to the year of his birth we all recognize the story in matthew's gospel of the three wise men from the east who followed a star and presented themselves and their gifts to the baby jesus what we perhaps don't recognize immediately is the similarity between this story and the traditions of a religion that is 500 years older than christianity buddhism when a great buddhist holy man or llama dies wise men consult the stars and other omens and set off often on extraordinarily long journeys to find the infant who is the reincarnation of the llama when the child is old enough he's taken away from his parents and educated in the buddhist faith could this be the origin of the story of the three wise men could jesus have been taken to india as a child and taught as a buddhist the russian writer nikolai notovic traveling in india in the 19th century discovered an ancient manuscript in a buddhist monastery in tibet in his book the unknown life of jesus christ notovitch translated this manuscript and it tells of a divine child called isa born in the first century to a poor family in israel isa came to india at the age of 14 where he learned the laws of buddhism before returning to israel at the age of 29. this idea would certainly explain the otherwise odd fact that from the age of 14 to 29 there's absolutely no record of jesus existence in palestine certainly jesus later teaching and miracles have uncanny parallels with the teaching and miracles of the buddha loving your enemies and the idea that the meek will inherit the earth have absolutely no tradition in the jewish religion but are entirely consistent with buddhism and the buddha was known to walk on water and miraculously to feed many hundreds of his disciples with only a few scraps of food but if jesus traveled or returned to the east surely there would be legends like those in the south of france to support the idea and of course there are such traditions the people here in kashmir call their tribe ben israel and claim to be descendants of the lost tribes and here there are stories that the first century preacher isa known locally as yosasaf meaning leader of the healed returned to kashmir in his thirties yusuf assaf's ministry here can easily be seen as a continuation of the jesus ministry and in a local temple called the temple of solomon there used to be an inscription which told of yusuf's claim around the year 50 a.
d to be jesus the prophet from israel kashmiri history books tell us that yusuf came from abroad he was a prophet and a messenger he came from israel he came to spread his teachings and our history books confirm that isa was known as yusuf here in kashmir to teach and preach in kashmir until he died around the year 80 a. d he was buried in srinagar and this they say is yo tomb the first building erected around this site was built in 112 a.
