Was Jesus Crucified or Not?

[Dawnofhope]

This is a question that is often debated by Muslims and Christians.

The Christians refer to the four gospel accounts that provide clear accounts of Christ's crucifixion. Historians, including atheists usually agree Christ was crucified. When they don't its because they don't believe Jesus existed at all.

Muslims believe Jesus wasn't crucified at all based on the following verses in the Quran.

Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia

And [We cursed them] for their breaking of the covenant and their disbelief in the signs of Allah and their killing of the prophets without right and their saying, "Our hearts are wrapped". Rather, Allah has sealed them because of their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.
And [We cursed them] for their disbelief and their saying against Mary a great slander,
And [for] their saying, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah ." And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.
Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise.

Surah An-Nisa [4:155-158]

These verses are taken literally. Many Muslims believe that the body of Jesus was substituted and another crucified in His place.

Islamic views on Jesus' death - Wikipedia

So who is right, and why?

For what its worth, Baha'is believe Christ was crucified.

 

[Skwim]

There's no reason I know of not to believe the event took place. So I'll go along with it. "Yes."

.

 

[Cooky]

This is a question that is often debated by Muslims and Christians.

The Christians refer to the four gospel accounts that provide clear accounts of Christ's crucifixion. Historians, including atheists usually agree Christ was crucified. When they don't its because they don't believe Jesus existed at all.

Muslims believe Jesus wasn't crucified at all based on the following verses in the Quran.

Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia

And [We cursed them] for their breaking of the covenant and their disbelief in the signs of Allah and their killing of the prophets without right and their saying, "Our hearts are wrapped". Rather, Allah has sealed them because of their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.
And [We cursed them] for their disbelief and their saying against Mary a great slander,
And [for] their saying, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah ." And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.
Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise.

Surah An-Nisa [4:155-158]

These verses are taken literally. Many Muslims believe that the body of Jesus was substituted and another crucified in His place.

Islamic views on Jesus' death - Wikipedia

So who is right, and why?

For what its worth, Baha'is believe Christ was crucified.

A Godly man evading his own death penalty only to have another crucified in his place? That's not honorable.

 

[Dawnofhope]

There's no reason I know of not to believe the event took place. So I'll go along with it. "Yes."

.

That's useful to have agreement from one of RFs most prolific critics of Christianity.

 

[Cooky]

That's useful to have agreement from one of RFs most prolific critics of Christianity.

He's a good anti-fundamentalist ally.

 

[lukethethird]

Was Jesus crucified?

Did King Arthur remove the sword from the stone?

 

[Spirit of Light]

I can not prove it or disprove it but i think he was yes.

 

[Ellen Brown]

After spending almost half my life as Christian, I don't think that many of them do anything to prove he was. And it does not matter to me if the Muslim version of the story is true.

The important thing in this whole business is: has obedience and worship of God and the following of the words of Jesus made us more pleasing to God?

Christians have even killed each other over this issue, and shamefully Muslims have also. What does that prove?

 

[TheresOnlyNow]

There is plenty of evidence even from non-Christian sources that say yes, Jesus was crucified. (Link)

 

[Unveiled Artist]

This is a question that is often debated by Muslims and Christians.

The Christians refer to the four gospel accounts that provide clear accounts of Christ's crucifixion. Historians, including atheists usually agree Christ was crucified. When they don't its because they don't believe Jesus existed at all.

Muslims believe Jesus wasn't crucified at all based on the following verses in the Quran.

Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia

And [We cursed them] for their breaking of the covenant and their disbelief in the signs of Allah and their killing of the prophets without right and their saying, "Our hearts are wrapped". Rather, Allah has sealed them because of their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.
And [We cursed them] for their disbelief and their saying against Mary a great slander,
And [for] their saying, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah ." And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.
Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise.

Surah An-Nisa [4:155-158]

These verses are taken literally. Many Muslims believe that the body of Jesus was substituted and another crucified in His place.

Islamic views on Jesus' death - Wikipedia

So who is right, and why?

For what its worth, Baha'is believe Christ was crucified.

I'm just curious. Why would there be an issue over jesus' crucifixion?

A lot of people were crucified during that period and place. We don't question about crucifixion of other people in history. Is it because it's religious in nature?

Personally, I wouldn't see why not. If you asked about the resurrection, I can see why that's an issue.

 

[TheresOnlyNow]

Was Jesus crucified?

Did King Arthur remove the sword from the stone?

Actually, a retired professor, professor Peter Field, has found evidence that "Arthur" did exist.

 

[Vouthon]

Yes, he was certainly crucified.

There are three aspects of Jesus's life that command virtually universal assent amongst scholars of antiquity: his baptism by John for remission of sin, his riotous disturbance in the Temple during Pesach and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate on the instigation of the High Priest Caiaphas.

If everything else about Jesus is at least contestable or doubtful, these three facts are not.

The reason these events are accorded such a high degree of historical credibility, quite apart from their unanimous attestation in different traditions including secular sources in the case of the cross, is that they fit what we know about the the social milieu of the time and caused grave embarrassment for the early church, such that New Testament authors endeavoured to gloss over them or make them 'fit' into theological doctrines.

Something important to bear in mind about ancient Roman and Jewish understandings of death:

‘The condition of human life is chiefly determined by its first and last days, because it is of the greatest importance under what auspices it is begun and with what end it is terminated.’

- Valerius Maximus (Memorable Doings and Sayings (“On Deaths out of the Ordinary”) 9.12 praef. LCL 493, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey)

​

A person’s birth and death were felt to be an indication of his or her true character.

On both accounts, his birth and death, Jesus 'failed' the test - and very badly - of true Roman manhood and heroism: he was born of peasants in Nazareth (a backwater derided even by Judean Jews "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:43)) and died the most ignoble torture-death. Cicero described crucifixion as ‘the greatest punishment of slavery’ (Verr. 2.5), while Josephus labelled it ‘the most pitiable of deaths’ (War 7.203).

Jesus's "true" character, then, in the eyes of Romans would have been as a piteous 'slave' and insurrectionist against the empire, abandoned by even his closest followers and left to endure the mockery of the crowds as he hung there naked and asphyxiated with a mock crown of thorns on his head.

As Professor Helen K. Bond, an expert on this period, has noted:

"Crucifixion was the most shameful, brutal and degrading form of capital punishment known to the ancient world, reserved for slaves, brigands and any who set themselves up against imperial rule. It was intended to be public, to act both as a deterrent to others and to provide spectacle, even entertainment, to onlookers.

It was a form of death in which the caprice and sadism of the executioners was allowed full reign, as they devised ever more gruesome ways to ridicule the condemned. Stripped naked, the victim was humiliated and shamed as he suffered extreme agony, perhaps for several days, until, overcome by suffocation and exhaustion, the merciful end would come.

So offensive was the cross that civilized people preferred not to talk about it, and few Roman writers ever dwelt on any of the details...

There is no getting away from the fact that Mark’s account, particularly in the crucifixion scene, is the very opposite of a “good death”: Jesus dies alone, in agonized torment, with no one to perform even the most basic rites. As Adela Collins puts it, Jesus’ death in Mark is “anguished, human, and realistic.”"​

(see also, J. G. Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).​

It is mendacious in the extreme to imagine that anyone in their right mind would make such a story up while living under the Romans. The gospels were written to 'defend' the legacy of Jesus and defiantly keep his memory alive, in spite of the Roman attempt to silence and discredit him through crucifixion. If I might quote Professor Bond again:

"...Jesus’ crucifixion was an attempt by the rulers of his day to consign not only his body but also his memory to oblivion. In many ways, Mark’s bios can be seen as an act of defiance, a refusal to accept the Roman sentence and an attempt to shape the way in which both his life and death should be remembered.

His work takes the place of a funeral ovation, outlining Jesus’ way of life and pointing to the family of believers who succeed him.

While men of higher class and greater worldly distinction might have had their epitaphs set in stone, Mark provides his hero with a written monument to a truly worthy life. Mark redeems Jesus’ death not by casting it as ‘noble’ or conventionally ‘honourable,’ but by showing that it conforms perfectly to his counter-cultural teaching..."​

(Bond, H 2018, 'A fitting end? Self-denial and a slave’s death in Mark’s life of Jesus' New Testament Studies)
​

Given its deeply subversive nature as a symbol of resistance to Roman imperial rule, the 'cross' and the shameful slave death that it represents, was evidently not a literary fiction of the early Christians. It's as historical an event as any from antiquity can be. The early Christians turned an unremitting tragedy into a literary triumph that has gone on to touch the lives of billions and in so doing defied Jesus's Roman executioners, by making his memory eternal.

We know Jesus and his death are historically accurate, because myths don't come baked in with such shoddy realism.

 

[Deeje]

This is a question that is often debated by Muslims and Christians.

The Christians refer to the four gospel accounts that provide clear accounts of Christ's crucifixion. Historians, including atheists usually agree Christ was crucified. When they don't its because they don't believe Jesus existed at all.

Muslims believe Jesus wasn't crucified at all based on the following verses in the Quran.

Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia

As a Christian I have no doubts about the historicity of Jesus as Messiah.

And [We cursed them] for their breaking of the covenant and their disbelief in the signs of Allah and their killing of the prophets without right and their saying, "Our hearts are wrapped". Rather, Allah has sealed them because of their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.
And [We cursed them] for their disbelief and their saying against Mary a great slander,
And [for] their saying, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah ." And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.
Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise.

Surah An-Nisa [4:155-158]

These verses are taken literally. Many Muslims believe that the body of Jesus was substituted and another crucified in His place.

Islamic views on Jesus' death - Wikipedia

So who is right, and why?

To say that Jesus did not die is to cancel out the reason why he came, to give his life as a ransom for mankind. (1 Timothy 2:6; Romans 5:18-19; Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 1:18-19; Colossians 1:14)

If Jesus did not die, then the ransom is not paid, and we are still doomed to keep sinning for as long as the human race exists.

Israel's redemption laws foreshadowed the value of Christ's death.....the price of the ransom to cancel out Adam's debt and free his children from slavery to sin and death.

 

[Dawnofhope]

I'm just curious. Why would there be an issue over jesus' crucifixion?

A lot of people were crucified during that period and place. We don't question about crucifixion of other people in history. Is it because it's religious in nature?

Personally, I wouldn't see why not. If you asked about the resurrection, I can see why that's an issue.

Muslim belief is based on a literal interpretation of the verses in the Quran quoted in the OP. Because Muslims believe the Quran is the unerring word of God, they believe it must be true. There may be a few Hadiths in support too. Interestingly some early Muslim scholars saw the verse metaphorically rather than literally true.

Ja'far ibn Mansur al-Yaman (d. 347 AH/958 CE), Abu Hatim Ahmad ibn Hamdan al-Razi (d. 322 AH/935 CE), Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani (d. 358 AH/971 CE), Mu'ayyad fi'l-Din al-Shirazi (d. 470 AH/1078 CE ) and the group Ikhwan al-Safa also affirm the historicity of the Crucifixion, reporting Jesus was crucified and not substituted by another man as maintained by many other popular Qur'anic commentators and Tafsir.

In reference to the Quranic quote "We have surely killed Jesus the Christ, son of Mary, the apostle of God", Muslim scholar Mahmoud Ayoub asserts this boast not as the repeating of a historical lie or the perpetuating of a false report, but an example of human arrogance and folly with an attitude of contempt towards God and His messenger(s). Ayoub furthers what modern scholars of Islam interpret regarding the historical death of Jesus, the man, as man's inability to kill off God's Word and the Spirit of God, which the Quran testifies were embodied in Jesus Christ. Ayoub continues highlighting the denial of the killing of Jesus as God denying men such power to vanquish and destroy the divine Word. The words, "they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him" speaks to the profound events of ephemeral human history, exposing mankind's heart and conscience towards God's will. The claim of humanity to have this power against God is illusory. "They did not slay him...but it seemed so to them" speaks to the imaginations of mankind, not the denial of the actual event of Jesus dying physically on the cross.

Islamic views on Jesus' death - Wikipedia

 

[Firemorphic]

Not controversial at all..........

 

[TheresOnlyNow]

It should be remembered that Muslims have nothing to do with the Christians Savior Jesus Christ.

Muslims own Qur'an informs them why.
Allah(the Muslims god) has no son.

 

[Dawnofhope]

After spending almost half my life as Christian, I don't think that many of them do anything to prove he was. And it does not matter to me if the Muslim version of the story is true.

The important thing in this whole business is: has obedience and worship of God and the following of the words of Jesus made us more pleasing to God?

Christians have even killed each other over this issue, and shamefully Muslims have also. What does that prove?

Its good to hear from one who has been both Muslim and Christian. I think where it matters most is the question about the reliability of the Gospel and Quranic accounts which many followers of these respective books regard as being literally true and the unerring word of God. OTOH I agree living in a manner that is pleasing to God is far more important.

 

[Firemorphic]

It should be remembered that Muslims have nothing to do with the Christians Savior Jesus Christ.

Muslims own Qur'an informs them why.
Allah(the Muslims god) has no son.

Well technically, if you want to go that route, you could call the entire universe collectively "God's son" but it wouldn't really achieve much. No, God does not incarnate in Islam or Judaism.

 

[Dawnofhope]

It should be remembered that Muslims have nothing to do with the Christians Savior Jesus Christ.

Muslims own Qur'an informs them why.
Allah(the Muslims god) has no son.

Somewhat off topic but both the gospel and Quran agree Jesus was born to a virgin Mary. He was not physically the 'son of god' as the Quran correctly states, but had the messianic designation 'Son of God' as the Gospels clearly relay.

A Baha'i perspective on Jesus as the 'Son of God'

 

[TheresOnlyNow]

There are three aspects of Jesus's life that command virtually universal assent amongst scholars of antiquity: his baptism by John for remission of sin, his riotous disturbance in the Temple during Pesach and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate on the instigation of the High Priest Caiaphas.

If everything else about Jesus is at least contestable or doubtful, these three facts are not.

The reason these events are accorded such a high degree of historical credibility, quite apart from their unanimous attestation in different traditions including secular sources in the case of the cross, is that they fit what we know about the the social milieu of the time and caused grave embarrassment for the early church, such that New Testament authors endeavoured to gloss over them or make them 'fit' into theological doctrines.

Something important to bear in mind about ancient Roman and Jewish understandings of death:

‘The condition of human life is chiefly determined by its first and last days, because it is of the greatest importance under what auspices it is begun and with what end it is terminated.’

- Valerius Maximus (Memorable Doings and Sayings (“On Deaths out of the Ordinary”) 9.12 praef. LCL 493, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey)

​

A person’s birth and death were felt to be an indication of his or her true character.

On both accounts, his birth and death, Jesus 'failed' the test - and very badly - of true Roman manhood and heroism: he was born of peasants in Nazareth (a backwater derided even by Judean Jews "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:43)) and died the most ignoble torture-death. Cicero described crucifixion as ‘the greatest punishment of slavery’ (Verr. 2.5), while Josephus labelled it ‘the most pitiable of deaths’ (War 7.203).

Jesus's "true" character, then, in the eyes of Romans would have been as a piteous 'slave' and insurrectionist against the empire, abandoned by even his closest followers and left to endure the mockery of the crowds as he hung there naked and asphyxiated with a mock crown of thorns on his head.

As Professor Helen K. Bond, an expert on this period, has noted:

"Crucifixion was the most shameful, brutal and degrading form of capital punishment known to the ancient world, reserved for slaves, brigands and any who set themselves up against imperial rule. It was intended to be public, to act both as a deterrent to others and to provide spectacle, even entertainment, to onlookers.

It was a form of death in which the caprice and sadism of the executioners was allowed full reign, as they devised ever more gruesome ways to ridicule the condemned. Stripped naked, the victim was humiliated and shamed as he suffered extreme agony, perhaps for several days, until, overcome by suffocation and exhaustion, the merciful end would come.

So offensive was the cross that civilized people preferred not to talk about it, and few Roman writers ever dwelt on any of the details...

There is no getting away from the fact that Mark’s account, particularly in the crucifixion scene, is the very opposite of a “good death”: Jesus dies alone, in agonized torment, with no one to perform even the most basic rites. As Adela Collins puts it, Jesus’ death in Mark is “anguished, human, and realistic.”"​

(see also, J. G. Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).​

It is mendacious in the extreme to imagine that anyone in their right mind would make such a story up while living under the Romans. The gospels were written to 'defend' the legacy of Jesus and defiantly keep his memory alive, in spite of the Roman attempt to silence and discredit him through crucifixion. If I might quote Professor Bond again:

"...Jesus’ crucifixion was an attempt by the rulers of his day to consign not only his body but also his memory to oblivion. In many ways, Mark’s bios can be seen as an act of defiance, a refusal to accept the Roman sentence and an attempt to shape the way in which both his life and death should be remembered.

His work takes the place of a funeral ovation, outlining Jesus’ way of life and pointing to the family of believers who succeed him.

While men of higher class and greater worldly distinction might have had their epitaphs set in stone, Mark provides his hero with a written monument to a truly worthy life. Mark redeems Jesus’ death not by casting it as ‘noble’ or conventionally ‘honourable,’ but by showing that it conforms perfectly to his counter-cultural teaching..."​

(Bond, H 2018, 'A fitting end? Self-denial and a slave’s death in Mark’s life of Jesus' New Testament Studies)
​

Given its deeply subversive nature as a symbol of resistance to Roman imperial rule, the 'cross' and the shameful slave death that it represents, was evidently not a literary fiction of the early Christians. It's as historical an event as any from antiquity can be. The early Christians turned an unremitting tragedy into a literary triumph that has gone on to touch the lives of billions and in so doing defied Jesus's Roman executioners, by making his memory eternal.

We know Jesus and his death are historically accurate, because myths don't come baked in with such shoddy realism.

Very good. It all comes down to, for Hebrews they believed anyone who died on a tree was cursed. Judas therefore was believed cursed when he hanged himself from a tree. Which is why he is condemned in the Synoptic Gospels. Which were authored after the Pauline Epistles(letters).
Jesus died on the cross because that would for the Hebrew legal tradition concerning sins, provide him to be the last lamb sacrificed on the last altar. Cursed, in taking the sins of the world upon himself there. Even those of the believer thief dying beside him on his own cross.

Jesus didn't die from the effects of the cross. His body died due to the spear piercing his lungs and heart when the Roman soldier checked to see if he was yet dead.

What is always fascinating to me are the unbelievers who find themselves consumed with the details of the faith.
It isn't true. It's fiction. It's a myth for the pathetic. Etc....
And yet, in irretrievable moments of their own life and the time they have here on this earth, they choose to spend hours of it obsessing over what they first insult. Or profess isn't true at all.

I'm not a Muslim because I know it isn't a religion. It is a political ideology conceived by Muhammad.
That's why I don't join Islam discussion forums. It is their faith, not mine. It is not worth my time.

I'm not an atheist. That's why I don't join unbeliever forums. Because it isn't worth my time.
But unbelievers are consumed with Christianity more than any other faith.

Some even form tax exempt groups so they can harass in particular people of Christ. And in the course of doing that violate their 501c designation via the tax exempt status they were privileged to receive by the IRS. But that's a later news story as to it being revoked.
Contrary to the optimist among us, no, such people as the unbelievers obsessed with the faith they don't believe in, are not so because they're led by our Lord to change.
If they were they'd be kinder.
No, they are God's sending alright but so as to show us what it looks like to live Godless. Mentally, emotionally. Obsessed with what one's intellect affirms isn't real is leading of the enemy of the righteous.

Unbelievers are the new parable.