I've read already that being tied would actually be worse than nailed - as the shock/trauma/bleeding might kill you quicker while with being tied you would slowly asphyxiate - a strong man could actually last for days (you could manage to stand straight a while but once you leaned forward you couldn't breathe.)

I love how Christians point out it says in the Buybull that when they pierced his side that water came out, and this is consistant with what modern medicine knows (not sure if it's even true.) Even if it were, don't you think that people living in a particularly rebellious area of the Roman empire would have likely seen a few crucifictions and known this happens from experience? Or at least that since the Romans dod in fact crucify people somewhat regularly that this might be part of the general knowledge of people? I'd say that epic fails as evidence.

Pfft, don't you guys know anything?  Not only can they talk quite easily, they can also sing and whistle.  Haven't you guys seen The Life of Brian?

(Ponders how many peoples heads he just got that song stuck in)

Have you ever read the ancient testament? I'm sorry, but only a small part is consecrated to commandments to the ancient Jewish people, the other (and biggest) part is most of all prophecies written a couple of thousands of years ago. The prophetic books, as Esaiah and all the following until the beginning of the new testament, contain 60 major prophecies and 270 ramifications. Stoner, a recognized american mathematician, calculated and concluded that the probability of one man fulfilling 8 of the prophecies would be of one on 10 ^ 17, which is 1000000000000000000. Altogether, Jesus fulfilled, only in himself, more than 300 prophecies laid down in the old testament by the prophets. Now you could say: but those were simply written after Jesus' death, but the dead sea scrolls (don't know if you have heard of them) had many prophetic books of the old testament and dated back to 100 BC.

Many people here have indeed read that book.

Describe one of these fulfilled prophecies.

It's interesting to me that so many of the elements of the crucifixion in the Jesus story seem implausible and even impossible.

In all of archeology, only one known crucified set of bones has ever been found. Only one. This is because the Romans simply did not allow bodies to be removed and put in graves or tombs. The whole purpose of crucifixion is to humiliate publicly the victims and to show how brutal your death might be should you transgress. Kindness shown to the family is simply not part of the event.

Once the body was sufficiently rotted, the remains were thrown to the dogs, and were scattered, hence the lack of evidence, in spite of historians like Josephus speaking of thousands of Roman crucifixions.

Another oddity is the story of the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus tries to wake his disciples. He's sweating blood in fear of his upcoming trials. They won't awaken. He goes back and pisses and moans to dad. The bad guys show up and arrest him and take him away.

Who wrote the story? How do we know details? Not a single word written about Jesus during his life has survived, not from the handful of historians in the area who never even mention him, not from any followers. Not a single word.

The only part of the story that makes any sense at all is the bit about Jesus being asked if he is the King of the Jews. If he indeed said yes, that would have sealed his fate. Jews although having some favor, were not Roman citizens and were not allowed to have a king. On the other hand, what prefect would have someone killed who had no real political power? The Romans were tolerant of at least 500 or 600 gods and goddesses, and except for their refusal to give homage to Caesar, also a god, it's hard to understand why an itinerant preacher would be given so much attention.

Also, the name Barabbas means "son of the father," and only adds confusion to the story.

A fact is something that is accepted because there is sufficient evidence to do so. The supposed empty tomb is not such a case. The only place this is even discussed is in suspect stories in the Gospels. These Gospels can't even agree on what happened during the life of Jesus yet alone what supposedly happened after he allegedly died. The Resurrection accounts all differ in content sufficiently to attribute them to legend and myth as passed on by oral tradition, today called gossip or Urban Legends.

No, the real question is was there even a body to disappear or was it all mythical based on conjecture and an epileptic seizure prone apostle named Paul or Saul.

"Are you really trying to prove that the early christian church is being based on totally nothing and that it sprouted out of an absurd lie?"

Give the man a prize!

"Why would people like you and me give their entire lives and risk their necks a coupe hundred time (and risk a crucifixion head downwards), perfectly knowing that they are preaching nonsense and that one could prove them wrong simply by showing to the romans and the people the remnants of Jesus' body?"

Faith in make believe is a horrible thing.

"No! The empty tomb is the only fact that would justify this incredible disciple making in a few years. It's a fact."

More likely there was never a body. Just like jesus supposedly lived and performed all these miracles but noone took the time to write about these impossible and wonderful feats until he was long dead. So long dead that the first guy to write about it wasn't even born when jesus supposedly died.

"More likely there was never a body. Just like jesus supposedly lived and performed all these miracles but noone took the time to write about these impossible and wonderful feats until he was long dead. So long dead that the first guy to write about it wasn't even born when jesus supposedly died"

Yes, but no matter what, the early christians did sprout preaching his resurrection in the few years after his crucifixion. It's not a matter of "long dead".

Second, supposing that the four gospels are a kind of conspiracy to make believe. I can't suppose that one who wants to be as credible as possible would voluntarily include some pieces of different information into the four stories. For examble, it is said in one that they were a group women to go to the tomb (in the morning of the third day). Another says they were only two. Not very credible for a totally made up story! But credible for a story that was recalled by a couple persons who didn't exactly remember the number of women. Plus, why make women go to the tomb first? (Again supposing that it is a made up story.)Women were a social class, in that epoch, who had no influence, and of which the testimony would not count. They were not believed. Why then would the author have made rely an incredible history fact upon the sayings of those?

Third, you can't arrive with a story and everyone believes you.

More, some said that none had taken the time to write it down. Well obviously some had. But there were very few who knew how to, and in that few, a few that had the whole story. We named those four gospels. They are simply recalling of many testimonies, written or oral, in which, as you see in reading them, the only couple differences are numbers, or unimportant things like that. It is not a divergence. And would you submit to the New Testament the reliability tests that you submitted to other early manuscripts, you would be surprised of the results. Manuscripts that you call reliable are not that reliable if you apply the same criticism that you are applying to the New Testament. I cannot state here all the surprising evidences, but I have read Josh McDowell's "Ready Defense". I suggest it to all of you.

Im not trying to prove it, i think its pretty obvious.

??  So your proof that it is a real story is that a lot of the supposed facts are inconsistent?

Is this an attempt at a jedi mind trick?

They didn't have nothing - they had all or nearly all of Paul's work and what we now call the Old Testament.

A wealth of material to build a story from.

 Come on. Please remove the "from nowhere" and respond to my main argument instead of concentrating on little misunderstandings... 

And yet . . . if the gospels were word for word the same - this site would still exist and all of you would be screaming . . .

 CONSPIRACY THEORY.

And you accuse Christians of saying the same things over and over again???  Very old argument . . . it has been answered over and over again.

Go interview a cop and ask him or her if when he or she has interviewed 4 witnesses to anything . . . if all their stories are exactly the same, even if they interview within hours of the event.

Let me clue you in on the answer . . . NO.  It doesn't mean their story was wrong.  It simply means they saw it from different perspectives, the people themselves have different back grounds, and if they were telling a cop and telling their spouse - it would also be different.  The gospels address different people groups, written by different people, who had different back grouds, written years after the events. 

BUT HEY, all you atheists think you know scripture better than christians . . . so you probably already knew all this stuff.  You just choose to ignore it.

You know, sometimes the gospels are word for word the same. That's when "Matthew" and "Luke" copy "Mark" word for word. No conspiracy needed, just plagiarism.

Repeating the same baseless assertion does not "answer" anything. Why do we have to point that out to you christians over and over again???

You're being way too generous with your analogy. A much better analogy would be that four people claimed to witness a car accident. Guy 1 swears up and down that there were two cars involved, a red and a blue one, and that it took place in Chicago. The second guy agrees there were two cars, but with different colors, and the accident happened in Milwaukee. Guy number 3 says it happened in Evanston, but there were no cars, only bicycles involved. The fourth guy says that the car accident was the Word, and the Word was with Zeus, and the Word was Zeus. That's when you realize they can't all be eye witnesses, the car accident, if it even happened, happened over 40 years ago in a different country, and the information about it has been transmitted across culture- and language- barriers in a gigantic game of primitive phone tag. On top of that, it is reaching you in books by unknown authors, written with particular theological agendas regarding car accidents.

You broke my irony meter with that last sentence.

If they were word for word the same there would be only one.

Since you bring this up, those who wrote these books didn't get interviewed with in hours of the supposed events. It's unknown who saw what and who they told.

Elan, Jared, Reuben, and Joel all stop by a crowded market where a man is preaching about the coming "kingdom of god". He waves his hands over the crowd. Later Elan hears this man was a prophet. He tells his neighbor Seth he saw this great man apparently performing a miracle. Seth several years later is reminded of this incident when he hears there is a great teacher in the neighboring village. He tells his son Alon that Elan had witnessed a man be healed from a fatal illness. About 40 years later Mark comes through the village trying to reconstruct the story of the great teacher Yahshua. Alon runs into him in the local tavern. Over many cups of wine Alon recalls the story. He tells Mark that there was this miracle that occurred in his village witnessed by many where 10 lepers were healed and made pure.

During this same period, Jared moves his family to a village near Jerusalem. Jared hears of a great teacher who was executed for rebellion. Jared tells his new neighbor Taavi it sounds like the same guy who was teaching in his village about 5 years ago who was doing miraculous things. Taavi goes on a business trip to the coast to ship some of his wares, Taavi is having wine in the local establishment and overhears a story about a healer that had been performing great miracles. Taavi tells the man that his neighbor saw the healer cure a lame man. Another guy sitting across the table named Guri adds that he heard the same man had raised a man dead for 3 days. Iram from Damascus in town to make a deal on olive oil listened in on the discussion. Two years later Iram hears about a healer that was supposed to be the expected messiah. Iram tells the man named Luke he knows of a man who witnessed this messiah raise a man from the dead and other miracles like healing the lame, and blind. Luke adds these tales to a book he is writing.

None of the stories finally written have anything at all to do with the original event, a man was preaching in the market, no more.

Since people tend to add their own 'spin' to a story, it's extremely difficult to tell if any of the Gospel accounts are based in anything more than legends, especially after 40 or 50 years and many retellings by many different people.

I