Which may be why a chapter in Crossan’s Jesus A Revolutionary Biography (which I think you know is controversial on many other points besides this) has a chapter entitled “The Dogs Beneath the Cross.”  But Google Books offers no quotes.  And quitting time approaches.

Why is he credible on this score, and not on his claim that Jesus, rather than being an Apocalyptic Preacher, was “a healer and wise man who taught a message of inclusiveness, tolerance, and liberation. In his view, Jesus’ strategy “was the combination of free healing and common eating . . . that negated the hierarchical and patronal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power . . .”?

And I’m not even saying I don’t find that a compelling message, but you know, everybody cherrypicks. 

I have his Revolutionary Biography on my desk now, not much time to peruse, but he’s a very passionate colorful writer–it’s intended as a work of popular history, and I imagine it succeeded as such (as scholarship–meh).  His unfeigned reverence for Jesus (and the fact he’s a priest) gives him a lot of license to be outrageous.  Well, that and the Irish thing. 

I note in passing, he mentions Josephus’ account of how he saw three friends of his crucified, still alive, and these were actual rebels against Roman rule, part of an uprising Roman soldiers had died putting down–he went to Emperor Titus in tears, begging for their lives.  All three were taken down, one survived.  (If that was in the gospels, only fundamentalists would believe it.)

So nobody could have begged for Jesus’ body?  From Pilate, or some minor functionary, who could easily be bribed? 

He does talk about the dogs going for shallow graves, so that Wikipedia entry should be edited.  Would you like the honor?  😉

Maybe I’ll fix it myself, when I get the chance.  I’ve edited many Wikipedia articles, but none related to this subject material.  The standards can be very high for some (they wouldn’t even let you edit the main article on Jesus), fairly slipshod for others (though I once had to spend days arguing with someone to edit a page about the song “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” to reflect that it was frequently used in Warner Bros. cartoons, and if you don’t understand why I’d bother, then you are a cultural philistine!).  Probably this one is too specialized to get a lot of scholarly attention.  Anyway, the book is already listed as the source, so I’ll just check it a bit more carefully, before I edit.  My guess is somebody else looked at the Google Books entry that only shows you chapter headings, and saw “The Dogs Beneath the Cross.”  

It really doesn’t matter at all, from a PR viewpoint, that he left the priesthood years before he wrote this book.  If anything, that’s better publicity.  Renegade priest.  

But he, I must again point out, is the starting point for the assertion that Jesus wasn’t buried in any proper sense.  He opened the door for others who wanted to cast doubt on there being a burial (and therefore, no empty tomb).  They rejected most of his other equally dubious assertions, and focused in on this.  Because it was useful.  And because the man can, you must admit, turn a phrase with the best of them.  

Again, it was a point worth raising (I’m sure somebody somewhere must have mentioned it before), but it shouldn’t have been in such a sensationalist piece of work.  Overreactions in one direction tend to lead to overreactions in the other.  The fact is, if you can believe Josephus when he says he got three insurrectionary friends of his taken off crosses by Titus, and one of them lived, the story of Joseph of Arimathea in Mark is a mere bagatelle.  Strip off the embellishments added by Mark and his sources, you have a very believable story, that could help explain an awful lot of things. Whereas non-burial raises more questions than it answers.  I simply don’t believe the resurrection story came out of Jesus rotting on the cross.  I think if that had happened, Christianity would never have existed.  

I don’t know if I agree–what do you mean by ‘primary’?  I think the belief he’d risen came about very quickly, but I don’t know how quickly–weeks?  months?  Not overnight.  They would have had to compare notes, and they were scattered.  I think the resurrection story came from the women first, and however much Jesus may have granted them something like equal status, the same probably wasn’t always true of the male disciples.  

Even in Galilee, it wouldn’t have taken them at all long to find out if Jesus had been left to rot on the cross–and if this was commonplace in such situations, wouldn’t they have assumed it?  Certainly it would have been a possibility they dreaded–and then imagine they found out that, without any assistance from them, he’d been buried decently.  I won’t say the body disappeared (although they do, you know–no supernatural elements required).  

Two possibilities–either burial of the crucified in Jerusalem was no big deal, in which case there’s no reason to assume Jesus wasn’t buried.  

Or it was very unlikely, in which case his burial in itself would seem like divine intervention to these horribly frightened and stressed out people.  They would have started mythologizing it the moment they heard about it.  But what are you going to do with him being left to rot?  Again, the point of leaving them to rot was to break the spirits of the survivors.  Well, didn’t work this time.  But didn’t it usually?  Why not this time?  

You say you want a detailed explanation–give me a detailed explanation of how they came to believe he’d risen from a grave that didn’t exist, when anyone in Jerusalem (and probably some travelers from there to Galilee) could have told them there had been no grave.  “They had visions.”  And—???

This weekend is devoted to a different martyred prophet, and if it’s okay with you, I’m going to put down the cross for a while.  Free at last.  😐

Chicken and egg?  If there was a burial, it definitely came before any resurrection story, since they were running for their lives.  The story evolved over time, but the story began with a real body, that had to be disposed of, as all of us shall be.  It is not where the story ended, but let’s just say–as many have, including early critics of Christianity–that if the body was physically removed from where it was supposed to be, or there was a misunderstanding about where it was supposed to be, that could have been the trigger event, as the story spread from Jerusalem out to Galilee, changing as it went.    

I believe a burial happened–I don’t think that’s just a story.  I don’t believe the resurrection happened, but to explain that story, without a grave, you  have a much more difficult row to hoe.  Did one person have a vision and communicate it to others?  Did many have individual visions, as Paul says?  Were there group hallucinations, as Bart has suggested?  Did some people hear about visions, and pretend they had them too, in order not to feel left out?  

My explanation in the recent past would have been that there were many different experiences, of varying types, that gradually got pruned down into what we have now.  On reflection, I am far from sure I believe this is sufficient explanation for the story we have.  And if we believe Paul about many claiming to have seen Jesus (and why would we not?), why not believe him about the burial?  And might not the burial itself–or something that went wrong with it–be the trigger for the visions?  Because what you really have to ask is, why did only Jesus’ crucifixion trigger this?  Why not John’s beheading?  What was different?  

It’s difficult to compare and contrast much here, because contrary to what some may think, it was not a commonplace event for purported messianic claimants to be crucified, especially in peacetime, with no especially strong political tensions, the zealots mainly quiet.  Do you know of a single one, other than Jesus?  Even by the standards of his century, his case is extremely odd.  So to talk about what ‘normal’ Roman behavior would be in an abnormal situation is not helpful.  They were probably as confused as anyone.  Jesus tended to have that effect on people.  

Robert said
I was not asking about your view of the historical event of the (empty) tomb, but trying to better discern your view of the pre-Markan development of the empty tomb narrative, which you may have referred to as a fact, if I recall correctly. That’s an exegetical discussion, specifically the attempt to apply form or redaction criticism to the gospel of Mark, two tools not particularly well suited for this task.

But I’m not opposed to an even more speculative discussion of historical events lurking behind the text. Certainly an experience of an empty tomb could trigger confusion, reflection, and ultimately belief in the resurrection. That is the case in many of the resurrection stories in the gospels. But not all. Think, for example, the experiences recounted on the road to Emmaus, doubting Thomas, or the encounter of the fishing disciples in Galilee in John 21. I agree the former type of narrated event is an easier explanation for the eruption of belief in the resurrection. This would entail the historicity of much of Mark’s story of Jesus’ burial, including a known site of his burial in an individual spot, known to at least one of his followers, and a reason for that person to visit this site sometime relatively soon after his burial.

Presumably this story would have developed somewhat independently of the sparse expression of the tradition as cited earlier by Paul. There is the similarity of Jesus appearing to the disciples rather soon after his burial, specifically ‘on the third day’, which has scriptural reverberations in the Jewish scriptures. Paul quickly mentions burial but not the empty tomb (‘though that is likely implied in his worldview) or any mention of angels or Jesus appearing to any women. Perhaps Paul, akin to the male disciples in Lk 24,11, merely considered a story about women finding an empty tomb to be an idle tale not worth mentioning.
Sure, all of this is a plausible scenario. Perhaps it is even the most plausible explanation of the initial development of resurrection belief. It does seem to be the easiest. Is that where you’re going? But, as you yourself admitted previously, this too could have arisen from Jesus being tossed into a shallow grave or rocky ravine and his body being carried away by scavenger dogs, such that anyone who went looking for his corpse later might wonder what had happened to the body.

I must say this type of discussion is foreign to me because of my training in rigorously historico-critical study of texts, a discipline which seems to work best when the hypothetical facts behind the text are bracketed from the study of these texts as historical and literary artifacts of a later period. But, while foreign, maybe it can become a fun hobby.  

I know this is the kind of thing that you love, Robert.  Me, not so much.  I really feel like I’ve said everything I have to say about this subject, several times over.  And I’m still hurt you didn’t want to talk about the Iliad with me.  (Kidding.)