This “Christ cannibalism conspiracy” has been a pet theory of mine for some time, but I wanted to ping the group of folks here for a logic check. I wrote this as a response in another forum thread years ago, mostly in jest, but the more I’ve thought about it and reviewed other material, it doesn’t seem too far fetched. Here’s what I’ve worked out:
A small group of his followers ate Jesus. Consider the following scenario:
• Jesus repeatedly made statements such as “53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (John 6:53-56; context)
• Understandably, many of those who heard this teaching were disgusted and left Jesus’ presence, “60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” 61 But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? … 66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” (John 6:60-62; 66).
• According to the Bible, 5,000 people were present for these statements. The text says “many” left, which means we can infer that at least a few had stayed. However, these few that stayed were not present during the last supper where this difficult teaching was explained by Jesus to the 12 apostles. The time between the last supper and the crucifixion was short and eventful. The Bible makes no mention that the apostles who had learned the true meaning spent any time spreading the actual meaning to the disciples, in fact, quite the opposite. The apostles ran away, hid themselves, and denied any connection to Jesus in fear of persecution. This means that some of the crowd of 5,000 (and possibly those who heard it secondhand) were of the understanding that they actually needed to ingest the Christ in order to gain salvation.
• Upon learning that Jesus is dead (and believing that eating his actual flesh and drinking his actual blood was necessary for eternal life and realizing that decomposition would quickly ruin there chances to live forever), this belief provided substantial motivation to get into the tomb and steal the body. Belief in eternal life is sufficient motivation to risk their lives, including bribing, tricking, or even killing any guards that may have been present.
• Under Roman law, the punishment for cannibalism was death. Under Jewish Law, the punishment for cannibalism was death. Stealing and eating the body of the Messiah would certainly not make them popular with the other Christians, especially after discovering what Jesus actually meant by “flesh and blood” (i.e. bread and wine). Therefore, the people responsible would have good motivation to keep it quiet. Furthermore, there would be no identifiable body left to bring forward after the flesh was eaten.
The conclusion, then, is that a small band of disciples stole his body soon after he was buried and subsequently ate him, believing that doing so would grant them the eternal life he spoke of.
I realize that this is hardly a mainstream thought (and I’m all but a scholar on the gospel texts), but I’m curious how it actually holds up upon a more expert scrutiny.
I also not an expert, have read that it was clear that “this is my body/blood” was said in a clear way to refer to bread and whatever He was drinking. Unless He was eating His own body, the “do this in memory of me” adds to a common sense understanding they were not doing as you speculate.
Also I think you are drawing a painting from the unnumbered dots.
The question was in reference to people who had heard his “eat me” teachings in public, but never had an opportunity to hear the explanation given in private. This would be for public teachings that occurred before the supper in the upper room, where the “do this in memory of me” was elucidated. If you refer back to the second bullet, this thought is strengthened – disciples said the teaching was “hard.” If the public teaching was that the bread and wine were symbols, the difficult part, then, would be the part about eternal life. However, elsewhere jesus taught about eternal life and how it was gained by “believing.” So the eternal life part doesn’t seem to be what was difficult about the teaching. It was only in the upper room where the bread and wine were introduced as symbols, and only to the apostles. None of the disciples who heard his public teachings were aware of the symbology. I contend, then, that the “difficult” teaching was having to ACTUALLY eat his flesh and drink his blood, causing “many” disciples to leave. This leaves the few disciples who accepted the public teaching at face value without ever having the symbology explained – it’s these few who could have ACTUALLY eaten him.
I’ll admit that it’s speculative, but I don’t think I’m “painting from unnumbered dots.”
It is a fun theory. But it seems like the biggest problem is that you are putting a lot of weight on the historicity of Jn 6, which I sort of doubt. I mean, if Jesus actually said something as forceful as what we get in Jn 6 in public why did none of the earlier gospels manage to record it?
If Jesus really publicly proclaimed, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you do X, you have no life in you. Whoever does X has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. Whoever does X will live forever,” wouldn’t we expect that rather important message to get recorded in the earlier gospels?
It seems a lot more likely to me that John invented the bread of life discourse to give a theology for the Eucharist that was already widely known and practiced.
Yeah funny. And guaranteed to give the Vapors to just the right people. I agree with Porphyry though. The eucharist traditions are a post-easter memorial to what was probably a passover seder that assumed significance in retropect.
It does give me a great idea for a short story. If it comes to anything I’ll be happy to credit you as a source.
There is another idea I’ve heard using these biblical texts. See a book written a while back entitled “The Last Days of Jesus Christ the Vampire”. I think it’s still available on Amazon. Sadly I have to report the idea is better than its presentation. Terribly written book. True blasphemy must only be committed at the highest literary level.
The problem with the theory is the crucifixion. Why did Jesus continue to have followers after such a public and humiliating execution. For the inner core of disciples they came to believe in the resurrection.
But if there’s a group who only heard and believed the public teachings to eat his body why would they continue to believe him after the authorities captured and executed him?
it is not neccessary that the body which is entombed is the samee body which is awoken.
quote
It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. 2I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.
quote:
12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
Greetings Robert.
So could it go either way? could the words employed imply the same body or is there a possiblity for it to be a different body/transformed? if the posibility exists, then there is no categorical evidence that the buried body with injuries was exactly the same body raised, if this is the case, then we don’t know exactly what the “inner core” believed
I’m confused.
rickgill’s hypothesis is, as I understood it, that some disciples heard the bread of life discourse–including the necessity of eating Jesus’ body–but, not being part of the inner core of his followers, never got any clarification about what that meant, and so continued on in the mistaken belief that they had to cannibalize Jesus to live forever.
Because the people who cannibalized him were on the fringe of the movement and not part of the core of his followers, those at the core wouldn’t have known what happened to the body–they weren’t aware of the confused plan to steal and eat the body. Thus their amazement at the empty tomb.
Moreover, these fringe cannibals would have performed their morbid rite post-haste, as they wouldn’t want to eat spoiled meat.
But bren’s point is that after the crucifixion, no one would have continued to place any credence in Jesus except those who believed in the resurrection. You need belief in the resurrection, which vindicates him, in order to explain why people placed any importance in Jesus’ messianic preaching.
So rickgill, is your theory then that some people at the fringe of the movement misunderstood Jesus, and while his body was still warm, developed the belief that he had risen (thus giving them reason to care about fulfilling the mandate to eat his body, rather than dismiss it as the ravings of a lunatic false prophet), but their belief he had risen was a belief in a non-corporeal resurrection (since otherwise there would have been no body left for them to eat). Then the core of his followers both *independently* developed a belief that Jesus had risen (they can’t have gotten it from the fringe group else we would expect them to have known the horrid truth of what actually happened to the body), and the core of his followers also happened to discover the empty tomb?
Hoo boy isn’t it much simpler just to imagine that Jesus was a vampire?
Only the inner circle would have actually consumed Jesus’ body. The outer circle would have been presented with some sort of metaphorical approach. My hypothetical story is precisely about the subsequent chain of transmission. I’ve hit on the perfect solution. You’ll have to wait for it however.
Back in the “real” world…
Paul did not believe that Jesus was simply resuscitated. He definitely believed in a bodily resurrection but he had ideas about the body typical of his milieu. If you want to take a deep dive see Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul by Troels Engberg-Pedersen, one of Dale Martin’s students, whose own The Corinthian Body is an excellent primer for this discussion. The short (and completely oversimplified) version is that the body (sarx) and the soul (psyche) wither away and the spirit (pneuma) is transformed into the resurrection body. Unfortunately none of these terms means quite what we mean by them. For Paul (influenced it seems by Stoic philosophy) even the flesh has a metaphysical aspect and even the spirit has a bodily aspect. The substance dualism of immaterial spirit vs fleshly matter came much much later being a product of the Neoplatonism absorbed by medieval scholasticism.
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