Could “resurrection” be faked?

[Zzyzx]

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Could “resurrection” be faked?

1. A supposed death could be an illusion (as is done for stage, movies and television regularly), or it could be in error, or it could be a fabrication.

2. OR, A dead body could be put into a tomb and later secretly removed (for publicity purposes).

3. OR, Supposed witnesses to the “empty tomb” could be unidentified so their reliability and honesty could not be investigated, or they could be mistaken or untruthful, OR their “testimony” could be fictional.

4. OR, An illusionist after faking death and entombment could later appear to witnesses.

5. OR, churchmen writing decades or centuries after the supposed event could have invented the tale in order to promote their interests and their religion.

6. OR, a combination of the above.

7. Harry Houdini could probably have arranged the trick very convincingly.

8. A clever author of fiction could write an emotional story including all the supposed conditions and characters.

9. Clever clerics have convinced people to believe their tales enough to follow instructions to kill innocent people, including children, to impress supposed gods “visible” only to clerics.


Two thousand years after the trick, no evidence is available to verify that the event actually happened as reported, and no witnesses left accounts of what occurred (existing reports are hearsay recorded decades or centuries later).

If told that a hundred years ago a dead body had come back to life, there was no evidence, the supposed witnesses could not be identified, and those who recorded the supposed incident could not be verified, would you believe it had been real?

If the “death” involved a godman for whom “death” was temporary at most, was the “death” and “resurrection” symbolic rather than literal?

Question for debate: Could “resurrection” be faked?

[The Nice Centurion]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #50]
Of course a rising someone from the dead might be even easier to fake than a sudden cure for the blind, the lame or the homosexualist.

Lazararus of Nain, or whoever fakes a heart attack and drops down on intent.

His family, in on that, declares him dead and "buries" him conveniently in a comfortable chamber. There Lacy plays possum and chess against himself for acouple of hours or days.
The conveniently nearby miracle worker is "called" for help. (Then officially to do what?)

MW makes great show of his arriving and has witnesses. Before the tomb he calls loud and clear:

"Lazarus, come out!"

(For without MW calling out loud Lazarus would not know inside his tomb that now the exact moment arrived to serve the bystanders with a good show.)

[TRANSPONDER]

But Lazarus and the son of Nain are in totally different places, times and situations. On the face of it they seem like legitimate memories of the individual writers, but thete are two problems; the synoptics are supposed to be based on an original (proto Mark) so why aren't these resurrections from death no less not in there? Answer, they were added later on. Individual memories? As I say, how could they not all know about the raising of Lazarus?

It was only later on in musing about Luke perhaps having heard of lazarus (and used for his teaching parable) might have used it in another context.

It is far from the only example. The penitent woman in Galilee in Luke has to be the anointing at Bethany which Luke moved. The miraculous haul ofg fish is after the resurrection in John but at the calling of disciples in Luke.

I even suspect that the healing of the blind man in Jericho in the synoptics turned up in Jerusalem in John. After all, the Palsied man in Jerusalem turns up in Galilee in the synoptics. There are many examples of these writers taking basic story elements and mixing and matching as they liked, when they weren't entirely making it up.