I have doubts he died on the cross
Really? Why?
Most take days on the cross to die
Jesus was up their four hours
Medicine were use on him when laying him in the crypt/cave
Too many stories of him beyond the middle east after his death.
They broke the legs of Jesus, which made it impossible to support his body .. Which would kill someone much quicker, but much more painful.
Gentle disagreement. In concession to Jewish law, their intent was to break the legs to hasten his death so that the body could be taken down before the Sabbath began at sundown. But when they got to him, he was already dead as testified by the piercing of the sword. Thus the passage in Psalms believed to be prophecy was fulfilled.
Prophecy
"He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken" Psalm 34:20
Fulfillment
"But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His Side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe. For these things were done, that The Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken." John 19: 33-36
In deeper theology, this was important re symbolism of Jesus being the lamb of God as well as the sacrificial lamb. And in the ancient rules regarding the sacrificial lamb is that it must be unblemished, i.e. perfect, and its legs could not be broken.
Interesting, this last part --- because it furnishes ample reason why the whole description that precedes it could have been fabricated, specifically to fit said 'ancient rules'.
Anything can be fabricated from the history of any of the Presidents or historical figures before the days of radio and television and video, and as history bears out, even what you hear on the radio or see on television or video can be fabricated. So, much of the lore and legend of George Washington, Davy Crockett, and Daniel Boone etc. we suspect or know to be more fiction than fact.
Unless we were there ourselves, the only basis we have to believe anything is via the eye witness accounts and/or informed opinion of those who were there or who personally examined the evidence.
There are those who teach now that the Holocaust was fabricated. The reason we believe it is because of all the eye witnesses to the horror, the people who knew those witnesses and who have recorded what they saw, what they experienced, reported what they were told at the time when there was no motive to distort it.
There are those who teach now that the moon landings were fabricated. The reason we believe it is because of all the eye witnesses and what they told to others.
There are those who teach now that 9/11 was fabricated.
Likewise there are those who desperately want to believe that the life and times of Jesus, the resurrection, all of it were fabricated. But there were many eye witnesses to the event and Paul of Tarsus was writing about them within 20 years of the crucifixion when there were still many eye witnesses to the events of the New Testament still around and long before any mythology had time to develop.
Those manuscripts, either in whole as some of the letters, or edited together as we find in the synoptic gospels, that are considered sufficiently authoritative to include in the New Testament are testimony of eye witnesses or those who knew eye witnesses of the events and teachings recorded.
There is still symbolic and metaphorical content in the New Testament, just as there is the Old Testament, and of course people who were writing it down as they saw it or recorded the testimony of others were not all witnesses to all the same events. And eye witnesses will remember various details differently--I can testify to that in my own work. So you have some disagreement in the manuscripts, and you will have accounts in one manuscript that were omitted in another. This in fact gives me more reason to believe--if the story was fabricated, there would not be so much difference in memory or detail.
They might remember various details differently, but all the writers of the New Testament were agreed on the core of the Gospel that is Jesus was crucified and his tomb could not contain him--he did appear to many people in the days following the crucifixion. He rose from the dead.
The basics are there, and I believe them to be reliable.
