Alternative history... (what if Jesus Christ hadn't been crucified?)

According to the New Testament, Jesus died for our sins (or at least of those who wish to believe it). But what would have happened if the Romans hadn't crucified him, but simply put him in jail for life?Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Added "(what if Jesus Christ hadn't been crucified?)" part to topic title. Also changed "NT" to "New Testament" (I hate undefined abbreviations).

Thread copied here from the Alternative history... (what if Jesus Christ hadn't been crucified?) thread in the Coffee House forum.

If were using the Bible as the source of information here("according to the New Testement") to answer your question we would all be on our way to hell eternally seperated from God because we have no way now, for our sins to be forgiven.According to the Bible God set this plan in motion from the beggining of time.Revelations 13:8 says It was God's plan all along. Jesus's purpose from the beggining was to die for Our sins. God knew Adam would sin, and that man, in His free will and now sinful nature, would need a Savoir.Roman 5:12 says The question isn't really what would happen if he didn't die, the real question is what happened when he Did.According to the Bible God is Supreme, all knowing, all powerful and nothing can thwart His puposes. According to the Bible it is impoosible for Gods plan of Salvation to have not been carried out. There are no "what if's" when it comes to the crucifixion of Jesus. Everything that needed to happen happened and "what if's" do not apply.Jesus' death on the Cross was never in question because it was God in His Sovereignty ( The Sovereignty of God is the biblical teaching that all things are under God's rule and control, and that nothing happens without His direction or permission) directing it.Ephesians 1:11 saysIsaiah 46:11 says Hope this answers the question--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.

If Jesus had not died then I'm sure Yaweh could have aranged for our sins to be forgiven some other way.He could have forgiven our sins at any time, when you think about it; without having to resort to torture and a painful death for his beloved son.Let's face it, if he really did know how it all would play out he could avoided a lot of hand wringing and just gave us a free pass: but no; somebody somewhere has to be suffering in xainity.

Not to be a spoil sport, but are you asking about the narrative IN the Bible or something in real life?It's extremely likely that if there even was a "Jesus", his life/death bears little resemblance to what is currently in the Bible.The Bible storyline is the same as a handful of other solar deities. It's always easier to convert people to your religion if you first steal theirs.So, let's assume for a second that there was a historical figure Jesus and he died at the end of a Roman sword or was thrown in prison and never heard from again.The Bible would still read verbatim as it does today.

Well, sure, but the thing is that Christians think that actually something special happened when Jesus died. They also say that we have free will. If these two things are true (and let's neglect for a moment all the discrepancies resulting from the combination of free will and an all-knowing god), then the Romans could just as well have decided not to crucify Jesus, and since that would be their exercise of free will, there would be nothing that god could have done about it (well, he could, of course, but then it wouldn't be free will anymore).If god was going to save us one way or another, would that mean that Jesus was only the first attempt to "save" us that actually succeeded? That there would have been many Jesi before him where the plan simply didn't work and he kept sending them to us until finally one got executed?

I seriously doubt that the Bible supports the concept of "free will" in any way.Exodus makes it clear that the Pharaoh had no free will. God MADE him reject Moses, then punished him and his people for it.Further, the mythology never quite matches up with the message in any part of the Bible.Jesus died to save us from our sins, so now... we have no sin?
Adam and Eve were naked, then ate fruit and wore clothes and that was bad so... Conservative Christians have a huge problem with a nip slip?
God loved the Earth so he gave his only son, who died, and therefore.... went up to Heaven to be with God? Sounds like the biggest case of "backsies" I've ever heard.

Considering that it was all part of the Big G's master plan and that he actually had no genuine freewill ability to do otherwise poor old Judas gets kind of a bad press.Without him doing what he was put on Earth to do our sins would be unforgiven for all eternity.Go Judas huh?

well in one of the gnostic scrolls Jesus tells Judas to do what he did.Back to topicWell if jesus never gets crucified there would be no RCC no crusades the dark ages would not last as long ....So we would probably be well on our way to colonize mars

So curse Judas for holding us back in our space exploration efforts then.Boo Judas.....!

quote:

---

According to the New Testament, Jesus died for our sins (or at least of those who wish to believe it). But what would have happened if the Romans hadn't crucified him, but simply put him in jail for life?

---

God would have continued to forgive people by his standard methods explained by Ezekiel.

Well, let's set aside for the moment the fact that the Romans didn't imprison criminals as a general rule, but only confined them until such time as they could be sent on to be enslaved, crucified, enrolled in a gladiatorial school, or just turned into tiger bait in the arena. An efficient lot, those Romans.I essentially agree with Nuggin. "Christian" scriptures without Christ might feature a few different names and stories, but I don't think that some sort of evangelical monotheism could have been held back forever. However, monotheism might have evolved into something more philosophical and less evangelical, like Neoplatonism without all the absurd attempts by the early Christians to shoehorn their nonsensical mythology into Plato's philosophy. The geopolitical forces that eventually broke up the Western Empire into various Gothic and Frankish states were probably unstoppable, but an enlightened Eastern Empire based in Constantinople would have held together and preserved the Greek culture and science that the Christians felt obliged to obliterate.End result? No Renaissance because no loss of Greek culture, and the emergence of the real scientific method at least a thousand years earlier than it did in our timeline. Without the Christian church to smother learning and experimentation with its dogma, it's entirely possible that we'd have a far more enlightened and advanced civilization today. Native civilizations in the Western hemisphere, descendants of the Aztec and Maya, receiving technology from Europe instead of disease and slavery? Maybe. Spaceships on Mars in the equivalent of our 14th century, instead of Europe losing a third of its population to the Black Death? Who knows?Of course, it's also entirely possible that, humans being what they are, we would have found another equally ignorant and destructive path to follow, and we'd be no better off than we are now. But it's fun to consider a world without Baptists and Republicans, anyway.

---

Your beliefs do not effect reality and evidently reality does not effect your beliefs.
-Theodoric

​

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Steven Colbert

​

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
- John Stuart Mill

Oh, you misunderstand me.I'm not saying they will be "essentially the same". I'm saying they will be literally, word for word, the same.Christ died on the cross not because there was some guy who was actually crucified, but because the vast majority of solar deities die on the cross with two other men. It's seen again and again and again in mythology from the region dating back thousands of years.It's all astronomical. The sun's transit across the sky ends at the the southern cross with two companion stars. The sun "dies" for 3 days, then rises again.There's a reason that solar deities all share the same birth day, the same death, the same "three visitors", the same "companions at death", etc etc etcI'm saying that there may or may not have been a Jesus. And that person may or may not have said a few choice things. Most likely not, but I wasn't there. That person's life has virtually nothing in common with the story in the Bible which is just a mishmosh of Horace, Mithra and the rest.

Im not sure how all of this got past AdminPD. Usually she's on the off topic comments like white on rice. This thread is NOT about weather Jesus existed, it's about what would happen if he was put in jail for life instead of crucified. Try staying on topic, im sure there is another thread debating His existance, this isn't it.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, with all due respect, the question that I think you want to ask is nonsensical. If you want us to grant the premise that Jesus was the Son of God and that he died for the remission of sins, then it makes no sense to ask what would have happened if he hadn't died. If he hadn't, then he wouldn't have been Jesus. You're asking us to consent to and then deny the central belief of Christianity. Does not compute.No, I understand Nuggin's point to be that for all intents and purposes, Jesus is a fictional character, perhaps based on a real person, perhaps not. In that case asking what would have happened if Jesus hadn't been crucified is like asking what would have happened if King Arthur hadn't been killed by his bastard son, Mordred. Well, even if Arthur is based on a 5th century native Briton or Roman war leader, whatever did or didn't "actually" happen to him makes no difference at all to the legends as we know them.For my part, I thought that the more interesting question was to ponder what the world would have been like had the idea of evangelical monotheism not taken hold in Western civilization at all. Asking that question takes a middle ground that accepts Jesus as an historical personage, but then posits that without the part in the story where he dies and comes back to life, the idea of his coming to save us all from sin by dying for us would be missing, and all you have is yet another apocalyptic Jewish rabbi and Christianity as such never happens. Whether another brand of evangelical monotheism would have arisen instead is an open question.ABE: Oops, I didn't see that this isn't your original question, but Dirk's. My criticisms should be directed to him, not you, Chuck.Edited by ZenMonkey, : No reason given.

---

Your beliefs do not effect reality and evidently reality does not effect your beliefs.
-Theodoric

​

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Steven Colbert

​

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
- John Stuart Mill