Category:Jesus Survival (subject)

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Jesus Survival from the Cross / Swoon Hypothesis

Overview

The "scholarly" origins of the fictional narrative

For some time, at the beginning of the 19th century, the notion that Jesus could have survived the crucifixion, was considered a legitimate scholarly hypothesis by rationalist authors such as Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, Karl Heinrich Venturini, Heinrich Paulus, and others. The goal was to provide a rational explanation of the resurrection and appearances of Jesus.

The Survival of the Jesus Survival narrative

After the criticism of Das Leben Jesu: kritisch bearbeitet (1835 Strauss), book, the hypothesis was totally abandoned in scholarship and was revived only in fictional circles, notably, by Moore and Austin.

At the end of the 19th century, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, claimed that after surviving the crucifixion, Jesus went to India, where his tomb is still located in Srinagar, Kashmir. Ahmad based his claim on some Muslim legends and on the work of Notovich. The Jesus Survival narrative thus came to be associated to the Jesus in India narrative (see also Docker, and Toll).

Another significant, parallel development was opened in 1928 by Lawrence who saw in the survival of Jesus the possibility for him to fully explore his sexuality.

Developments after WW2

After WW2 the Jesus Survival hypothesis has grown out of its pre-War foundations.

(a) The old "scholarly" view has been been revived with large public success but no critical consensus by authors such as Hugh J. Schonfield (The Passover Plot, 1965) and Barbara Thiering (Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1992).

(b) Second, we find authors who have developed the Survival Theory to support their claim of the presence of Jesus in India. In 1978 Meier gave an unexpected twist to the story by associating it to the notion that Jesus was an alien.

(c) Third, and more successfully, the Survival story has flourished in his "sexual" version. In 1951 Kazantzakis made survival and marriage the last temptation of Jesus on the cross. Promptly in 1972 (The Jesus Scroll), Donovan Joyce claimed the supposed discovery in Israel of a scroll proving that Jesus had survived the crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene and fathered a child with her. Joyce's work laid the foundations for Baigent's work (Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982; The Jesus Papers, 2006) and was taken up in several versions of the Jesus Bloodline story.

(d) Finally, the survival narrative played a role in the horror-parody movie Beaster (2004 Morrone), film, where Jesus "survived" the crucifixion in the form of a flesh-eating zombie.