Yakow And Ivar

The Day of Their Return, 16.

Yakow Harolsson, The High Commander of the Companions of the Arena, to Ivar Frederiksen, Firstling of Ilion:

"'Religion' means faith in the supernatural, does it not?'" (p. 199)

It does not - although the supernatural, if it existed, would transcend nature and thus would be one kind of transcendence.

Yakow:

"'...if we could show that there was in fact a Jesus Christ who did in fact rise from his tomb, he may have been in a coma, not dead.'" (ibid.)

That is plausible if a crucified man lost consciousness after a few hours, his legs were not broken and he was then placed in a chamber. However, crucifixion victims were thrown into a mass grave. The earliest accounts of the Resurrection are not of a reanimated corpse emerging from a tomb but of a different kind of "spiritual" body emerging from the earth like a plant from a seed. The pious story of a decent burial in an unused tomb could have originated in the oral tradition before the first Gospel was written: "We couldn't prevent the death but we treated the body right." The disciples are more likely to have scattered and fled from Jerusalem.

I agree with other points made by Yakow.