Roman Soldiers Excited For Super-Easy Job Guarding Tomb Of Some Jewish Guy

Roman Soldiers Stoked For Super-Easy Tomb Duty

Roman Soldiers Excited For Super-Easy Job Guarding Tomb Of Some Jewish Guy.

'These two Roman soldiers totally lucked out: their next assignment is to guard the tomb of some dead Jewish guy. How hard could it be?'



Just kick back, how hard is it to guard a dead guy.

We just have to make sure the dead guy, sealed in a tomb with a big old boulder, doesn't get away! Ha ha!

All we have to do keep this dead guy from getting up and running away, what an easy job!

......

What the heck!

Please discuss and Happy Easter!

 

In ancient times, if a Roman soldier failed to stay at their guard post, they risked execution.

So if they were bribed off, it would have had to have been a huge amount.

A necessary bribe amount for such a situation would have needed to be more than a years wages, probably at least two. Roman soldiers were well paid, compared to the other ordinary people in ancient times.

Probably there were 4 guards, each sleeping in shifts.

Matthew 28 says that some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests what] had happened. This means some of the guards remained while others went into the city. This suggests there would have to be at least four guards.

If these are in fact Roman guards, then four is in fact the minimum that protocol would dictate (see for example John 19:23), with each man taking three hours out of the night. Earlier in the account of Jesus’ punishment, we already got a glimpse of this basic ‘squad’ unit, when we read in John that the soldiers divided his garments “into four parts, one part for each soldier” (John 19:23).

 

I would agree that guarding a dead body is a very easy job.

 

It depends on the number and abilities of the grave robbers.

 

And whether or not they are armed and angry.

 

What I always found interesting about this part of the story is that it appears that Christians only came up with it AFTER rumors had circulated that they had stolen the body. Smells like a convenient post hoc excuse.

 

My understanding is that the reaction from the Hebrew priesthood (the Rabbis) and the Romans was very immediate... so, according to the Bible, the "Elders" quickly made up the narrative about Jesus' "followers" stealing the body.

The problem with that is if you know anything about how the Roman legions enforced very strict discipline in the ranks, a story like that would not have been given any credence.

If Jesus' "followers" had arrived to steal the body, the Roman soldiers would have raised an alarm, sent for reinforcements, and the remainder would have closed ranks to engage in combat right on the spot. Cowardice or disloyalty when in the presence of an enemy of any kind almost always resulted in a death sentence for a Roman soldier, and frequently also for his family back home.

 

But guards were almost never assigned to guard tombs. And there are many, many problems with the supposed story of the Jewish trial. The whole idea that the Jews somehow wielded enough power to influence Rome like this . . . well, let's just say it strains credulity. And the Biblical story about the "Elders" making up the narrative about the body appears in the same context of mentioning the guards. So, Christians were not talking about these supposed guards until after the far more likely explanation was already well-known. We have no record of the guards until AFTER Christians had need for them in the story.

 

True, but according to the story, Jesus had already disarmed one of his followers and had commanded the others not to take up arms.

 

I like the story about Mary Magdalene when approaching the tomb was met by an angel who said: "Fear not!".

Scaring the **** out of her.

 

One of the gnostic gospels has a story about Jesus as a child. From what I recall, he was making toy birds out of either clay or mud when his parents caught him and asked if he was not only making graven images, but working on the Sabbath to do so. He quickly said no, clapped his hands, and the toy birds became real and flew away. I always loved that story. A rabbi once told me that, in the original Hebrew, there's also a story in the Bible of God mooning Moses, but I forget the details at the moment.

 

Why in the world would Rome care enough to guard this body? It was the Jewish leadership who felt threatened by Jesus, at the time. So they asked and he dedicated 4 guards? Yeah right. Far larger commitment than just executing somebody.

 

And Rome wouldn't have needed Jewish prodding to execute him. Rome was QUICK to execute anyone in the area fomenting any kind of religious upheaval, especially near religious holidays. And I find it odd that many other people, according to the Bible, were resurrected on that day . . . and no one else besides a single Biblical author seemed to notice.

I know I'm being harsh with a lot of this, and obviously I don't believe in the resurrection or in the infallibility of the Bible. But I do want to make it clear that I do like many of Jesus's teachings and I do acknowledge him as a historical figure.

 

There were stories of his divinity, so the posted a guard to make sure he stayed dead. Or so the story goes; told to me by my Catholic Nun teacher who delighted in beating the **** out of me. Which is why to this day I am Antaganostic.

 

Yeah, well it's not the least of Christianity's problems in terms of making any sense at all. It's not like resurrection would prove anything about a god's existence even if it had happened.

 

Yeah, it just seems like a lie/embellishment still. Jewish leaders had to ask them to execute him, and then they guarded his body (asked or unasked). It's just not consistent behavior on the part of the Romans. It's all efforts to bolster the idea of the resurrection. A resurrection convincing people a god exists and that this is the son of god is problematic anyway.

 

Well you could convince me my right arm, that I'm looking at, doesn't exist before you could convince me that there isn't a higher power in the Universe ... that cares about each and every one of us. But, I'm equally sure you'll only find him/her in your heart not in a church of man.

 

I can acknowledge our perspectives are limited enough that we can't be sure, but I'm not aware of anything suggesting there must be. Sure, the universe is mysterious and big, but having trouble explaining certain things ought not to be filled with supernatural filler explanations. Better to admit we don't know.

I only come down solidly against things that make no sense at all - like Christianity.

 

I know. I've been the beneficiary of his/her intervening love to many times to believe otherwise.

Christ save me from Christians.

 

Statistically some people are bound to have a "charmed" sort of life - to have many opportunities to do better and close calls. But if you look at the totality of what happens. Bad things happen to good people. It's not always some kind of lesson or example for others either. Babies die of leukemia. Sometimes it's destructive actions by people, and sometimes it's just random chance and physics. The pattern isn't one of love for people, it's a pattern of randomness with the laws of physics and biology. And the only kinds of karma I see is the karma imposed by social norms, and a lack of intelligence or knowledge running into the real world.

 

Our ... Supreme Being ... is there for anyone that seeks him/her.

 

Especially given the fact that we have several accounts from the time period of people surviving crucifixion. But even the idea that he would be allowed some kind of special burial place for his apostles to look for him at in the first place is really, really suspect. I don't think the story is necessarily entirely made up. It is perfectly possible that his female followers were looking around for the body, couldn't find it, and the stories erupted from there. The fact that the story has women as the first witnesses (anyone making up the story whole cloth probably would have had men be the first witnesses) and the fact that there are contradictions between the versions makes me think there might have been some sort of seed that the stories sprang from. But his death and resurrection don't really mean anything to me. I'm more interested in what he taught while he was alive. Some of that was great, some of it terrible.

 

A lot of people, still today, seem to "come back from death"; when they weren't actually dead in the first place.

IMHO if you need a miracle to prove the existence of a superior being ... you're looking at it all wrong.

 

I personally love the Buddha's answer regarding death and the afterlife. When asked what, if anything, survives after death, he smiled and asked what, if anything, survives moment to moment, even during life. In Buddhism, there is no "soul" or "self" that remains the same entity moment to moment, much less between life and death.

But I also like Jesus's teachings about treating earth as the Kingdom of Heaven instead of waiting for an afterlife.

 

Judea and Rome had fairly cozy "patron-client" relationship. Indeed, Herod the Great and Augustus had gotten along just fine. Things started to go somewhat downhill after Herod the Great died about the time that Jesus Christ was born. Along came Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, who had a contentious, surly population of unhappy Jews to govern, and his background suggested that he wasn't on the best of terms with Roman Emperor Tiberius, either.

So, as the story goes, when the Jewish "Elders" (priesthood) started raising hell about Jesus Christ, Pilate acquiesced and had him crucified at the Jews' demand (verified in the writings of Roman historian, Tacitus, and Jewish historian, Josephus). Pilate didn't want to get any bad publicity back in Rome, and he mostly just wanted the whole thing to 'go away'. But, Pilate got in hot water with the Samaritan Jews anyway, and was summoned back to Rome to get his ass chewed and fired (in all likelihood), but Tiberius died in the meantime, and Pilate just kind of disappeared from history after that.

Truthfully, I have no idea what the Roman soldiers that guarded Jesus' tomb did or didn't do. But looking through a few hundred years of the history of the Roman Empire convinces me that they did as they were ordered, or they faced very unpleasant consequences....