[WARNING: i am an amateur and not qualified in christian theology. everything here is written by a hobbyist.]

i'm not sure if anyone here is ex-christian like me (there's probably someone out there), but one of my favorite past times nowadays is digging into the bible and each and every issue that arises within it. the central aspect of christianity and what makes it unique is the way its god died. jesus of nazareth was born in 6-4 BC and crucified in 33 AD. he was nailed to a cross along with two other people (both thieves) and his body was placed in a tomb from which he rose on the third day after his death. christ's resurrection, as said in the bible, is proof of his divinity and all that he has claimed and said. as said by paul in corinthians:

1 Corinthians 15:14: And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is useless, and so is your faith.

everything in christianity revolves around their savior rising from the dead after suffering one of the most gruesome executions imaginable and forgiving everyone who took part in his death, no matter their degree of involvement. his forgiveness of his enemies and the entire world's sins is what defines christian faith before anything else. but the story of jesus' death is a lot murkier than you might've been told in bible school. when i found that out, my faith started crumbling, which is why i revisit this topic every so often.

there is only a handful of things that scholars can definitely confirm about the way jesus died. to follow the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, certain facts about jesus need a lot of hoop jumping to make sense. a lot of details about his death have ranged from "definitely true" to "completely bonkers", with each of claims falling somewhere in between. here are some of the key details that are debated about jesus' death to this day:

• the time it took for jesus to die: the bible states that jesus was crucified somewhere around 9 AM (mark 12:25) and died six hours later (matthew 27:46-50, mark 15:33-37, luke 23:44-46). the gospel of john claims that he actually died three hours later (john 19:14-18) and was then carried off to be buried. the usual apologetic for that claim is that john was counting in roman time while the other three gospels were counting in jewish time. okay, sure. makes sense.

• jesus' quick death from a slow torture method: if we're gonna go with the longer estimate of time it took for jesus to die, aka 7 hours, then it is a bloody miracle (no pun intended) that he died so quick. crucifixions take much longer than 7 hours to kill someone. that is by design. they are a torture method first and an execution second. all that's done to the body when crucified is the limbs being nailed to the cross. that's it. the whole purpose of crucifixions is humiliation and torture. criminals who were subjected to crucifixions were left there to slowly die of either exposure, starvation, organ failure or suffocation. their corpse was specifically left there to intimidate whoever sympathized with the victim. 7 hours is not nearly enough to kill someone via crucifixion. in certain cases, it would take days for someone to finally die after being nailed to a cross. how come jesus got it so easy?

• what was done to jesus' corpse: continuing on from the last point; if crucifixion, as a torture method, was specifically designed to humiliate the victim and intimidate the sympathizers, why was his corpse immediately taken down after his death? unless you had connections, or were important enough (which jesus really wasn't at the time), your body would at most get tossed in a mass grave or just left up to be eaten by vultures. so tell me why jesus was granted the privilege of a burial, but designated guards? what the fuck were guards doing at a random person's tomb? he was, at most, an apocalyptic preacher claiming the title of king of the jews, who was a mild pain in the ass to the romans; what did he do to deserve such treatment? (further reading on this issue)

• "jesus has risen" and the gap in mark: after three days of being dead (well, more like a day and a half), jesus' tomb was empty. jesus was gone. the women came to the tomb to... well, each gospel claimed they've done different things. and how many women came to the tomb. and who greeted them inside the tomb. and who they told, if anyone at all. each gospel says something different, so pick and choose what you want to believe. i can already hear young me say, "but one thing they all shared is that, in each of them, jesus came back from the dead!". oh how wrong i was. in the gospel of mark, which is the oldest out of the main four canonical gospels (mark, matthew, john, luke), the resurrection of jesus is only mentioned and never described. what also needs to be said is that in all four gospels we never actually see the resurrection happen; rather, we're shown a scene of the empty tomb, the opened gate and the animated jesus, alive as ever, preaching further prophecies and eventually leaving earth. but what is unique about mark is that while it mentions that jesus has risen, the earliest manuscripts of mark never actually tell us what jesus was doing after he came back from the dead. which makes it a possibility that everything jesus supposedly said after he came back from the dead was a later addition. mark 16:5-8 is where the earliest mark ends, and it reads as follows:

Mark 16:5-8: As they [the women] entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

• the 500 witnesses and the issue with hearsay: jesus died in 33 AD. after his death, he resurrected and stayed on earth for [less than a day (mark 16:9, luke 24:13), another 40 days (acts 1:3), unspecified (matthew 28:10, john 21:25)]. since then, the stories of the new testament entered circulation. they were initially passed down orally from person to person until around 50 AD, when the first book of the new testament was finally put to paper. 18 years is already an insane amount of telephone that was played with the most important writings in the world, but the canonical gospels were written even later, with mark's earliest copy written down around 66 AD. even putting that aside, 18 of the 66 books (in the protestant canon) were written anonymously, with the four canonical gospels, john and hebrews being a part of that number. the most prolific writer of the new testament, who wrote 13 books, is paul. paul was also the one to claim, in 1 corinthians 15:6, that there were 500 witnesses to jesus' resurrection. that number is mentioned nowhere else in the bible, including the four canonical gospels. it is not known where paul got that number from. the source of the original claim remains a mystery even to paul himself. we know nothing of the original 500 witnesses; none of them wrote their own accounts or were mentioned in the earlier NT books. the claim is essentially hearsay that somehow made it to the bible for no known reason.

• bonus point: the three-hour darkness: this is less important than anything listed before, but i still want to bring this up. it is said that during jesus' crucifixion, there was 3 hours of complete darkness that covered the earth, along with a zombie apocalypse and an earthquake. it is mentioned in all 3 synoptic gospels (matthew, mark, luke). the actual event that took place during the 3 hours of darkness is widely debated, but the usual position that believers might take in this question is that there was a solar eclipse that came over jerusalem. solar eclipses do not last longer than a few minutes. some may claim that the "three hours" is a mistranslation, but that still won't help the case. because in 33 AD, there were two solar eclipses, both of which both were nowhere near jerusalem. the first one took place entirely in the ocean, and the second one passing over inland asia.

religion is an odd thing, innit?