The Jesus Inquest Quotes

“All four gospel writers were no doubt enthusiastic members of their local churches. They went there every Sunday; sometimes they preached themselves; sometimes they listened to the sermon and nodded when the tradition was repeated accurately. And eventually they were prevailed on to write down their own or their sources’ recollections of the facts that had generated the tradition. This is why it is silly for X to say: “Mark wasn’t written until the 50s at the earliest. That’s a good twenty years after Jesus died. Mark couldn’t be expected to remember things clearly after all that time.” Mark didn’t hibernate between the death of Jesus and the time he wrote his gospel, then take out his pen, scratch his head, and say: “It was a long time ago, and I’m trying to remember this for the first time, but so far as I remember it went something like this.”31”
― Charles Foster, The Jesus Inquest: The Case For and Against the Resurrection of the Christ

“[ Jesus] was probably crucified on a short Tau-cross, and died within 6 hours (probably even within 3 hours). This is not an exceptionally short period of time, and there is no reason to postulate unusual causes for his death. He probably died from the classical progressive asphyxia syndrome and hypovolaemic shock typical of the crucifixion process, finally ending in cardiac arrest as result of a vaso-vagal reflex. The latter could have been elicited by intense pain due to various causes, although hypoxaemia per se or various other less common conditions could also have pertained. The wound in Christ’s side from the spear which probably pierced his heart, was certainly inflicted after his death. The appearance of blood and water as an expected postmortem phenomenon is discussed. There is no reason to consider this as proof of a functioning blood circulation indicating apparent rather than true death.30”
― Charles Foster, The Jesus Inquest: The Case For and Against the Resurrection of the Christ

“The notion that Jesus, three days after his death, would arise alone—the firstfruits of the dead—was completely unprecedented in Jewish thought. It would never have occurred in the wildest dreams of the most eccentric first-century Jew. The only rational way to explain its appearance in the New Testament is that it actually happened.”
― Charles Foster, The Jesus Inquest: The Case For and Against the Resurrection of the Christ

“In the case of Christianity, though, there was no resurrection expectation to dash. The disciples had lived with a rabbi they believed was mortal. And, if you end the story with the crucifixion scene, he indeed proved to be mortal. If the story had ended there, it would have coincided with the disciples’ expectation. There was no reason to stop the ministry of the Jesus movement. Jesus had said some very worthwhile things. After his death, teach his message by all means. Circulate the poetry of the Sermon on the Mount. Publish the kingdom parables. Tell the world that Jesus had been a great teacher. But that is precisely what the disciples did not do. They went to their deaths saying that they had been completely surprised by the next phase of the story. They said they had been completely wrong in their expectation. They said that Jesus had risen. And that was the core of their preaching. Excise the resurrection from the teaching of the early church and you have no teaching and no early church at all.”
― Charles Foster, The Jesus Inquest: The Case For and Against the Resurrection of the Christ

“Whether Jesus rose or not isn’t affected by the brutality, chauvinism, or downright tediousness of his followers through the ages. It’s a matter of mere history: the fact or fallacy of the resurrection is in the same class of alleged facts as the contention that the battle of Agincourt was fought in 1415, or that I caught the 0856 train this morning. And so it is subject to the same sort of historical inquiry.”
― Charles Foster, The Jesus Inquest: The Case For and Against the Resurrection of the Christ