Christ! I Want Your Body

The following four basic objectives have been incorporated into this book:

1)      To provide a solid foundation, a fresh review  of portions of the Old and New Testaments to present material for understanding Jesus as an historical Jew who lived and died as a human being. This is required as well to understand those who established a religion in his name as the Christ of their faith. 

2)      To look at the possible misinterpretations and contradictions that seem to be prevalent, though well-meaning, in the Bible.  Why has it been so perplexing and deeply disappointing to find so many differences, changes and inconsistencies in what has always been considered "The infallible Word of God?" This is terribly frustrating to find them further multiplied when considering the many different versions and the many Bible translations.

3)      To look at the results of this search to find what I understand and believe was the real message that Jesus was sending.  It consumed his life and he determined it to be exceptionally critical to the well-being of all people of his time.  It was such an overwhelming message that it applied not only to the people then, but is just as potent for us today, but from quite a different perspective.

4)      The last objective is critical with regard to the first three specifically, but also to the book itself and has to do with being objective and honest.  I have tried to be careful to always point out that most of the material in this book is my opinion and those of the authors and scholars whom I quote. Even when I quote a dictionary or the Bible, please know that what is written is surely the best effort of the writers and interpreters to inform the readers of what they see as the truth. For instance in (3) above, there is no way to ever know the exact words Jesus said, and even less exactly what he ment by them.

To accomplish those objectives the first three chapters have been written primarily to build and provide the foundation for the explanations of research that follows in later chapters. In doing so, there are many references to earlier researched criteria. All chapters are divided into four parts each.

The first chapter (26 pgs.) recognizes and establishes the basic understanding of the meaning of the “Christ” both in the Old and New Testaments.  The following four understandings of "Jesus' body" are researched to determine if the church has in fact produced and promoted far more than Jesus ever intended, i.e. (1) Has the church fostered the universal depiction of Jesus in art forms that can be recognized and worshiped around the globe? (2) Has the church encouraged a cult like following regarding the alleged burial cloth of Jesus as an icon to be revered and venerated? (3) Has the church enhanced and glorified the metaphorical example which Jesus' simple gesture of sharing a Passover meal with his friends had established?  Has it created a cannibalistic ritual where its constituents are to believe they are actually ingesting parts of a dead human body? (4) Has the church some-how managed to convince millions of people that the religious institution of "Christianity" actually represents the body of a Jewish peasant who lived  so long ago? Has all this grown entirely beyond what Jesus originally intended?

The second chapter, (45 pgs.) continues the recognition of the basic data provided in the Bible for the foundation on which the study has been built. In the first section, the afterlife and resurrection beliefs and ideas understood by Jesus and his contemporaries, as depicted in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are described. For the second section the same is researched for the New Testament to examine what the early church believed after the crucifixion. What revealing insights are to be found by laying out side by side comparisons of the synoptic gospels about Jesus’ last days, the crucifixion, Easter morning, the appearances and resurrection stories?

The third chapter, (82 pgs.) based on the work of many Christian historians, completes my foundation work by detailing the early work of the Christian church (the Body of Christ) in its formative years.  Early Christian letters and manuscripts telling of their beliefs and how they individually interpreted the way the church should continue to change are discussed.  The group and individual skirmishes to gain the approval of others in helping them launch political agendas is documented. The influence that the Roman Empire had on the on-going establishment of "Christianity" is examined closely.  The growth through the centuries and struggles of later years resulting from influences in addition to the early Roman Empire are shown.  Twentieth and twenty-first century survey statistics are revealed regarding aspects of Christianity viewed by the population at large after two thousand years.

The fourth chapter (58 pgs.) starts erecting a structure of data on the foundation provided in the previous chapters.  Although several Scholars are quoted earlier, this is where the reader is provided additional direct input from those scholars who have spent their lives studying the life of Jesus and the Christian Church.  There are brief biographies and titles of the Scholars’ works, with the publishers’ names provided if available.  Some quotes are from television documentaries, where the year and name of the TV studio that prepared t