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educated, a man of words -- this was not an answer. It simply proved to him that Jesus does not know. He agreed with the priest; but behind the curtain he also agreed with a disciple of Jesus, who was a very rich man -- because only a very rich man could have been able to reach the viceroy.
And this was a simple arrangement -- that the crucifixion should happen on Friday, that it should be delayed as much as possible, so almost on Friday afternoon.... The way the Jews used to crucify people was a very torturous method, torturous in the sense that it took sometimes forty-eight hours for the person to die... because it was not like an electric chair, or a gas chamber of Adolf Hitler where within seconds thousands of people evaporate. It was a very crude method: nailing a person to a post. Now blood will ooze drop by drop, it will take time.
So this was the conspiracy -- that by the evening, when the sun sets, he will not be dead. He was only on the cross for six hours. Nobody has ever died on the Jewish cross in six hours. Twenty-four hours, thirty-six hours, forty-eight hours, people have even taken sixty hours to die. And what was the strategy? ... Because Saturday is the Sabbath, everything stops for the Jews; no work can be done. And the body of Jesus had to be brought down from the cross after six hours, because the sun was setting; now all work stopped. So he was perfectly alive; he had just lost a little blood. He never died on the cross.
So the bishop in the first place knows nothing. He is saying, "I cannot trust God conjuring with the bones and doing this miracle of resurrection." How can you conjure with bones? He knows nothing about the actuality, the facts. But at least he is an honest man. He risked his bishophood. I respect him for his honesty, but he is stupid also. He does not know the real story behind the facade of the resurrection.
Jesus is taken down from the cross, put into a cave, with a big rock as a door so he cannot escape -- because the people who brought him down knew perfectly well that he is alive. Even in The Bible it is reported that one soldier poked his sword into his side and blood came out. Blood does
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