Elvis Prestley Never Died

[dB-Paradox]

I was only four years old when Elvis died, and so I only remember hearing stories of the Elvis sightings years later.  But I'm trying to make a modern day connection with these claims and how no one took the seriously, and how the claims that Jesus' tomb was found empty and that he was alive again was not taken seriously.  What I'm wondering is, did anyone take a serious look at the Elvis claims?  Was his grave ever exhumed and his coffin opened up to prove a decomposing corpse lay inside?  I'm assuming not, but before I use it as an argument on a Christian, I just want to be 100% certain.  Thanks!

[flockoff]

Elvis Prestley never died, but Elvis Presley sure did

 

I don't know about Elvis, but people close to Jim Morrison gave some credence to the notion that his death was faked.

 

Actually, I have trouble seeing where you're going with this. The claims were of Elvis never dying but faking his death to get out of the limelight only to be sighted by the odd country bumpkin, and Jesus actually dying but resurrecting to a large number of eyewitnesses. Apples and oranges?

[OnceConvinced]

Whether Elvis died or not, is of no real concern. Maybe if someone started telling us we should live our lives based on his music or started threatening us with hell if we didn't believe he was still alive, it might be a different story. But hope you manage to find out what you need to know.

[dB-Paradox]

The argument goes like this:

 

Jesus' tomb was empty, and he was seen alive by his closest followers and then to 500 other people.  Apologists claim that the Jewish authorities could have produced the corpse of Jesus to squash any further stories of these Jesus sightings, but since they didn't, he MUST have risen from the dead!

 

Elvis' coffin was claimed to contain a wax figure of him, and he was actually still alive and seen by various people.  His family, or the state, or whatever, could easily dig up his grave and show that there is a decomposing corpse of Elvis inside, squashing such stupid theories, but they don't because no one takes such claims seriously.  The same goes for the silence of the Sandy Hook families.  The reason they're not giving any attention to the Truthers is not because the Truthers are on to something, but because the Truthers are not taken seriously.

 

Likely, no one took the newly created Jesus cult or their claims seriously, which is why the Jewish authorities didn't spend extra energy into finding the corpse of Jesus and producing it.  That, and the empty tomb tradition probably didn't start circulating until 25 years or so after Jesus' death.

 

Does this make sense, how I'm trying to tie a modern day example of an "empty grave" theory to the much older one?

[HymenaeusAlexander]

The argument goes like this:

 

Jesus' tomb was empty, and he was seen alive by his closest followers and then to 500 other people.  Apologists claim that the Jewish authorities could have produced the corpse of Jesus to squash any further stories of these Jesus sightings, but since they didn't, he MUST have risen from the dead!

 

Elvis' coffin was claimed to contain a wax figure of him, and he was actually still alive and seen by various people.  His family, or the state, or whatever, could easily dig up his grave and show that there is a decomposing corpse of Elvis inside, squashing such stupid theories, but they don't because no one takes such claims seriously.  The same goes for the silence of the Sandy Hook families.  The reason they're not giving any attention to the Truthers is not because the Truthers are on to something, but because the Truthers are not taken seriously.

 

Likely, no one took the newly created Jesus cult or their claims seriously, which is why the Jewish authorities didn't spend extra energy into finding the corpse of Jesus and producing it.  That, and the empty tomb tradition probably didn't start circulating until 25 years or so after Jesus' death.

 

Does this make sense, how I'm trying to tie a modern day example of an "empty grave" theory to the much older one?

 

Yeah, that's pretty much the way I addressed this claim in a recent reply letter to my uncle:

 

The reasoning that the enemies of Jesus could have easily proven that he was not raised from the dead by producing his corpse seems a bit strained. According to the book of Acts it was, at minimum, seven weeks after Jesus’ death that his disciples began to publicly proclaim his resurrection. Even if this is reliable, what good would producing a rotting seven-week-old corpse have been? There would’ve been no methods available to the first century Sanhedrin to even establish a positive identification. They would’ve known the disciples could’ve simply said, “Yeah, that’s not him. It’s just some imposter body you’ve dressed up to look like him.”

 

All of this assumes that the writer of Acts is giving us reliable historical information about when the disciples started gaining the attention of the authorities. There is every reason to believe this writer is not a reliable source, given a comparison of his timeline for Paul’s post-conversion visits to Jerusalem to Paul’s own timeline in Galatians. First-hand accounts like Paul’s are typically given historical priority over anonymous, second-hand accounts like Acts. No other New Testament writing makes reference to those very public events at Pentecost and the gospel of John even places the receiving of the Holy Spirit prior to Jesus’ ascension (John 20:22). Furthermore, things like the account of Judas’s death (Acts 1:18-19) do not align with other New Testament documents (Matt. 27:3-10), nor do this author’s writings in the gospel of Luke align with extra-biblical documents regarding the details of things like the census of Quirinius. The writer of Acts is not historically reliable, and therefore we may conclude that it could’ve easily been years after Jesus’ death before his disciples’ teaching became a noticeable problem for local religious authorities in Jerusalem. Rotting corpses and empty tombs would’ve been moot at that point.