Episode 23 – The Early Church

Remember how, a few episodes ago, we left Julius Caesar on the floor of the Senate, in a pool of blood?  Well, that’s NOT how we left Jesus at the end of the last episode.  It’s a very distinctive claim by his followers – that he did die, but that he rose from the dead.  They weren’t claiming something like Buddha’s followers or Mohammad’s followers claimed after they died.  Those groups claimed that their leader had been a prophet, and had showed them the way to God, or the way to live.  Mohammad is buried in Medina, and Buddha was probably cremated after he died, although pieces of his body are scattered all over Southeast Asia.  I visited a shrine in Thailand once that supposedly had a toe bone from the Buddha. 

But there are no such relics of Jesus’ body.