You asked me above
SirAnonymous Are these objections original with you, or did you get them from somewhere?
At the time my answer to you was this:
Stephen: I wouldn't know is a short answer. ......
But since then I have have come across a wonderful piece of work that appears to agree with me.
In their book The Hiram Key _ Pharaohs, Freemasons And The Discovery Of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus- authors Christophe Knight and Dr Robert Lomas wrote as follows:
" Sometimes people underwent a temporary 'death ' by leaving the inner group and then being readmitted [raised from the dead]. An example of this was Lazarus, who lost his nerve when the going got tough towards the end of Jesus' life.
They go on:
"The kind of expression of the 'living and the 'dead' has been shown, beyond all doubt, to have been the terminology used at the rime of Jesus and those that insist on taking it literally not only deny all the evidence but also do a great disservice to a unique and brilliant teacher........."
"The idea of a rotting corpse being brought back to life would have been a disgusting concept to all Jews of the age, and for modern Christians to think that such things were spoken of in such a matter- of - fact way is as foolish as thinking that magic carpets were the usual mode of transport in Baghdad. people who are generally pragmatic seem open to believing that the ridiculous could have happened in the remote past in some lost 'golden age'. "
So unless anyone can convince me otherwise, I am sticking to my own belief that "raising the dead" is / was, nothing more than an initiation ceremony into the inner circle of the Jesus movement of called the "living".