Jesus Never Said in the Gospels: “I Was Dead and Now I Am Alive!”

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD A comment by a devoted Christian in the Muslim Times gave me the title of my article or column for today. I have known it before as well that Jesus never said in the Gospels: “I was dead and now I am alive!” However, today, I took on a careful reading of all the canonical Gospels from where he is put on the cross to the ending of each Gospel.  It is called Horizontal Reading of Gospels.  So, I read the account horizontally with a special purpose in mind. Did Jesus describe his death and his resurrection, in so many words? What is Horizontal Reading and what do we learn by this simple tool, about this issue, at hand? We will also consider if the followers of Jesus, have been putting words in his mouth? Horizontal Reading is a method of textual analysis used to compare multiple accounts of a similar event – such as the two creation stories found in Genesis, or the accounts of the life of Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament. This cross-referencing is useful for finding Biblical contradictions. Another example of horizontal reading would be the practice of reading various newspaper accounts of a single incident. Given a story of a banking scandal, The Economist may attribute the incident to lax regulation, while The Sun, a newspaper so low-brow it’s practically a beard, would be more likely to blame “fat cats” and immigrants. The primary advantage of horizontal reading is that it allows a comparison between multiple accounts of an event. Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar and author of several books examining the history of Christianity and the Biblical Canon, advocates horizontal reading in his book Jesus, Interrupted.^[1] He advises readers to read a gospel account, taking notes while doing so, and then repeat the process for the account of the same event found in another gospel. This leads readers to find hitherto unnoticed discrepancies and contradictions. Prof. Bart Ehrman describes horizontal reading of the Gospels in this short video clip: So, I went to Bible Gateway and read the New International Version, as I find that most readable.  Most scholars believe that the Gospel of Mark was the first to be written, some 30 years after crucifixion and so I started reading that first.  I did not find any mention of Jesus saying, “I was dead and now I am alive!” Read more »*This blog is completely unofficial and in no way represents Islam Ahmadiyya or the views of anyone except the author themself.*