Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, and he disappeared from their sight. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love But the most amazing discovery was yet to come. The grave clothes in which Jesus was laid to rest had been shrugged off, and the body was gone. Maybe Jesus really did bring the boy back from the dead. That meaning was what left the disciples awestruck. He had led and sustained them through the years in the wilderness, and had shaped their moral code, their sense of community, their legal system and their pattern of worship. They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?". In this particular ossuary, the archaeologists found one bone that particularly caught their attention. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid.

It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. By rebuking the wind and the sea, Jesus was showing that he had authority over the elements. That environment would be radically different for a bystander in first century Nain. They sat and listened, but they had an agenda. One morning they stumbled across something unusual. Since the first century, quarries have doubled as city rubbish dumps, but two thousand years ago they were places of execution too. You might think Jesus would be furious, or shocked, when his teaching was interrupted so dramatically. This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country. Many, however, accept that a remarkable healing took place that day in the house at Capernaum. But in the middle of the twentieth century a remarkable discovery offered the hope of doing just that. How conscious was Jesus that his miracles were acting as signs? And that is the historical evidence on which the resurrection is based - an empty tomb and several dramatic appearances by the risen Jesus to his disciples. This man of war would come to liberate the Jews from Roman oppression. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. Others have speculated that the mood of harmony and selflessness spread by Jesus' teaching might have inspired the crowd to offer up their own private supplies of food and share them with each other. Or were they witnesses to a genuine and unprecedented event in human history? They saw the works of the Lord, And on the back of that belief, a great world religion was built. Today it is a park, but from the evidence of chiselling all over the rock face, it is clear to archaeologists that this was once a quarry. Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?" Jesus was in the small town of Capernaum, where he and the disciples had made their home. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. They said to him, "That would take eight months of a man's wages! Those tell-tale signs, like nails stuck through bones, are always missing. Or did he see himself as God? Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, In fact, there are strong grounds for thinking that Jesus - like all Jews - would have been given a proper burial. An extract from The Miracles of Jesus explains the cultural relevance, and the deeper Biblical meaning, behind Jesus's works. Of course, some have argued that the paralysed man may have suffered from a psychosomatic illness, that his paralysis did not have a physical cause and was therefore more susceptible to suggestion. Was this the fate of Jesus' body, to be placed in a simple quarry tomb close to the place where he died? ", Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, "Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? However, the timing was very unfortunate. It is a bleak, uninhabited part of the landscape. And so began the final conquest of the promised land, beginning with that most historic armed struggle, the battle of Jericho. Sudden violent storms from the east in the early evenings of winter are well known in the area. Now I have told you.". Well, there are vital clues in the detail of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, clues that betray striking symbolic parallels between Jesus and Moses. "Go and see."

they were at their wits' end. Well, first he had crossed the waters of the Red Sea, and then he had stopped in the Sinai desert. It was the custom in Jesus' time for the bones of the dead to be removed from their tomb after six to twenty-four months, and placed in an ossuary to make the tomb available for other corpses. He called out to them, "Friends, haven't you any fish?" Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Did the women go to the wrong tomb? She said to Elijah, "What do you have against me, man of God? Either way, they were usually dead before long. However, once they reach the desert, Jesus' disciples ask him how two loaves and five fishes are going to feed such a substantial crowd. "What things?" The feeding of the multitude would put first-century Jews in mind of a towering figure in Jewish history, someone even greater than the prophet Elijah. As Jesus and the disciples set out on one of their many trips across the Sea of Galilee, they were hit by an unexpected and violent crisis, as recounted here in the Gospel of Mark. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat." One of the central tenets of Christian history was under threat, and the case for the resurrection of Jesus potentially undermined. Well, theologians set about the task in much the same way that we examine any remarkable or contentious event in our own time: by scrutinizing the motives and accounts of eyewitnesses who were there at the right place and time, and the reporters who mediate the eyewitness accounts to us. But what does it mean, this copycat miracle? Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. Their new movement which promised so much is now on the verge of extinction. and his wonderful deeds for men. But it didn't leave the disciples calm and liberated from their troubles. It's a captivating story - Jesus interrupting a funeral cortge to bring the deceased back to life. In 2008 Professor Gary Habermas, one of the USA's most respected philosophers, gave an interview to the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4. Why didn't looters make off with it, or Roman soldiers reuse it? Here, at last, was the leader who would take up the mantle of Moses and Joshua, who would foment revolution, overthrow Roman tyranny and liberate the people of Israel.

Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. They were waiting for a military saviour who could do to the Romans both what Moses did to the Egyptians and what Joshua had done to the Canaanites. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. But the precise identity of this saviour has been less clear. When they looked inside the tomb, archaeologists discovered an ossuary - a stone box - containing bones from the time of Jesus. In fact, they reach a place on the north-east shore of the lake that is so lonely it is known as 'the desert'. Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. 'Friend, your sins are forgiven.' He said "Young man, I say to you, get up!" But for the disciples, that revelation was not to be greeted with unalloyed joy. The original account can be found in the Gospel of Mark: The apostles gathered round Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Just south of the city of Jerusalem is one such place. But as with Jesus' healing of the widow's son at Nain, the key element here is the belief of the crowd that a miracle had taken place. Today, it is not hard to see how it came by its name. As the news of Jesus' remarkable healings spread, more and more people came to hear him and brought their sick and dying loved ones to him. These officials had travelled from every village in Galilee, and from Judea and Jerusalem, to hear him. Jesus - it appears - can control the very elements "Who is this that even the wind and sea obey him?". In fact, it more than reminded them. Those desperate friends of the paralyzed man could have reached the roof through a neighbouring house. The story - as told in the book of Kings - goes that Elijah was staying with a widow in a small town when her son fell ill. Perhaps that is one reason why only one victim of crucifixion has been found to date. If the bones of crucified rebels were not ending up in ossuaries, then perhaps it was because the original victims were not being placed in tombs in the first place. It's the act of someone with incredible power, and it makes the disciples question who on earth Jesus was. Same circumstances, same outcome. In the mornings the ground was covered with manna - the bread of heaven - like a fall of snow. Perhaps Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah who would set the Jews free from Roman occupation. Moses had fashioned these exiled slaves into a people of God, but he was not the man who delivered them into the promised land. Then the woman said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.". "Give me your son," Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. One passage from the book of Psalms recalls occasions in the history of the Jewish nation when God had used his power to rescue his people, and the way he used that power is strikingly reminiscent of the way Jesus used his power that day on the Sea of Galilee. As a military saviour like Moses and Joshua? And those ancient scriptures did more than locate the sea as a place inhabited by evil. To those people who saw it happen there was no doubt - Jesus had brought the widow's son back to life. Could Jesus be seen as the new Moses and the new Joshua? Jews at the time of Jesus were praying for a military saviour who could do to their Roman oppressors what Moses had done to the Egyptians. Either he really was God in human form, or this was nothing short of blasphemy, and blasphemers were mad or demonic. In Tel Aviv, curators at the Israel Antiquities Authority museum had a unique opportunity to find out. "About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. By Michael Symmons RobertsLast updated 2009-09-18. Not only were they used to cut stone for building, they were also used by the Romans for public executions. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?" The truth is that most rebels were not nailed to their crosses, but tied to them. In those desperate hours, he must have looked more like another deluded rebel who had got it badly wrong; just another young man with big ideas who had underestimated Roman power. If that is the case, then it raises a big question: where, if not in a tomb, did the bodies of Jewish rebels like Jesus finish up? As soon as Moses reached the Sinai wilderness his Hebrew people asked him what on earth they were going to eat, to sustain them in that barren landscape. What made this bone distinctive was the rusty nail still lodged in it. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish you have just caught." They knew it was the Lord. Was Jesus the new Moses? According to these accounts, some of his female followers - in Mark's account it's Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, but it's 'Mary Magdalene and the other Mary' in Matthew - made their way to Jesus's tomb to cover his body in oils, herbs and spices. Some of the crowd were locals, but Luke says there were also Pharisees and teachers of the Law there. As it has passed down the centuries, the miracle of the stilling of the storm has lost its edge. Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. And if that were true then was it possible that the body of Jesus was never placed in a tomb?