What is the point of just listing "all aberrant views ever held through history" about a certain topic if you then do not say what you believe yourself and why? I appreciate that you "only listed" and have not said you believe this. I would be interested to hear what you really believe and why. But why do you try to make "the whole topic" very doubtful by just listing many opinions on it? Don't you think I can make the issue "how the Qur'an came into being" very doubtful if I just list all the strange theories that people have brought forward over the centuries - whether I myself think these speculations are valid or laughable? Without evaluation of the theories and then saying what I think about it, I hold this to be purposeful deception, trying to make the impression on people "because there are so many views (no matter how solid or ridiculous) this shows how little we know and how uncertain it really is". Because many people have very different and not so favorable opinions about Muhammad and the Qur'an, would you therefore agree that it is a very doubtful and uncertain matter? In fact any important event in history which claims consequences for today will invariably draw much attention of many people and the more attention it gets the more theories will spring up on it. Does it mean the more important an event is the less sure we can be about it? I am interested to know what YOU believe. And then we can debate on whether your belief is sound or not. I am not really interested to debate speculations you don't believe either. Now, in order to illustrate this point a bit clearer, let's assume that you (rightly) believe that 2 + 2 = 4. But for whatever reason, I am strongly opposed to this view. Now, I haven't decided yet what the addition of 2 and 2 should be, but that is rather unsubstantial. I bring you a long list of people who have all kinds of ideas of how to promote that 2 + 2 = 5, others strongly believe 2 + 2 = 18, while some lonely defender wrote many books on why 2 + 2 = -1. Would you say that a long list of people believing contradictory things is an impressive case against your belief that "2 + 2 = 4" ? No, even if you have 200 people who believe something else but contradict each other, all these many people have no stronger case than any one of them just for himself. Because their theories contradict each other, AT MOST one of could be right. And therefore all of them together are no stronger than any one of them alone. Alternative theory A can either support or contradict alternative theory B. In fact, rather than supporting each other, they weaken each other's case because they show that all these efforts have only proven that it is no easy thing to disprove "2 + 2 = 4" and nobody has had any convincing arguments yet. THAT is the reason so many of these theories exist. Conclusion: Although I don't know why anybody should have anything against "2 + 2 = 4", I know a lot of people who have much motivation to be against the "death and resurrection of Jesus". But because it is such a clear case, it is impossible to come up with any intelligable theory against it. THAT is the reason for all these many theories and the huge number of contradictory speculations testifies to the strength of the Biblical eyewitness accounts. Not just atheists are exceedingly bothered by the resurrection of Jesus. That is also testified to by the several contradictory speculations Muslims have come up with on top of the ones promoted by the unbelievers. Although the historical event of cross and resurrection is the CENTER of the Christian faith, the originator of the Qur'an [whoever it may be] has "seemingly" not bothered to give any coherent explanation on this topic, but was content to just declare: "It was an illusion and didn't really happen." It was important enough to be against it, but not important enough to explain what really happened. And in the next sentence it is then said: "If you doubt you are of those who have no knowledge." EXACTLY: Because I do not have the knowledge, therefore I doubt. Or rather: Because I do have knowledge based on strong evidence I am not going to just accept a claim to the contrary without any backup evidence, but any such claim will induce strong doubt in me. Do Muslims really want to say that that I should believe AGAINST evidence and reason?
Overview on topic of the crucifixion.
Answering Islam home page.