Monday, May 15, 2006

 

How Jesus Survived the Crucifixion

By Chris Brand

A) After the Resurrection

While the Gospels offer ample testimony to Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances, they leave a nagging question about the crucial first day of Jesus' new life. Whether to Mary Magdalene - in St John's account - or to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus seems to have been initially unwilling to identify himself. Indeed, it appears from both of the accounts offered that in these early encounters he may have been in disguise. Mary mistakes him for a gardener; and the two disciples walked with him for several miles without appreciating anything but his considerable knowledge of Old Testament prophecy. Further, his having to be `constrained' (Lk. XXIV 29) to stay with his disciples in the evening suggests that Jesus had a purpose on the road to Emmaus that is quite consistent with such furtive behaviour. Quite simply, he may have been fleeing the country. Allowing ourselves the liberty of a materialist interpretation of the Ascension, it is possible that he went on to do just that: having survived one crucifixion, who would willingly put himself at risk of another? Prior to that, his object was at least to leave Jerusalem. And the plan he adopted seems to have been to have a reunion with the disciples in Galilee (Matt. XXVIII 10). But, if Jesus was fleeing, what made him adopt the attention-getting role of a resurrected man?

Whatever the time-scale of Jesus' post-Resurrection ministry, it seems that it was his discovery by the disciples at Emmaus that tempted him to risk one final coup. On finding that the disciples were indeed prepared to accept the possibility that he might have risen from the dead, Jesus - after at first `vanishing out of their sight' (Lk. XXIV 31), possibly to manufacture some stigmata - clearly resolved to give a convincing impression that his own prophecies had been fulfilled. It may seem unlikely that Jesus would - or could - have manufactured the necessary symptoms of a recent crucifixion. Certainly, as some scholars have recently pointed out, it is unlikely that the Romans would have driven nails through the hands - rather than wrists - of a crucified man. But, according to the Gospel records of the stigmata, there is at least some possibility that he did not possess them during his first two post-Resurrection appearances. First, they are not mentioned; secondly, there is a remarkable change in Jesus' attitude to receiving bodily contact over his first resurrected day. To Mary Magdalene, Jesus says "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father" (Jn. XX 17). But on his re-appearance to the disciples after `vanishing' from Emmaus, he advised them to "handle me and see" (Lk. XXIV 39). In fact, the Gospels contain no explicit record of anyone taking up that invitation - not even Thomas, eight days later. But Jesus' change in attitude is at least consistent with the notion that the exploitable potential of the disciples' gullibility was only apparent to him after the careful sounding-out on the journey to Emmaus. In short, there is some reason to believe that Jesus' early encounters with his disciples led him to change his mind about revealing his physical condition.

Whether such fanciful stories have any validity must in turn depend on just what his condition was. What could Jesus have initially had to hide? If the Gospel records of Jesus eventually displaying his stigmata are to be given any credence, then to suggest that he had not died during crucifixion does not square with his change of heart. Why need he have waited? The same question arises for the traditional Christian interpretation. To account for Jesus' reluctance to reveal himself on his triumphal day, we are driven inexorably to consider a third alternative. Perhaps Jesus had not been crucified at all? Perhaps he had escaped crucifixion but, as a result of his chance meetings, had come to realize that none of his disciples would be likely to challenge the attractive version of the previous three days that he eventually proceeded to offer them? (More charitably, it is likely that the disciples' own enthusiasm at his re-appearance would have placed him in as embarrassing position: he might thus have felt socially constrained to provide a Messianic performance.) Even Thomas may not have been beyond succumbing to emotionally-charged intimidation from whatever combination of Jesus and the other disciples. Too diffident, perhaps, to subject Jesus to a proper medical at such a time, he preferred to simply acknowledge "My Lord and my God".

Just who could have rolled the stone from the tomb and removed the other body that Joseph of Arimethea had originally put there is a crucial problem to which we will return. It could have been Jesus himself - with helpers such as Joseph and Nicodemus. Even if he had not intended to reveal himself, he might have felt that the mere disappearance of his `body' from the tomb might ensure the perpetuation of his legend during the self-imposed exile that he anticipated. Removal of the body into the councillors' safer keeping would have prevented its identification by any suspicious Jews or Romans. If we accept St John's account of Jesus' meeting with Mary, this is a reasonable hypothesis which gives Jesus a motivation for visiting the tomb. Alternatively, we shall see that there are two other possibilities. One is perhaps unlikely in that it might seem to burden Jesus with the murder of a most trusty friend. The other is calculated to preserve the maximum integrity for both Jesus and his disciples; and its likelihood can only be seen as part of a coherent story of what had happened to all the major figures of the Gospel story during the previous three days. Even if such an opening of the tomb could have been arranged, we must clearly first consider what further reason we have to accept the tentative possibility that it was not Jesus' body that had been buried. In fact, it is only in the course of such a fresh look at old evidence that it is possible to show not only how the Resurrection happened but why it had to happen.


B) The Crucifixion

Ruling out the remote possibility of Jesus having genuinely survived a crucifixion without actually dying, it now behoves us to examine the hypothesis that he never went to the Cross at all. What evidence do the Gospels offer as to whether he attended the Crucifixion? While there is virtual unanimity that three women were witnesses to the Crucifixion, there is disagreement between the Gospels as to how near to the Cross they were. St Mathew and St Mark record them as being `afar off', whereas St John says they were `near' or `by' the Cross; St Luke does not commit himself. Having regard to the majority opinion - as also to likely Roman practice at crucifixions - it would seem reasonable to believe that these observers from Jesus' Galilean ministry were probably not in a very good position to observe just who was actually being crucified. Additionally it should be remembered that - as is the case for religious attendance in our own day - many of the adult followers who were keen enough to make the trek to Calvary were probably middle-aged women (Lk XXIII 27). Without spectacles, the vision of many of them would have been poor; and, doubtless, those who had known Jesus well would have been so distraught with grief as to be quite incapable of reliably recording what proceeded. Mary Magdalene may have been rather younger: only she, amongst the three explicitly mentioned as being present, was not a mother. But, by the traditional Christian account itself, she was no expert at identifying Jesus when she saw him: she mistook him for a gardener on Resurrection morning. Moreover, it would be in accordance with tradition to suppose that Jesus - or his substitute - was so mutilated prior to crucifixion that he would have been less than readily recognizable to even an attentive and reliable observer.

Three further considerations were relevant to an assessment of whether a substitute could have passed for Jesus during the Crucifixion. The first is that it is by no means clear that Jesus was as well known a figure in Jerusalem as Christians are inclined to assume. Even the Jewish authorities themselves - concerned as they supposedly were at his preaching - had to resort to Judas to identify the man they wanted to arrest after Jesus had overthrown the tables of the moneychangers in the basement of the Jerusalem temple. It was not enough for them to be told his hiding-place: Jesus had to be personally identified - by a kiss from Judas. Secondly, had a substitute for Jesus been provided at some stage in the Crucifixion story, the planner of such an operation would certainly have tried to ensure that the substitute was a reasonable physical and psychological match. Of course, it would have required great good fortune to get all the necessary details right - or to get all the discrepancies omitted from the historical record: and at least one mistake seems to have been made. According to St John, the man on the Cross was not sufficiently obliging to refuse the sour wine that was offered him (Jn XIX 29, 30 (New English Bible)). He thus failed to fulfil Jesus' pledge that he would `drink no more of the fruit of the vine till he drank it new in the kingdom of God' (Mk XIV 25). This contradiction clearly went unobserved during the Crucifixion: a further testimony is thereby provided to the absence of the most vital witnesses. Thirdly, quite straightforwardly, it will be remembered that the Gospels themselves testify directly that all the disciples had forsaken Jesus at the time of the arrest (e.g. Matt. XXVI 56). The amazing absence of the disciples from the publicly accessible events of Calvary may further testify either their treachery or their complete ignorance that any arrest had ever taken place; but it certainly deprives the traditional account of the Crucifixion of an important source of confirmatory evidence.

The only exception to this general account is provided by St John. But his account of Jesus' conversation from the Cross with `the disciple whom he loved' (Jn XIX 26) is problematic in three ways. First, it does not identify Jesus with any certainty. In saying "Woman, behold thy son" and - to the disciple - "Behold thy mother", the man on the Cross may just have been commending a weeping, but unrelated woman to the care and attention of a younger man. The first saying does not definitely indicate that the crucified man thought Mary was actually his own mother. Secondly, one might take the commands to reveal a mistaken assumption of kinship between John and Mary. This would constitute direct evidence that the man on the Cross could not have been Jesus. Thirdly, the scene is none too plausible anyway. How could a man dying of lumbar collapse talk to anyone at all - yet alone to a person who, if she was Jesus' mother, would have been standing `afar off' according to St Mathew and St Mark? As with St John's chapter-long account of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane - which occurred, according to the other Gospels, while Jesus was physically apart from his disciples and while they were asleep - it is frankly reasonable to suspect St John of a vivid imagination. Of course, Jesus is supposed to have said other things on the Cross - either to the two thieves crucified with him or to nobody in particular. But these were not long-distance conversations; and their content - which may subsequently have been relayed by the soldiers guarding the Cross - was not such as to be peculiarly characteristic of Jesus. After all, if we suppose that some innocent bystander had been substituted for Jesus by Pilate or whomever, would we not expect him to say at his crucifixion something like "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me" - or words to that effect? Further, if Jesus' proper place had been taken by some unfortunate who was himself of a religious-paranoid disposition, why should such a man not have undertaken to `forgive' the more agreeable of his co-crucifixees?

In fact, the only point at which there appears to have close contact between Jesus' followers and the man who was crucified occurs on the removal of the corpse to the tomb. But, even here, St John records that the councillor who was able to approach Pilate to have the body removed from the Cross was only a `secret' disciple (Jn XIX 38). It is perhaps unlikely that a man in such a position would ever have been able to afford much time to consort with humble Galileans. And the same might surely be said of Nicodemus - if St John's lone account of his appearance is correct: he had only once previously seen Jesus, and that was at night for fear of his position. Moreover, these two Jewish worthies may well have belonged to the priestly castes who were not allowed to handle the dead in person: in that case, only their servants would have been in close contact with the body. Alternatively, two such capable and responsible dignitaries would have been ideal partners in one of the most successful conspiracies of all time. For their unique position would have been that they could have been expected to guard the body from the prying eyes of suspicious Jews by virtue of their civil authority and contacts with Pilate; while also guarding it from anything but a major enquiry by the civil authorities on the grounds that Jesus had already suffered enough indignity. (It can remain a matter for speculation whether they would have been subsequently embarrassed by the Resurrection. But Jesus would at least have aimed to oblige them by keeping out of the way of both Roman and Jewish authorities until his final disappearance -- if the Resurrection had occurred in the way in which any of the disciples might have planned it. In the event, as we will see, such speculations are idle and the dignity of the councillors would have had many Jewish defenders so long as they kept silent about the real goings-on in the sepulchre.) They would certainly have had little difficulty in keeping the secret from the women who attended Jesus' interment: for, by the time the grief-stricken women were on the scene, the body had already been dressed and wrapped in linen. But it may seem preferable to assume complete innocence of a substitution on the part of Joseph and Nicodemus. The councillors were hardly familiar with Jesus; the man they took from the Cross had been disfigured by the Roman soldiers; and there are other figures who can be called on to play the role of resurrection-men. Even had the disciples planned to steal away the substitute body so as to give the impression of a Resurrection when the real Jesus finally re-appeared from hiding, we shall see reason to trust the Gospels' indignant assertion that this was not how the Resurrection happened.


C) The Trial

Since it may have passed unobserved, it is perhaps only fair to remark that - by contrast with the events of Resurrection day - the events that constitute the central Crucifixion story seem to stand in only occasional need of any kind of re-interpretation. Thus the above account - or collection of possible accounts - may look rather like a piece of special pleading. Doubtless, with very little imagination one could re-interpret a great many supposed historical events so as to put their central characters in a new and unsavoury light. Such efforts would be unworthy of the name of even the most speculative historical revisionism. The only point in new stories or theories is that they cope with problems that arise with existing accounts. In this respect it is with greater satisfaction that the serious revisionist can proceed to consider the Gospel record of Jesus' conviction and sentencing. For here - as with Jesus' re-appearances - there are once more some very substantial problems demanding explanation.

The paradoxes to be considered take us back one stage further. Although it may be only barely plausible to suggest that Jesus was never crucified, we shall now see rather reason to believe that he was never tried or even arrested. Now, one strong link does not make a chain; but one weak link is enough to allow a break. It is just at the point where the Crucifixion - Resurrection story is forced into the light of society's legal processes for establishing truth that we find a particularly weak link.

Although the person best placed to arrange a substitute was undoubtedly Pontius Pilate, there is little reason to think that he took such action. He had a motive; but conflicting considerations of justice and expediency would also have carried weight with him. And his opportunity would have been limited once he had shown Jesus to the mob in an attempt to appeal for mercy. Moreover, to suppose that a substitution might have occurred so late in the day would still leave unresolved two other major paradoxes of the trial. Peter's denials and the character of the accused during the court hearings suggest that Jesus may never have appeared at his trial at all.

The Gospels again give little help in establishing just how their record of the court proceedings might have been obtained: as during the arrest and crucifixion, the disciples are largely conspicuous by their absence. Only St John records that any disciple other than Peter was in attendance. This `disciple' is supposed to have had the rather surprising distinction of being `known to the high priest'; and indeed of being on such good terms with the Jewish authorities that he was able to secure Peter's admittance to Caiaphas' court (Jn XVIII 15, 16). As with Joseph and Nicodemus, the reliability of such a witness in making an accurate identification is at least open to doubt. A similar question-mark hangs over Peter's testimony. The Gospels are in general agreement that Peter never got very near to the centre of the action at court. So it could simply be claimed that he was in no position to make a trustworthy identification. This might explain why Peter's denials lay themselves open to the very general interpretation that he was denying ever having been a disciple of Jesus. For example, when Peter says "I know not the man" (Matt. XXVI 72), it might be supposed that he was talking of his previous relationship with Jesus rather than of his knowledge of the accused man in court. But in that case his denials could have occurred without his ever seeing the accused man at court. This would render less credible the traditional view that at least one intimate acquaintance of Jesus had some contact with him after the arrest. But there would have been little point in Peter denying discipleship of `Jesus of Nazareth' if he had not simultaneously implied that he was a disciple of the defendant. On balance, it is far more likely that Peter's denials explicitly referred to the particular man whose trial he and others were witnessing: that is, Peter was denying that he knew the man they had all seen. It is regrettable that the Gospels do not make this point clear. Yet this is only one among many failures to get the details right: there are flat contradictions as to the recipients of the denials, and as to the number of times the cock crew before Peter recognized his failing.

In view of Jesus' explicit warning to Peter during the Last Supper, it seems reasonable to suppose that only a very real doubt in Peter's mind as to his relationship to the accused could have led him into the three denials. Just such a doubt could most easily have arisen if the man undergoing trial had not been Jesus at all. Despite Jesus' prophecies, Peter found he could do no other than - as he later thought of it - `deny his Lord'. He just did not recognize the man. His eventual sudden upsurge of guilt is attributable to his accepting, once conviction had occurred, and once Jesus' `before-the-cock-crows' prediction had appeared to be fulfilled, that the convicted man must indeed have been Jesus. Peter would not have been the first to prefer interpretations that are ideologically convenient to the evidence of his own senses.

Quite apart from what the accused might have looked like at court, Peter might well have been amazed at what he had to say for himself. Here too, it is not just the absence of information in the Gospels that provides scope for re-interpretation. At this historic point, with the eyes of the world focused on him, the supposed Messiah was remarkably unwilling to rise the occasion. Throughout the Gospel records, it is clear that the most common action taken by the defendant was to `hold his peace' or to `answer nothing' in the face of the charges leveled against him. At least on some occasions, it appears that his reticence may have been calculated to annoy: "Answerest thou the high priest so?" (Jn XVIII 22). It is likewise remarkable that the accused so frequently answers the charge of claiming to be the Christ with a mere "You say that I am" (New English Bible). From the moment of arrest onwards, the accused shows the bitter resignation of man who recognizes that he is involved in a `put-up job'. His refusal to deny Messianic status might appear a natural part of a general refusal to co-operate in a rigged trial. In so far as he is recorded as extemporating on the theme that he is the Son of God, it is in terms that might have come naturally to any other messianically inclined compatriot. The only reference made to any detail of Jesus' ministry is that the defendant does admit to having preached in the temple; but, by the same token, so must many other Jewish evangelists of the time. The fact that Barabbas - whom Pilate eventually released to the mob in preference to Jesus - had been found guilty of murder in the course of sedition further testifies to the presence in Jerusalem at the time of the many revolutionaries whose efforts were finally to culminate in the Diaspora. The degree to which the Jesus of the trials one of many dissatisfied spirits is perhaps further witnessed by the absence of any mention in court - in his defence - of his `render-unto-Caesar' speech. The clear impression of the Gospel accounts of the trial scenes is that few people had any clear knowledge of Jesus or of his pronouncements in the temple. The real Jesus was a minor figure whose mistake had been to fail to make crystal clear that - though he could have done it - he would not actually destroy the temple (MK XIV 57-61). The authorities had to rely on Judas to identify their man with a kiss; and they then found it hard to provide evidence against him. Only at the end of the hearing before Caiaphas was the prosecution able to lure the accused into the ‘blasphemy’ that was to justify his death-warrant.

Even the accused's `blasphemy' in court seems to have taken a most non-assertive form. Although St Mark records the reply "I am" (MK XIV 62) to Caiaphas' question "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?", the other accounts represent Jesus as going out of his way to make a rather weaker claim. In Matt. XXVI 64 the reply is: "The words are yours. But I tell you this: from now on, you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven." It is hard to believe that this utterance does not really mean: `You're wrong at the moment. But just you wait and see.' Why the "but" unless some important modification is being made to the claim? A precisely similar problem arises with account of the replies to Pilate in John XVIII 33-37. Dealing with the enquiry as to whether he is "the King of the Jews", the accused - apart from going through the familiar `Thou sayest it' routine - asserts in particular that his kingdom is not of the present world and that his mission in life has been merely "to bear witness unto the truth". But it was just a few days previously that the real Jesus had prophesied in regard to `the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds with great power and glory' that `the present generation will live to see it all' (MK XIII 24-31 (N.E.B.)). Even if we can believe that these remarks were recorded by some competent observers - including, presumably, some close associates of Pilate - they leave us far from clear as to the precise nature of the accused's testimony. If the records are to be trusted, it seems that the accused - though behaving in a fatalistic and superior way that could hardly fail to annoy - at least made little effort to urge the `strong' claims as to his identity that we know from the Gospels to have been so characteristic of Jesus himself.

It is thus no wonder that Pilate found no fault in the prisoner whom he received from Caiaphas and whom he forwarded to Herod for a second opinion. Pilate must have been reluctant to crucify a man whose revolutionary fervour was so restrained that he would not even regularly incriminate himself. Unfortunately for Pilate, Herod's court was equally unsuccessful: the accused reverted to his previous silent treatment. Once more, Pilate was required to face the music. Just what was his real view of the prisoner is left uncertain by the Gospels. His final labeling of the accused as `the King of the Jews' - despite his prisoner's reservations about such a title - suggests that he was finally contemptuous of both the man and his accusers. But, in any case, it is unlikely that it was Pilate who provided the substitute for Jesus that our present story requires. The evidence already given is more compatible with the suggestion that Jesus was saved from crucifixion by another figure whose character has been blackened by the traditional Christian story to an even greater degree than the character of Pilate.

D) The Arrest

Judas, the disciple who was responsible enough to be treasurer and perhaps even conscientious enough to hang himself when he realized the enormity of his crime, appears to have been a most practical man. Having both the motivation and the opportunity to save his Master from the consequences of his rash preaching in the temple, he seems to have planned ahead. Alone amongst the disciples at a time when they were having to take special precautions to meet without being arrested - see the `secret hideout' arrangements of Lk XXII 1-13 - Judas saw the possibility of acting as a false agent. Far from betraying Jesus, Judas' approach to the chief priests established him as an agent and revealed the crucial opportunity for duplicity in such a role. Maybe the authorities took some persuading, but what Judas seems to have been able to arrange was that they should arrest whomever he identified for them. In accordance with this possibility, we might suppose that Judas never had any intention of betraying his Lord.

An alternative is that Judas changed an original plan of betrayal after the embarrassment of discovery or near-discovery at the Last Supper. But this would leave us with the double problem of explaining both Judas' initial lapse from grace and a subsequent repentance in addition to his final suicide. It is even more economic than the traditional account to assume that Judas had only one major change of heart - and that this precipitated his death. Like the other disciples, Judas had not bargained for a crucifixion - or a resurrection. At least, on this supposition it is easier to explain Judas' overwhelming remorse when the man of his choosing finally went to the Cross. If Judas' death was indeed by his own hand, it would have had a cause that the traditional story obscures. Judas, on our account, was not a man who would give up just when things were going according to plan. Perhaps he did not give up - perhaps the Gospel writers too easily believed the account of his death that was offered by the Jewish authorities? Alternatively - and adhering more closely to the traditional Christian version of events - he could be considered to have underestimated the concern of the authorities at revolutionary preaching. Thus he may have believed that the substitute for Jesus would escape with a light sentence. In that case, he would have finally had good reason for finally going back to the chief priests to confess "I have brought an innocent man to his death" (Matt. XXVII 4 (N.E.B.)).

Why should he admit to betraying an `innocent' man if it was Jesus whose arrest he had arranged? However regretful Judas may have been at betraying his Lord - if he did in fact do that - it is not clear why he should have thought he was innocent of such blasphemies as admitting to Messianic status or of seditious hopes of a kingship that would shortly come. It is a classic case of religious hypocrisy that, while Christians should properly have been proud of Jesus' `guilt' of the claims that he made, they have typically appeared to lament the contribution of Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod to the arrangement of a theologically necessary crucifixion. Perhaps Judas, too, was having it both ways: believing that Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah while simultaneously asserting his `innocence'? Fortunately, there is an alternative to resting a story on such self-contradiction. Judas' statement makes much greater sense if he had indeed sent an innocent man - albeit one selected to be like Jesus in revolutionary religious opinionation - to an unanticipated death.

As things turned out, Judas' choice of the timing of the arrest enabled the crucial substitution to be made without even the disciples realizing what had happened. In the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane in the small hours of the morning, and with the disciples either asleep or fleeing, Judas would have had sample opportunity to direct attention to the wrong man while still convincing the arresting agents that he had indeed led them to the right place. Whether Jesus himself was co-operative at this stage is not clear: we might imagine that he would have had to be virtually forcibly persuaded to abandon temporarily his prophesied crucifixion. But the man who was eventually arrested did not go without at least a little protest at the indignity of the arrangements. The complaint at being `arrested like a common thief' is at least surprising if it came from the mouth of Jesus. After his rampage at the temple, and having gone into hiding for the Last Supper, why should he have complained at being thus ferreted out? At every least, such a complaint would have been ungracious from the lips of a man whose life's mission was the Crucifixion. It has to be admitted that the real Jesus would have drawn attention to himself at the arrest by healing of the stricken Malchus. But we have already resolved that the miracle of the Resurrection is less convincingly demonstrated by recourse to other miracles than by an account which makes no such assumptions. As to the fighting that went on at the arrival of the police, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the substitute's own friends and associates would have put up a passably heroic struggle against his arbitrary arrest.

While the traditional account of the arrest presents few paradoxes on its own that justify a major re-interpretation, it would seem to be weak enough to accommodate quite easily a revisionary story that lends coherence to the many other problems that have been mentioned. To adduce Jesus' last pre-Crucifixion miracle to support it is hardly good enough. As we must now see, the account that we have offered does more than resolve the paradoxes mentioned so far. It also explains what must surely be the biggest problem surrounding the traditional story of the Resurrection. To anticipate what follows, it gives the most obvious motive for the Resurrection to just the people who had the power to bring it about. Just what happened to Jesus between his evading arrest and his appearing after the Resurrection must be a matter for speculation. Since the Gospels record him as keeping away from contact with the Jewish and Roman authorities after the Resurrection, it seems reasonable to assume that he went into temporary hiding which he only left when Judas' confession of what had really happened made him simultaneously a wanted man and a candidate in the eyes of faithful for the status of being newly resurrected.

E) The Resurrection

If the Crucifixion was a case of mistaken identity in one way or another, a number of important pieces of the Gospel jigsaw slip neatly into place. Certainly, some of the traditional pieces are inevitably displaced a little; but they are often either irrelevant pieces for the open-minded materialists or pieces that only owe their existence to St John's Gospel. Only St John fails to have Jesus identified personally by Judas; only St John records Barabbas as being merely a `bandit' - thus not admitting the presence in Jerusalem of dangerous criminals; only St John supplies an extra disciple to accompany Peter at Caiaphas' court; only here do we read of a conversation between the crucified man and a favourite disciple; and only St John's lengthy account of Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances suggests that Jesus did not flee the country just soon as he could. But there is one further unique Johannine story that our account has positively incorporated: Jesus' appearance at the tomb to Mary Magdalene. From the point of view adopted here, St John's other idiosyncratic stories might helpfully be dismissed; but this story is well worth retaining. It establishes - according to taste - either the general unrecognizability of Jesus or his use of disguise on the day of the Resurrection. At the same time, its retention is a reminder of a most important loose and that must now be tied up. What was Jesus doing at the tomb?

As already mentioned, a possibility is that he had gone to assist Joseph - and perhaps Nicodemus - to roll away the stone and remove the body. But this view has three major disadvantages. First, it puts Jesus in a dishonourable light. On the account that has been offered Jesus might be thought to have been almost forced into a `resurrection' by the circumstances of Judas' shrewdness and the disciples' gullibility and emotional dependence. But this could hardly be so if Jesus actively helped to conceal the evidence of the substitution. Having already tried to redeem the honour of Judas, it would seem hard if the alternative was to blacken Jesus' character. For this reason alone, it would be nicer to assume that Jesus - at a loss to know what was happening as a result of his disciples' contrivances - simply went to the tomb to find out what was going on. Even better, he might have wished to play his own last respects to the man (or, more particularly, ideological rival) who had died in his place.

Secondly, and more self-interestedly, to suppose the involvement of Joseph and Nicodemus in the substitution plot might seem to risk an ever-widening circle of disciples who were `in the know.' Now, given that the rest of Jesus' ministry was conducted either in secret or at some distance from Jerusalem, it could perhaps be supposed that Jesus' disciples were so physically separated after the great events in Jerusalem that some of them never heard the true account of the Resurrection that the conspirators could have made available. On this view it would have been the non-conspiratorial disciples who would have been responsible for the later promulgation of the myth. But this is at least a risky assumption that is perhaps best not made.

For, thirdly, if any of Jesus, Joseph or Nicodemus had been involved in removing the body, they would at least have had to evade, overpower or bribe the watchmen placed outside the tomb by the chief priests and Pharisees (Matt. XXVII 62-66). Now, according to the Gospel account, the soldiers placed on guard were certainly not beyond the reach of bribery (Matt.XXVIII 15). But it is also clear that they were directly responsible to the Jewish authorities. As the traditional Christian account has it, it would surely have been more than their jobs were worth to allow the tomb to be tampered with. Like the other points against the multiple-conspiracy view, this disadvantage is clearly not insuperable. Yet, as with the traditional story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the points seem to add up to make the account implausible.

An unlikely possibility that avoids the second of these disadvantages is that it was Judas himself who helped Jesus to remove the substitute's body from the tomb. But this would involve the assumption that the Gospels are inaccurate as to the timing of Judas's death. And, even had two men been sufficient to remove the stone from the sealed tomb, it would remain to be explained why Judas died at all. If his plans had come to fruition - and his plans would presumably have included a mock confession to the Jewish authorities - why should he ever have committed suicide? A truly iconoclastic revisionary might suppose that Jesus had known of the conspiracy from its inception: this might help explain how the arrest was staged. But though Jesus might reasonably be considered to have suffered grandiose delusions of a paranoid nature, there is no reason to believe that he was the kind of psychopath who could have finally brought himself to arrange a `suicide' for such a valuable friend as Judas.

It is for such reasons that we must proceed to the one every credible story of the disappearance of the body from the tomb and of the subsequent the truth of the Gospel record of Judas' confession and the councillors' good faith, there is only one way in which Christianity as we know it could ever have got off the ground. It is perhaps one of history's greatest ironies: `Jesus' was `resurrected' by the Jews.

Merely in answer to the question `who had the opportunity?' the Jewish authorities emerge as the most likely candidates. Throughout the watch on the tomb, it is clear that they were in control. It was the chief priests and Pharisees who asked Pilate for a watch to be set; it was they who supposedly received the report of the guards and issued the bribes that were designed to ensure that any story of a resurrection would be given little credence. Later, too, it was their police-work that obliged the disciples to remain in hiding after the Resurrection (Jn XX 19). As Pilate's own deference had originally made clear, the whole business was a Jewish matter in which the Roman authorities had little interest; and so it was to remain after the Crucifixion. Had the Jewish authorities wanted to remove the body from Joseph's tomb after the Crucifixion, they would have had all the time, all the men, and all the authority they needed. Of course, they would have had to bribe the soldiers to promulgate a rather different version of what happened: every detail of our revised story of the Crucifixion-Resurrection makes this likely.

Lest this is not clear, it is worth considering the last major paradox of the Gospel record of the Crucifixion. It was not until the Sabbath - the day following the Crucifixion - that it occurred to the Jewish authorities to ask Pilate for a watch to be placed at the tomb (Matt. XXVII 62). To say that Jesus had only predicted his own resurrection for rather later is hardly to meet the problem of their lack of preparation. If their fear was truly that the body in the tomb would be stolen (Matt. XXVII 63), they surely had little reason to suppose that the disciples would obligingly delay the theft until the third day? It is more reasonable to suppose that the thought of mounting a guard on the tomb occurred to them only after the Crucifixion: and the account that we have offered of Judas' behaviour makes it clear that their motivation would have been.

Far from wishing to keep the body safely in the tomb - though this may have been their first reaction till they found that the women were to return to anoint the body - Judas' revelation (whether voluntary or under torture) that an innocent man had been crucified would have made it imperative to get the body removed into secrecy as quickly as possible. Not only was the reputation of the Jewish authorities with Pilate at stake - after it had already been tarnished by their wilful refusal to have Barabbas crucified instead of the man sent to Pilate as Jesus. Even more importantly, a removal of the body from the tomb would have had to be arranged in order to partially undermine the stories of Jesus' `resurrection' that would otherwise gain credence on his being found alive. Once the real Jesus was discovered, the tomb would have had to be opened anyway - by the Romans, in the course of an official enquiry; then the substitution would have been revealed. So it became clear that there was little to be gained from even the most secure guarding of the tomb. Of course, the Resurrection could have been denied by the production of the body in the tomb. But the cost would have been the exposure of the injustice done to an innocent man. In this most embarrassing situation, the Jewish authorities had only one course of action open to them: to save face with both Romans and their own faithful, it simply had to appear that Jesus' disciples had stolen the body. Viewed historically, they blundered in underestimating the credence that the disappearance of the body would lend to a Resurrection story and in overestimating the likelihood that would subsequently be attached to their official version of events. But these were ordinary, weak people invested with authority they took to be unchallengeable. As far as they were concerned, Judas' revelation made some semblance of a `resurrection' inevitable. And, in fairness to them, interest in Jesus went markedly underground for more than a generation.

Clearly, the best `witness' of this `body theft' would have been some heavily bribed Roman soldiers whose story could not be attributed to Jewish anti-Christian prejudice and who could hardly reveal their own corruption. Only two further measures lay within the authorities' power. Though they could not actually afford to arrest the real Jesus without exposing their initial mistake, they could at least hound Jesus and his disciples from Jerusalem as quickly as possible. In this way, they could have hoped to prevent any rapid dissemination of the news of Jesus' survival. Secondly, one other step would have been mandatory. It is hopefully pardonable to suggest at this stage that the Gospel writers - misguided by the Jewish authorities and entirely without malice - might have got one detail of the Crucifixion-Resurrection story quite wrong. If they did, it makes our already-superior account of Judas' nature and motivations just that much better; and it clearly makes no crucial difference to the plausibility of the traditional Christian story. For the fact is that if Judas had not committed suicide, his murder would have been singularly convenient to the Jews. To suggest that a murder may have been more nearly the truth removes from Judas the unnecessary slur of a grotesquely fatalistic emotional over-reaction to what he had intended as only a moderately serious offence committed out of passionate and intelligent loyalty to his Master; and it shows more clearly the tragedy of Judas - an ordinary man overpowered by the engulfing waves of religious fervour and human history. Double agents are rarely understood; and they get little sympathy when they are discovered and their careers are brutally foreshortened. Judas is a classic case. It has always been easier to see him as a treacherous figure whose conscience finally took an exacting toll than as the brains behind Jesus' survival and the unwitting instigator of the myth of the Resurrection.

In the short term, the Jewish authorities were fortunate enough to be able to make the required arrangements. So successful were they that St Matthew tells us that the proffered story was "commonly reported among the Jews until this day" (Matt. XXVIII 15). But, perhaps like Jesus himself, what the Jews had not bargained for was the faith of the disciples that kept alive the tiny flame of an incredible alternative. Once there were no longer any survivors to tell the dampening story of what had really happened - even had the original conspirators been honest enough to do so - that flame was to ignite the Roman world. Eventually, after 314A.D., Emperor Constantine would cleverly insist on an agreed formulation of Christian doctrine to become a suitably non-revolutionary religion for his empire; but the main building block of Christianity, the Resurrection, was probably supplied by the Jews.

posted by jonjayray 10:50 PM

Sunday, October 23, 2005

 

MORE ON ROMANS 13

An Australian reader emailed me some interesting points about the Old Testament background to the text

Jeremiah 29 has some interesting things to say about what God required of his people, the Israelites, while they were living in captivity in Babylon. At verse 7 God says, "And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace." That is, God is telling the Israelites not merely to submit peacefully to the rulership of a Babylonian king but to actively pray that the peace in Babylon would continue. They were to get on with their lives - build houses, plant gardens, get married, have children - and wait for God to do something about their situation. They were not to get involved in insurrections. They were not to be "activists", destroying the peace of the city.

Now look at the Jewish Wars. The "religious activists" among the Jews of the time tried to force a political/military solution to their perceived problem of Roman overlordship and it was their terrorist activities that led eventually to the destruction of the temple, the city and their millenial dreams.

But remember also that Daniel (who read Jeremiah to find out how long the captivity would continue) was a servant in the Babylonian king's court. He didn't have nothing to do with politics. When Daniel was asked to interpret the king's dreams (because no one else could do it satisfactorily) politics became his concern. What he did was tell the king the truth as he saw it, or as it was revealed to him.

Rendering unto Caesar does not mean that Christians should have nothing to do with politics, only that wherever a Christian is working he or she should obey God, pray for those who govern over them and not seek to damage or overthrow the government by illicit means. But the government's paid servants aren't the government. They are among the governed. If they do well in their jobs then they are only doing what God requires of us all. If they don't do well then they, too, can expect to be subject to the "sword" - as some of our public servants currently are in the Vivian Alvarez case.

posted by jonjayray 9:18 PM

Friday, October 21, 2005

 

ROMANS 13: 1-7

Should Christians obey the government, no matter what? I consider that in the post below. Note that there are two German words below. "weltfremd" means "foreign to this world" and "Obrigkeiten" is the Luther version bible translation of "superior authorities". Luther used the "Obrigkeiten" passage to advocate support for the Princely rulers of his day.

1: Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2: Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
3: For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
4: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5: Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
6: For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
7: Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
8: Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
9: For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
10: Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
11: And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
12: The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
13: Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
14: But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.

One of my regular correspondents -- of Dutch origin but living in the USA -- recently wrote to me as follows:

In your scripture commentaries, have you ever written on Romans 13: 1-7? I have had a rough time with the notion that all government authority comes from God, and it's our Christian duty to genuflect to it.

The first time was when I attended a Presbyterian church. Unlike many American Presbyterian churches today it was a sound, conservative congregation with a good minister. But then, after several years, there was a local controversy about the area's public hospital. It had replaced two old, private hospitals, but then the new professional managers and the Board went on a building spree which a lot of the taxpaying public thought was excessive. It so happened that three members of the hospital Board were prominent in the church, and they were getting a lot of flak - deservedly so, I think, because even financial conservatives, when they're elected to public office, tend to throw prudence overboard and go along with the empire-builders on their staff. Building big, useless monuments has always been irresistible to people who handle the public's money, Anyway, one Sunday the minister preached on Romans 13, advocating that we honor and obey these free-spending public servants because they'd received their positions from God - well, that's when I became seriously disenchanted. In the first place, I don't believe the government of Paul's time was into running as many things as today's governments are, so where does this stop? It would mean that in countries where the government runs EVERYTHING - you know which ones those were - the population would be genuflecting constantly. Besides, I had a hell of a lot more respect for the nuns that used to run one of the now-closed hospitals than I did for the highly paid "professionals" in charge of the new one. I also happened to know a lot of them were incompetent, but that's another story.

In addition, I don't see a lot of support elsewhere in the Scriptures for Romans 13, and I think it's a sound principle that concepts that only occur once or twice in the Scriptures may be taken with a grain of salt. Then there is the question of Paul as a politician. The Roman Christian congregation he was writing to contained a lot of Jews - maybe a majority, and the Roman government of the time was pretty distrustful of the Jews in Palestine, who had a tendency toward insurrection.

Fast-forward twenty years, and we've been attending a Conservative Baptist church. It has a lot of similarities to the Presbyterian church I spoke of except for the music - I will never be able to relate to the so-called worship songs, too many of which I think are trite, unsingable retreads of seventies pop songs. But then, there are some aspects of American culture I will never connect with. Anyway, the minister at this church is a great guy; having grown up hearing the bloodless, weltfremd ministers of the Dutch Reformed church I think it's good to have someone who started out in the regular world and only later got his calling. Jerry started in life as a fireman and a part-time boxer, attended Bible College in his spare time and then, like the minister in the Presbyterian church, he was a missionary for some years. With his background he draws a lot of firemen and policemen to his church, and he is the Chaplain for all local police departments, which means he is called to minister to survivors and relatives whenever serious accidents have occurred. You have to respect that; I couldn't do it.

But guess what: the other Sunday he turned to Romans 13, his basic message being that all public "servants" - policemen, firemen, teachers, hospital workers, administrators of all kinds - are entitled to special respect - he came real close to suggesting they were superior people and made them stand up and enjoy applause. Well, I've seen policemen perform go-slow actions because they didn't get their raises, I've heard them lie in court, I've seen teachers behave like hoodlums on the picket line, I've seen enough corrupt politicians, and let's not get into the armies of well-paid lazybones shuffling paper everywhere. Besides, if all authority comes from God and shouldn't be challenged, how come we had the American Revolution? (American War of Independence is a more appropriate description, but ignore that aspect.) "Shouldn't Queen Liz and Tony Blair still be in charge of the USA?" I challenged Jerry at the exit. Well, no, that was different, he said. Taking a deep breath I started into the fact that King George was good enough for the Australians and the Canadians - but my wife poked me in the ribs to move on.

I wrote in reply:

Turning to an atheist for spiritual counsel is certainly testimony to how bad the churches have become.

But the answer is clear: Both Paul and Jesus made it very clear that their concern was to show the way to the afterlife. They did NOT think this world or its government was their concern -- Caesar's things to Caesar etc

So the advice concerned is SPIRITUAL: It will be better for your personal development if you ignore politics. And politics is so crazy that there is a lot of sense in that. Paul's view that the Obrigkeiten were put there by God is a way of saying: accept whatever God's purposes are (as with the problem of evil) and don't question it. Just keep your own life pure.

But we can do many things for non-spiritual reasons -- including challenging authority -- but while that may help this world, this world is not the important one

And, as I alway stress, context is very important. If you read the verses right through to verse 14 you can see the truth of what I said. Paul even laid out in detail what your personal conduct should be and how that would lead you into the coming Kingdom of Heaven. And perhaps the wisest verse in the passage is:

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same

In other words, if you keep your nose out of politics and just live a good personal life, you have little to fear from any ruler.

So it was clearly the view of Christianity's founders that involvement in politics (the affairs of "this world") is, if not absolutely wrong, at least inadvisable and certainly bad for you spiritually. So the attempts by various Christian groups over the years to legislate morality ran against the advice of their own Christian scriptures. If Christians HAD followed the advice of their founders and not tried to intervene in the political affairs of the world around them, Christianity would not have the bad repute it does today have among the many non-religious people who resent being dictated to about what they should do in their personal lives. Christian authoritarianism has, in short, shamed Christ.

Note however that there is NOTHING in the scriptures that forbids Christians from voting according the their consciences nor is there any prohibition on voting itself. And note that the New Testament was written in Greek and that the concept of voting for your government was at that time already centuries old in the Greek-speaking world.

posted by jonjayray 6:26 PM

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

 

JUST A REMINDER

Only a small part of this blog is on the page in front of you. If you want to follow my attempted reconstruction of what 1st century Christians believed, you need to click on the ARCHIVES link in the green column to the left and start from the earliest date there.

posted by jonjayray 12:39 AM

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

 

AN APPRECIATION OF SOLOMON THE WISE

I have said a bit about Solomon previously on this blog but I think he is well worth reflecting on again

I wonder how many people realize that they do have copies of most of Solomon's surviving writings? They are, of course, in the Bible. I should perhaps initially note that King Solomon's words are so much at variance with all else that occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures (they are amazingly modern) that they do serve to attest that the Hebrew scriptures (the "Old Testament") are not some coherent canon but rather a simple and unauthoritative accretion of what was seen as popular or profound over many years. That was saved and revered which people liked or respected for one reason or another.

"Practical" men sometimes say with great pride: "Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we may be dead -- that is my motto. I don't worry about all that Bible stuff". How amusing it is that they are in fact quoting the Bible in saying that. The "motto" concerned is in fact Solomon's most frequent advice in the book of Ecclesiates.

In psychological terms, much of Solomon's writings (e.g. chap. 1 verse 14 in the Revised Standard Version of Ecclesiastes) could be seen as classically depressive ("Vanity of vanity, all is vanity and a striving after wind") so one could conclude that Solomon was probably something of a drug abuser by the standards of his day (the relevant drug probably being alcohol) As King of Israel he certainly would have been free to booze all he liked.

Let us note, however, that the decrying of human strivings is a very common theme in religious thought and it would surely be stretching it to claim that all such decriers have been boozers! Most were in fact ascetics.

I myself am no ascetic but I am nonetheless acutely conscious of how unimportant most of what we do is to anyone but ourselves. Even the most famous man of today will almost certainly be totally forgotten in a thousand years -- and a thousand years is as nothing in geological time. We remember a few people from the past (Solomon, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha Gautama etc) but they as nothing compared to those who have been forgotten. Hammurabi is hardly a household name today, is he? Yet he was probably one of humanity's great minds and he was certainly a bigshot in his day. Knowing that sort of thing does make it hard to take oneself and one's concerns seriously.

Note however that Solomon WAS a religious thinker. If you read ALL that he says (e.g. the last two verses of the book -- though they COULD have been added by a later hand), you will see that he does in fact repeatedly profess some quite clearly religious beliefs -- though they are rather sparse by the standards of his times.

My favourite quotes from Solomon: "Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days" (Ecclesiastes 11:1); "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest" (Ecclesiastes 9:10); "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

There is however much more to Solomon than these few short quotes. I would very much recommend the careful reading of the whole of what he wrote -- preferably in a modern translation. His words are sometimes more Delphic than those of Mahatma Gandhi or Dale Carnegie but that poses a challenge that is well worth rising to. The "bread on waters" quote, for instance, is generally taken to refer to good deeds done without foreseeable reward. Solomon has the perhaps optimistic message that you will get an unforseen reward for such deeds. In modern terms we might translate Solomon as saying: "Be kind to others whenever you can as you never know when that will come back to benefit you": A sort of pragmatic idealism!

I think the immediate reason why Solomon sounds so modern is that he was King in Jerusalem and, as such, had everything. In those days only a King could have many of the things that we now take for granted -- extensive leisure, constant entertainment, effectively infinite booze, high quality and varied food, for instance. Having everything that people normally want or idealize, however, he could see how trivial normal materialistic aims in the end are and successfully developed a deeper set of values. That he was able to do this in conjunction with his clear rejection of belief in an afterlife is, however, strong evidence of what a remarkable mind he was -- particularly in the context of his times. He was in my view a supreme realist.

posted by jonjayray 8:32 PM

Friday, May 06, 2005

 

WORLDLY GOODS

"Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother." And he said, "All these have I kept from my youth up." Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, "Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."

Luke 18:20-22.

This quotation is one of the allegedly "Leftist" quotations from Jesus and I have already discussed them previously -- see here and here.

I also thought, however, that the following comments from Australia's famous Father Rumble were rather good. They are taken from Radio Replies: 1588 Questions and Answers on Catholicism and Protestantism (Rockford, Illinois. TAN Books and Publishers, Inc. 1979 [originally published: 1938 by Radio Replies Press Society, St. Paul, Minnesota]) page 105. In my youth the good Father was simply referred to as "Rumble" and his columns defending Catholic doctrine were carried in many newspapers. They were much discussed.


474. He commanded the rich young man to sell all, and give it to the poor.

This was not a command, obliging in conscience. It was a special invitation which the young man was free to accept or reject. If the possession of goods as such were evil, Christ would have been recommending the young man to cause evil in the very ones who bought or accepted possession of his goods. But you have misunderstood the passage. The rich young man said to Christ, "What must I do to be saved?" Christ replied, "Keep the commandments." Thus He specified what was necessary for salvation. But hearing that the young man had kept them, He went further: "If you desire not only to be saved, but to be perfect, then do more than is of obligation. Sell all and follow Me." The young man turned away sad, for he had not the generosity of character required. But the Gospel does not suggest that he was lost. No man is lost who loves God enough to keep all the commandments. Meantime, in the Catholic Church, thousands of Priests, Brothers, Nuns have renounced all worldly possessions and have vowed poverty for the love of Christ, giving up the right to possess or administer anything in their own name. Thus the invitation of Christ is fulfilled in the Religious Orders of the Catholic Church.


473. Was not Christ poor, and did He not forbid the hoarding of treasure on earth?

Christ Himself set the supreme example of poverty, although, as I have said, Judas carried the purse containing money for His use, and for the needs of His Apostles. But Christ never commanded that His followers should adopt actual and absolute poverty. God had sanctioned the right of private property when He gave the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal." The right to private property is therefore just and not sinful. Christ did forbid men to make earthly goods their only treasure to the exclusion of their spiritual welfare. In fact, He warned those who have mammon or wealth, not necessarily to give it up, but to make it their friend by giving alms to the poor.


475. Christ said that a rich man could not enter Heaven.

He did not. He said that the rich would encounter special difficulties in the matter of salvation. But this is not because they are rich. It is because rich people are in danger of being so attached to their earthly goods as to forget God. The same Christ said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." A rich man can be poor in spirit by being at least sufficiently detached from his worldly goods that he would not for all of them offend God.

posted by jonjayray 3:41 PM

Thursday, April 21, 2005

 

WAS PETER CHRIST'S "ROCK"?

Matthew 16:18-19: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church". (Douay)

I note from The Pope Blog that the passage in Matthew 16:18-19 is rendered in Latin as Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam. This is the passage upon which the Roman church relies for its doctrine of apostolic succession. The theological point at issue, of course, turns on the fact that the name "Peter" means "rock" -- so the claim is that Christ was going to build his church on Peter.

The Greek very clearly gives the lie to this claim so I am pleasantly surprised that the Latin preserves the distinction found in the Greek. According to my Chambers-Murray Latin dictionary, "Petrus" is unknown as a word in Latin but "Petra" ("petram" in the quote above as "petra" is there used in the accusative case) is a known word. And it means exactly what it means in Greek: "a rock, a crag". My Abbott-Smith Greek Lexicon gives the Greek meaning of the same word as "a rock, i.e. a mass of live rock as distinct from "petros", a detached stone or boulder". And "petros" is of course also the name translated from the Greek into English as "Peter". The full passage in Greek is: "ou ei petros kai epi tautee tee petra oikodomeeso mou teen ekkleesian"

So both the Greek and the Latin say that Christ was going to build his church on a rock-mass but only the Greek makes clear that Peter was no such thing. Peter ("petros") was more a pebble than a rock-mass. So it would appear that Christ -- with his usual love of parables -- was referring to himself as being the rock-mass upon which his movement would be founded rather than it being founded on a small stone ("petros") such as one of his disciples.

And I guess I should note in passing that "ekkleesian" does not really mean "church" or even "congregation". It means "called-out-ones" -- showing that Christ here, as always, was looking towards the Heavenly Kingdom rather than this world.

posted by jonjayray 10:06 PM

Sunday, March 27, 2005

 

OF THE MAKING OF MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END .....

As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes about 3,000 years ago. But sometimes blogs do end:

Well, I think I have now covered pretty well the topics I wanted to cover here so this blog will now be joining my RECIPE BLOG and my MARX BLOG in being placed on hold. As with the other two blogs, however, I will be happy to post new material if something comes up in my emails that warrants it.

My decision to cease daily postings here arose partly out of my having committed the sin of David (2 Samuel 24) -- in numbering my readers. I have had a counter up for the past week which tells me that this blog gets about 60 hits per day. That compares with around 600 hits per day on Dissecting Leftism. So this is a very tiny corner of the blogosphere. 60 hits per day still probably amounts to a couple of hundred readers per week overall and I would be loath to abandon that many readers except for something else that the counter tells me: Almost all readers come here via Dissecting Leftism. So if I do put up any new posts here I will notify that on Dissecting Leftism and interested readers should find it.

My principal aim in doing this blog was to get people to read their NT more attentively and compare their beliefs with first-century Christianity. If I have done that for a few people I am pleased. Early Christianity was a faith of great power -- as judged by the strength that it gave believers in the early days of the Roman empire. So if anyone were to revive that faith today, I am confident that it would still have great strength and influence. But the reason I sent my son to a Catholic school was my belief that ANY passing on of the teachings of Jesus will be of great benefit to those who listen.

posted by jonjayray 7:36 AM

Saturday, March 26, 2005

 

JOHN 5: 21-30

"For as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth them life, even so the Son also giveth life to whom he will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he hath given all judgment unto the Son; that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father that sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment. I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me".

I have so far concentrated heavily on Paul's account of the Day of Judgment in 1 Corinthians 15 because it is undoubtedly the most carefull spelled-out account in the NT but I thought I should also draw attention to at least some of the accounts given by Jesus himself. And the scripture above is I think fully in accord with the account Paul gives.

Once again we see that Jesus is seen as the agent God uses to run the show. We see that the alternatives are eternal life and death, not Heaven and Hell. We note that it is twice said that the dead SHALL hear the voice of God -- which assumes that they are not already alive somewhere and listening. We note again that ALL the dead (good and bad) are initially resurrected -- with the good guys going straight off into eternal life (compare Paul's description of the good guys being changed "in the twinkling of an eye") and the baddies going off not directly into the second death but rather into "judgment" ("kriseos" in the Greek -- the basis of our word "criticism"). This implies that the unrighteous dead get a prolonged examination before final death -- a divine courtcase or trial. That "kriseos" describes some sort of extended "legal" proceeding is also what is behind the statement (verse 24) that he who believes "cometh not into judgement". The good guys don't have to stand trial. They just get waved straight on. Note that Revelation 20:12 also seems to envisage an extended Day of Judgment legal process with books being opened and people being judged according to what is in the books.

There is however one rather curious point: What are we to make of "and now is"? Is Christ saying that the resurrection is happening at exactly the time he speaks? The fact that he teams it with a verb in the future tense ("shall") suggests not and the Greek word concerned ("nun") is in fact used in several different ways in the NT. In John 12:31 ("Now shall the ruler of this world be cast out"), for instance, it clearly means "presently" or "soon" and that is presumably also the meaning of the word in the passage above.




Britain's lost Christian culture

More than half of British people have no idea why Easter is celebrated, a survey revealed. Just 48 per cent of some 1,000 adults questioned for the Reader's Digest Magazine poll correctly answered the resurrection of Christ.

In addition, a massive 92 per cent failed to recognise Karol Wojtyla is better known as Pope John Paul II, according to the survey. People appeared to struggle with religious figureheads, with two-thirds clueless as to the identity of the Archbishop of Cantebury Rowan Williams and 42 per cent unable to name Judas Iscariot as the man who betrayed Jesus.

Despite their lack of religious knowledge, the poll found 64 per cent of people quizzed believed in God and 58 per cent in an afterlife. "Britons have a strong spiritual sense, with a majority expressing a belief in God and an afterlife, but they have little grasp of or interest in the basic tenets of Christianity," said Reader's Digest editor-in-chief Katherine Walker. "Many people who would profess to be Christian know little more about the faith than they do about other world religions," she added.

More here

posted by jonjayray 4:19 AM

Friday, March 25, 2005

 

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE EARTH AFTER THE DAY OF JUDGMENT?

The OT view of what happens after the coming of the Messiah is straightforward. As we see in (say) Isaiah 11, the expectation is of the world being once more transformed into a big Eden in which resurrected man will live forever. But the NT has a different story. As I have recently been discussing at great length, the NT expectation is that good people are resurrected into a spiritual life in the Kingdom of Heaven. So what happens to the earth after that? With the exception of some texts of arguable implications in the book of Revelation (e.g. chapter 21) I know of no text that really answers that. Curiously enough, however, one very well-known text does seem to touch on it:


Matthew 6:10 "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven".


That text certainly does seem to suggest a restoration of God's kingdom to power ON EARTH. And there will presumably be somebody on earth to do God's will. So who will be there on earth if all the good guys have been transformed into spirit beings and taken up residence in Heaven (as 1 Corinthians 15 tells us)?

I think we just have to accept the obvious here: It is envisaged that human life will continue on earth but in a perfected form. The old OT vision is, then, not completely abandoned. And it is presumably because the old OT vision was well-known that nobody in the NT really tried to spell out what the ultimate future of the earth was.

So the Heavenly destination of the good guys who have lived between the Fall and the Day of Judgment is presumably a reward for their great virtue, not something that keeps on happening forever and ever. And since there will be no more death, there would be no more need for any more resurrections of any kind anyway.

A small question that remains is what the source of the continuing earthly population will be. If the bad guys have all gone off into the second death and the good guys have gone off to Heaven, would not the earth be empty at that point? It would seem so. But the God who created man in the first place should have no trouble creating a few more people to restart the earthly population, I guess.








SCOTTISH ANGLICANS CREATE A STIR

In their strong statement of support for lesbian and gay clergy, and regret for the actions taken against the liberal provinces of the West, the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church have firmly aligned themselves with Canada and the US. "Whether this accelerates schism of the Anglican Communion depends on what they do now. The Scottish Episcopal Church is a small church, with just 45,000 members. Compared to the 17.5 million members of the orthodox evangelical province, Nigera, it has a small voice. In Scotland, the Presbyterian Church is the main Christian presence, the Roman Catholic Church second.

But the episcopal church's status as neighbour to the Church of England and its already well-established reputation as a liberal province, thanks partly to the leadership of its former Primus, Bishop Richard Holloway, give its actions weight out of proportion to its size. The statement in support of gay and lesbian clergy and blessings of same-sex relationships was made by the College of Bishops in response to the Primates' Meeting in Newry, Northern Ireland last month.

The US and Canada, who provoked the crisis two years ago by electing the openly-gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire and authorising same sex blessings in the New Westminster diocese, were asked to impose a moratorium on future similar actions and to voluntarily withdraw until 2008 from the Anglican Consultative Council, the British charity that is the management body at the centre of the Anglican Communion. The indications from Canada are that the church there remains defiant. In the US, the bishops have agreed to call a halt to all episcopal ordinations, straight as well as gay, until next year's General Convention can debate the matter.

The Scottish bishops have added to the instability of the situation. They have not formally authorised any same-sex blessings services, and are unlikely to do so. They will continue to ordain gay people to the priesthood, as churches around the world still do, where they pass the usual selection criteria. As yet they have not announced plans to consecrate a gay bishop. But episcopal vacancies come up all the time. The Scottish church has already passed legislation to permit the consecration of a woman bishop, although has yet to do so. The future of the Anglican Communion could now depend on what happens when the next episcopal vacancy comes up in Scotland, and on whether the church decides to elect a married man with children, or to make a statement and choose one of their clergy who meets all the criteria but just happens to be in a stable, loving relationship with a member of the same sex. And this could even be a woman.

(From The Times)

posted by jonjayray 3:05 AM

Thursday, March 24, 2005

 

1 CORINTHIANS 15 AND SPIRITUAL "BODIES"

An email from a reader:

"Your attempt to explain (away) Paul's use of the word "body" in "spiritual body" makes no sense as the Greeks already had a perfectly good word to describe a spirit -- i.e., "spirit" (pneuma: wind, breath). Just as today a person talking about seeing the body of a ghost would be jarring, so too it was for Paul's readers. The question you leave unanswered is why Paul should use that phrase rather than the typical "spirit."

Paul does of course use the word "pneuma" in 1 Corinthians 15. In verse 44 we read: "it is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body". The word translated as "physical" is "psyche" and the word translated as "spirit" is "pneuma".

Note however that on other occasions "psyche" is translated as "soul" and "pneuma" is translated as breath. So one could co