Tag Archives: Synoptic Gospels

Seek and Ye Shall Find

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Thanks to all the Christians who responded to my questions last week. Here’s the answers (in red) they helped me reach.

I asked –

1. What happens to you, as a Christian, when you die:

a) You go immediately to heaven (The Bible says this precisely nowhere)

b) You go into suspended animation until Christ’s coming and the final judgement (Paul implies this is the case in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. You have to ask yourself how he knew this)

c) You cease to exist (Yup, this is it. So, as Dolly says, better get to livin’)

2. According to the first three gospels, how long was Jesus in the grave?

a) About 36 hours (Friday tea-time till just before sunrise on Sunday. You do the Math)

b) 3 whole days (see above. Despite saying in Matthew 12:40 that this is how long he’d be dead, he fell way short. The fourth gospel, on the other hand, alters the timeline to make things fit)

c) He wasn’t: he went down to hell (according to 1 Peter 4:6 and the so-called Apostles’ Creed this is exactly what he did. Some people are daft enough to believe it)

3. Which of the following does Paul refer to in his letters?

a) Jesus’ miraculous birth (he mentions this zero times)

b) Jesus’ parables, teaching and miracles (likewise; not a single mention)

c) The Empty Tomb (nor this. Don’t you think that’s strange?)

4. How often did Paul refer to Jesus’ second coming?

a) In all of his letters (Nope)

b) 2 or 3 times (Nope)

c) Never (That’s it: not once. Paul looks forward to Jesus coming soon, as if it’ll be his first visit: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 again. Don’t you think that’s significant?)

5. How often did Jesus refer to his second coming?

a) Once or twice (No)

b) Frequently (Again, no)

c) Never (Yes, never. The fictional Jesus of the gospels says someone called ‘the Son of Man’ would be arriving real soon: Mark 14:62. Occasionally Jesus’ creators suggest he and the Son of Man are one and the same, which they are in that both are fictional)

6. When did Paul say the Messiah would be coming to the Earth?

a) Thousands of years in the future (To hear modern Christians talk you’d think this was it, but no: Paul never said this.)

b) While he himself was still alive (He says clearly that he expected he’d still be alive when Jesus came down from heaven: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. How many more times?)

c) He didn’t say (course he did: see above)

8. According to the gospels, when did Jesus say the Son of Man would be coming to the Earth?

a) He didn’t (he did)

b) Thousands of years in the future (Nope)

c) While those he was talking to were still alive (Yes: in Mark 9:1; 13:26 and 14:62)

8. What, according to the Bible, is the Word of God?

a) The Bible itself (‘Fraid not)

b) The Church (No)

c) Jesus (Yes, but not as often as you might think: only in John 1:1-3)

9. Which was written first?

a) Mark’s gospel (made up about 70CE)

b) Paul’s letters (the earliest, in the 50s)

c) Acts of Apostles (invented circa 80-90CE)

10. When the New Testament mentions ‘the Scriptures’, what is it referring to?

a) Ancient Jewish writings (exclusively so)

b) The whole of the Bible as we now know it (the Bible as such probably didn’t exist until the 4th century)

c) The New Testament (there was no New Testament when the writers who would later be included in it were writing. So, no)

11. How did the New Testament writers ‘prove’ Jesus was the Messiah?

a) By claiming the scriptures predicted he would be (Exclusively so)

b) By pointing to his miracles (Never)

c) By quoting things he said (Never)

Now isn’t that odd.

12. According to the Bible, how did Jesus want his followers to spend their time?

a) By witnessing to atheists on the internet (You think?)

b) By worshipping him (Never)

c) By feeding the hungry, healing the sick and helping the weak (This. See Matthew 25:31-46. So why you spending your days and nights harassing non-believers on the Net?)

Actually, no Christian helped out with this. The answers are those that scholars (and I, in my own humble little way) have arrived by actually reading the friggin’ Bible. 

Neil’s Second Letter, to the Literalists

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Dear Literalist,

I’m confused. Please help me understand which Jesus you believe in, the one whose spirit dwells within you.

Is it the Jesus of one of the first three gospels? The rabbi who walked in Galilee two thousand years ago? You see, I expect it to be him but then I find you ignore most of what he says. You know, stuff like love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, sell all you have and give to the poor. So I can only conclude this isn’t the Jesus you believe in and commune with.

Is it the Jesus in John’s gospel? The problem with this version, I think you’ll agree, is that he isn’t the same as the Jesuses in the other three gospels. He feels kind of made up. Probably no more so than those Jesuses but, you know, more obviously so.

Or is it the Christ Paul talks about? The one he saw in his visions? Because this Jesus really bears no similarity to the ones in the gospels. Paul doesn’t seem to know those Jesuses. Paul’s version is a heavenly being like other demi-gods of the ancient world: Osiris, Apollo, Mithras, Romulus, even defied Emperors, all of whom mystics claimed to have seen in visions. Is this the Jesus you believe in?

Perhaps you believe in the Jesus some New Testament writers claim sits at the right hand of God the Father ‘interceding’ on behalf of sinners. It’s a mystery how they know this, but they seem sure, so no doubt this Jesus is as legitimate as any other. You’d be perfectly entitled to include him in your internal pantheon.

You may also believe, as Paul did, in the Jesus who’ll be coming back to the Earth real soon to put the world to rights. Except of course Paul thought this was going to happen in his lifetime as did the writers of the synoptic gospels, none of whom refer to Jesus ‘returning’. It’s as if they didn’t believe he’d been here in the first place. Still, nothing to stop you from believing your Jesus will return in your lifetime, like millions of others have done in the past two thousand years.

Possibly though the Jesus you believe in is the one you encountered in your conversion experience (or think you did.) The one who you credit with changing your life and who now ‘walks with you and talks with you along life’s narrow way’. I confess this is probably the Jesus I believed in when I was a Christian, with a few extra details added from all the other Jesuses. Of course, my Jesus wouldn’t have been the same as yours. He was my own unique creation, just as yours is for you.

Perhaps you’ve convinced yourself that your own personal Jesus is actually the spirit or ghost of the original. After all, earthly Jesus appears to say in some of the gospels that his ghost will stick around to ‘comfort’ his followers after he himself returns to the heaven just above the clouds. Is this the Jesus you know and love? Does his spirit-ghost dwell inside you? If so, where exactly does it dwell? In your head? And how do you distinguish the Jesus-ghost from your own thoughts, imagination and conditioning? (Asking for a friend.)

I’d really like to know which of these Jesuses is your Jesus. Perhaps he’s an amalgam of them all, a confection of best bits. Please let me know in the comments.

But, if you don’t mind me saying so, almost all of these Jesuses are entirely made up. They’re the product of the human imagination, making themselves known in visions and dreams; they’re the result of subjective emotional experiences, or composites made from different sources.

So your best option is to say you’re committed to the ‘real’ Jesus of the gospels. But as we’ve established, you don’t really believe in him or you’d do as he commanded. In any case, there are several different, often incompatible Jesuses in the gospels. Some of them have to be made up. Oh, wait. They all are. The real Jesus is nowhere to be seen. If he ever existed he’s lost to us, replaced by the heavenly being seen in visions and the metaphorical stories invented about him.

What a quandary! Let me know how I can help.

Yours,

The Apostle Neil

The Gospels and Other Fiction, part 3

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The final part of my critical look at Christians’ defence of scripture as truth.

‘The logia of the Lord in all three of the synoptics stand out from the narration of the author by style and grammar.’

The same way Elizabeth Bennet’s/Jay Gatsby’s/Hermione Granger’s dialogue stands out from the narration and the speech of other characters in Pride and Prejudice/The Great Gatsby/Harry Potter. A skilled author can make all of their characters speak in different and distinctive styles, with their own particular grammar and syntax. This doesn’t mean those characters are real. Nor does the fact that some of the ‘logia of the Lord’ was carried over from Mark into Matthew and Luke mean the two later authors were at pains to preserve the real words of Jesus. They were, as scholars, including the evangelicals Dr Strauss and Dr Wallace suggest, copying, plagiarising, editing, amending and inventing his script.

There are also the omissions to take into account: words recorded by Mark that Matthew and Luke didn’t see fit to copy into their gospels. Were they not convinced these were genuine sayings of Jesus? Did they just not like them? On what basis did they jettison these ‘logia of the Lord’?

If only there were a fourth gospel that didn’t lift its logia from Mark, one whose Jesus speaks in a very different style, with different content, vocabulary, syntax and grammar from the synoptics, but which is itself internally consistent. We would know then his script could be made up.

Miracles of miracles, we do have such a gospel, one in which Jesus is completely different from the version in the synoptics. Where does this character’s logia come from? A different oral tradition, one totally separate from and uninfluenced by that used by Mark but which existed in parallel to it? Highly unlikely. An eyewitness? One who heard Jesus speak an entirely different set of words from whoever supposedly heard those eventually used by Mark? Of course not. The fourth gospel’s logia was invented by a much later author and his collaborators, with no direct experience of Jesus (if he existed). He and they do a pretty good job of writing his fake lines.

And if they can do it, why not Mark forty years earlier?

‘There are, in the synoptic gospels, fewer variations in the logia than in the surrounding shared narrative.’

This doesn’t mean there aren’t any. There are. For example:

Whoever is not against us is for us’ (Mark 9.40) v. ‘Whoever is not with me is against me.’ (Luke 11.23). 

‘And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ (Mark 4:20) v. ‘But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.’ (Luke 8:15) [Luke makes a terrible job transferring this parable from Mark to his own gospel. His is full of errors and discrepancies, generally attributed to ‘author fatigue’. He was just so tired of cribbing from Mark and Matthew.]

‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1:15) v. ‘The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you of you.’ (Luke 17.21)

It looks like isolating the logia and claiming because they are similar across the gospels they must be the actual words of Jesus. Matthew and Luke copying from Mark (and each other?) while John invents his own unique dialogue, makes for a far better explanation of both the similarities and the differences.

The Gospels and Other Fiction, part 2

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‘The gospels were written as history. Their writers did not make things up.’

History, as koseighty has reminded us, is not littered with angels, devils, demons, spirits, apparitions, miracles, voices from the sky and resurrected corpses. Real history was being written at the same time as the gospels, by Josephus and Suetonius for example, who do not include the supernatural but do reference their sources, something the gospels never manage.

And of course the gospel writers did make things up. They invented numerous stories for Jesus to make it appear he is fulfilling prophecy (even when that ‘prophecy’ wasn’t prophecy to begin with.) This included making up ‘history’; Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents (a rewrite of a fiction about the infant Moses), the crucifixion eclipse, the rending of the temple curtain and more. These are all symbolic events. They didn’t really happen. Jesus’ own resurrection can safely be added to the list. It’s ironic that those who defend the gospel authors against the charge they made stuff up are the same who invent stories themselves: Mark and Luke knew each other? Mark proof-read Luke’s first draft? There were people who would fact check the gospels and point out any errors? But the original Christians wouldn’t do such a thing. Except they did.

‘There are no Inconsistencies, contradictions and inaccuracies in and between the gospels, but if there are, these are irrelevant. It’s the bigger picture that counts.’

Jesus is different in all four gospels. Despite Matthew and Luke’s plagiarising of Mark, they alter him to reflect the Jesus they believe in. John’s Jesus is so far removed from Mark’s that he’s a different character altogether. The inconsistencies do matter: did Jesus perform signs and wonders or not? Was he crucified on Thursday or Friday? Was it Peter, John or Mary who was first to see him resurrected? Did he hang around for one day or for 40? These conflicting details tell us that the creators of the Jesus story were more than happy to alter it when it suited their purposes. This is not how history is written. It is how propaganda is created. The ‘bigger picture’ is, in any case, made up of these smaller details. They work collectively and cumulatively to create the bigger picture. If we can’t rely on their being accurate how can we be sure the bigger picture is? When the gospel writers are unreliable in the smaller details, how can we be certain they’ve got the bigger picture right, given they’re all copying it from the same source, Mark, and giving it their own spin?

‘There is corroborating evidence of the gospels’ accounts’.

There is? Where? Just because there is some evidence that Nazareth existed doesn’t mean Jesus performed miracles, any more than Dunsinane castle’s existence proves Macbeth murdered King Duncan (he didn’t). Just because Pilate was a real historical figure doesn’t mean he crucified Jesus, any more than the existence of King’s Cross Station means Harry Potter catches his train there. And these, surely, are merely the small details. There is no corroboration at all for the bigger picture. Mention of the followers of Chrestus in Suetonius confirms at best that there were Christians in Rome at the time of Claudius, but no-one is disputing that. At worst, for the apologist, this curious reference has nothing whatever to do with Jesus. Later references to incidents from his story, by the much vaunted Church Fathers, are derived from the gospels and are therefore dependent on them. As such, they don’t constitute independent corroboration.

‘Everything Jesus prophesies or predicts in the gospels will come to pass, then sceptics will see that everything in the Jesus story is true.’

This one is from a commenter on Don’s blog. (I only went there by accident, honest.) The problem with this one is that everything Jesus is made to promise should already have come true, two thousand years ago. The Son of Man should have appeared in the sky with the heavenly host to usher in God’s Kingdom on Earth, while sending most of mankind to the fiery pit or outer darkness or some other damn place. Both he and Paul claimed that this would happen within their and their followers’ lifetimes. The trouble with Christianity is it is always winter and never Christmas. Its fulfilment God’s – God’s Kingdom on Earth, life after death, the final judgement – is always going to be at some indeterminate time in the future, a time and fulfilment that never quite arrives. It never will; part of ‘the big picture’ we can be confident we will never see.

More to come (unlike Jesus). 

‘

A Christian Writes

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A Christian commenter writes –

…there is only one issue of primary importantance. That is is Jesus the Son of Man and the Son of God and my/your Savior. If so, every other issue pales.

Neil, you and many other atheists seem to think Christianity is broken up into a multitude of pieces that do not agree and do not get along because of disagreements on doctrine and practice. That is actually untrue. When it gets right down to it, only the one issue is important. And that means there are billions of Christians in fellowship. That is the church.

If you missed that in your time as a Christian, I wonder if you really were or whether you were merely religious. Now, among the religious there are significant differences and divisions. Religious Roman Catholics disagree with religious Baptists, and Pentecostals with Greek Orthodox and so on. But that is religion. Christians in all those denominations agree and can have wonderful fellowship when it is about Jesus.

And I respond –

This is nothing more than the No True Scotsman fallacy: ‘those who don’t practise Christianity in the way I (or my sect/church) approves of are not true Christians; they’re merely ‘religious’.’ Having thus discounted those who ‘disprove’ the rule, the rule now gives every impression of working. Brilliant!

You assert that ‘only one issue is important… is Jesus… my/your Savior?’ No, he’s not. He’s nobody’s. Just because Paul and those who came after him decided he was doesn’t mean he is. He’s long gone. Dead. Even so, he doesn’t claim in the synoptic gospels that he came to be anyone’s personal Savior. For synoptic Jesus the only thing of ‘importantance’ was working towards the Kingdom of God on Earth. ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and his righteousness, and all these other things shall be added unto you.’ For some in the early church, the ‘only issue of importance’ was obeying Jesus’ commands, including, presumably, seeking first the Kingdom on Earth (1 John 2:3-6).

The evidence shows, however, that Christians have never managed to do this (not even after discounting those they disagree with). Just look at Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The church has been an unholy mess since the very beginning. It continues to be to this day: take a look at Christian Research Network, which denounces fellow Jesus-lovers on a daily basis.

You delude yourself if you think the ‘true’ church, then as now, is in complete harmony, enjoying blissful love-ins with Jesus while everything else, differences in doctrine and practice included, conveniently fade away. But then, you’ve already bought into one of the most perfidious delusions ever foisted on human beings so I don’t suppose another one matters all that much.

 

Making Prophecy Work

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Recycled image and still no second coming

Never one to belabour a point, Don Camp has responded to my posts and comments about prophecy over on his own blog, Biblical Musing. This is a modified version of my response to that post.

What you seem to be saying, Don, is ‘leave a selected prophecy long enough and eventually it’ll appear to come true’. Perhaps, but then, if you take any selection of predictions from any source and you’ll find this to be the case. Why? Because:

1) You’ll have cherry-picked from the start so only those ‘prophecies’ that are vague enough or appear to have been fulfilled already will make up the bulk of your selection.

2) The vagueness of many that are chosen will make it relatively easy to scout around and alight on circumstances that seem to demonstrate some sort of fulfilment. You may even invent some that do, like the synoptic gospel writers do.

3) Some prophecies will indeed come true, but at no greater rate than chance allows. A prophecy you cite may say a particular city state will fall and return to the wilderness from which it was built. To claim that when, centuries later, it does so is not a fulfilment of this prophecy; it is a happy coincidence (for you and your so-called prophet, not so much for the denizens of the city state.) Just look at the number of ancient cities to which this has happened, without there being a preceding ‘prophecy’. It just happens.

4) You’ll ignore your own failure rate, or explain it away: i) discounting those prophecies that have never come to pass, even after millennia; ii) insisting ‘they could still occur! With God a day is like a thousand years!’; iii) reinterpreting them: ‘they’re metaphorical’ etc.

5) You invoke the get-out clause; the god says ‘if you don’t do ‘x’ then I’ll make ‘y’ happen.’ “Well, praise the god, everyone did ‘x’ and the calamity was averted! It’s a miracle!” This then counts, somehow or other, as a win for the ‘prophecy’.

These are your strategies, Don. You use them in combination to demonstrate the ‘fulfilment’ of biblical prophecy. You work really hard at nullifying your own cognitive dissonance, desperately attempting to demonstrate the truth of ancient fantasies. You conclude your post by saying Jesus will return as King soon. No, he won’t. You need to apply every one of your strategies to believe this is ever going to happen.

Will the real Jesus please stand up? (part 1)

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Over the last week or so I’ve encountered a couple of Christians online (here and here) who’ve made the point that Jesus must’ve existed because

  • Early Christians wouldn’t have died for a lie. (I’ve covered this before so all I’ll say here is that yes, they would – as zealots still do today – especially if they were convinced the lie was true.)

  • They themselves know Jesus as their personal saviour, and

  • The Bible tells us about him so no-one in their right mind could possibly believe he was imaginary.

These last two are interesting and related. Susceptible people have always believed in imaginary beings. All of the pantheons that have ever existed – Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, Aztec, Hindu and numerous others – have had their adherents; people who lived with the conviction that supernatural beings were real and would respond, help or judge them in some way when they themselves acted in specific ways. Yet none of these beings existed. Why not Jesus?

Christians today don’t believe in Jesus alone, however. They subscribe to an entire company of invisible beings and places: God himself, of course, spirits – holy and otherwise – angels, Satan, demons, hell, heaven as well as a celestial being called ‘the Christ’ who sits at the right hand of God and who may or may not be related to an historical Jesus. Evangelicals and other believers build their entire worldview around such mythical beings, worshipping some of them; turn on your God channels any night of the week and see trance-like Christians telling Jesus how amazing, wonderful and worthy of praise he is. Yet this is a Jesus who is wholly imaginary.

Many of the posts on this blog are about how Christians aren’t very much concerned with the Jesus of the synoptic gospels, who tells his followers to sell all they have, give to everyone who asks and to turn the other cheek. They are only interested in his supernatural alter-ego, ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’, who makes no demands on them, but who, they think, listens and blesses them from on high. For all they care, any other Jesus may just as well be imaginary.

So if the Christ contemporary Christians worship isn’t real, why are they so insistent that the Jesus of the gospels must have been? It is equally likely that, the same as them, the earliest Christians also worshipped a made-up supernatural being.  

We’ll take a look next time at just what the Bible says about Jesus, and what it doesn’t.

How to spot a Christian

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What is being a Christian actually about? Do you qualify as a Christian if, like Paul seems to suggest, you believe a particular set of propositions; ‘right belief’ that ensures you’re saved and will go to heaven after you die? Do you have to sing songs about how marvellous Jesus is and how much you love him? Do you show you’re a Christian by defending God’s ‘standards’, which you know about from a very selective reading of the bible? Does being a Christian entail arguing vociferously that Jesus is God, that he rose from the dead and that the bible is God’s inspired word? Is it insisting, with all the loving aggression you can muster, that non-believers are bound for hell, that homosexuals are disgustingly evil and that these, like every other period in the past two millennia, are the end times?

This is what a modern Christian looks like. He or she does these kinds of things, and a whole lot more, that Jesus, as he’s portrayed in the synoptic gospels, wouldn’t recognise. His idea of a Christian (not that he’d know the term) is a very different animal. Here’s what Jesus expects of one of his followers –

They:

cut themselves off from their family – hate them, in fact – just to follow him (Luke 14.26);

deny everything about themselves (Matthew 16.24-27);

forsake home, job, wealth, status, credibility and comfort to help bring about God’s Kingdom on Earth (Mark 10.29-31 etc);

slave tirelessly in the service of others (Mark 10.43-44; Matthew 23.11 etc);

sell their possessions so that they can give the proceeds to the poor (Matthew 19.21; Luke 14.33);

turn the other cheek, repeatedly go the extra mile and give away the shirt and coat off their back – if they’ve still got them after giving everything away – (Matthew 5.38-40);

welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit those in prison (Matthew 25.35-40);

forgive again and again and again (Matthew 18.21-22);

don’t judge others in case they’re judged in return (Matthew 7.1-3);

love their enemies (Matthew 5.44);

regard persecution and injustices done to them as blessings (Matthew 5.11);

do miracles even more impressive than Jesus’s own (Mark 16.17-18; John 14.12);

heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons (Matthew 10.7-8);

are granted whatever they ask for in prayer (Mark 11.24; Matthew 21.22);

don’t subscribe to a magic salvation-formula (found nowhere in the synoptic gospels).

Yes, Jesus was completely insane, demanding all this, and more, of those foolish enough to align themselves with him. But demand he did.

I’m sure there are Christians today who do everything he expected… somewhere, possibly… but I don’t know any. They’re all too busy enjoying their affluent, middle-class lives, singing songs at PraiseFests, judging others and squabbling about doctrine from behind their keyboards. It makes you wonder why they call Jesus their Lord when they don’t do a thing he tells them (Matthew 7.21).

Jesus’ dates with destiny

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I hope you’ll allow me a little speculation…

Here are the few days leading up to Jesus supposed resurrection as related by the synoptic gospels:

Nisan 15: Wednesday sunset to Thursday sunset. The Day of Preparation when thousands of Paschal lambs are slaughtered ready for the following day’s (i.e. Thursday evening’s) Passover. Jesus instructs his disciples on the arrangements he has made for the feast.

Nisan 16: a. Thursday evening: Jesus celebrates Passover.

b. Thursday evening and night: Jesus is arrested and tried.

c. Friday 9.00: Jesus is put to the cross

d. Friday 15.00: Jesus dies.

Nisan 17: a. Friday ‘evening’: The start of the Sabbath: Jesus is buried by Joseph of Arimathea.

b. Friday evening to Saturday sunset: Jesus body lies in the sealed tomb.

Nisan 18: Saturday sunset to ‘early’ Sunday: The body remains in the tomb overnight(?) but by early next morning is missing.

John’s timeline, however, is markedly different. He says that Jesus is arrested on the Day of Preparation for Passover – that’s Nisan 15 according to the synoptics, which started at sunset on Wednesday (John 13.1; 19.14.) In John, therefore, Jesus does not eat a Passover meal with his disciples. He shares an ordinary supper with them on the Wednesday evening, when he washes their feet. Judas slips out to inform on him just as he does in the synoptic gospels, a day later (Mark 14.16-17; Matthew 26.19-20; Luke 22.33-45.) John significantly alters the timing of events though he retains Judas leaving, though from a different meal. In the fourth gospel, Jesus is arrested on the Wednesday evening, the start of Nisan 15. John mentions in 18.28 that the temple officials involved in the arrest have yet to eat their Passover meal; it still awaits on Thursday evening.

In John, Jesus is tried during the night of Nisan 15, or the early hours of Thursday. Eventually, at around noon on the Thursday he is nailed to the cross and dies rapidly (John 19.14, 31, 42). By the time everyone else is eating the Passover meal later that day – a meal Jesus is present for in the synoptic gospels – John’s Jesus is well and truly dead. He is placed in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb at some point Thursday evening, either the end of Nisan 15 or the start of Nisan 16. He remains there during Friday and Saturday (the Sabbath) but by Sunday morning his body, according to the story, is missing.

It has been argued – given we don’t know the year Jesus was crucified – that John has his Passover falling on the Saturday, the Sabbath (John 19.31), as happened on occasion, and that therefore John’s ‘Day of Passover Preparation’ was not the Thursday – as it is in the synoptics – but the Friday. According to this line of reasoning, Jesus’ arrest in John was also on Thursday evening, at the start of Nisan 16 and his crucifixion was on Friday, as in the synoptic gospels. But the Day of Passover Preparation cannot be freely moved around to accommodate both versions of events; either it was on the Thursday (Nisan 15) as the synoptics record, or it was on the Friday (Nisan 16) as those who seek to locate John’s crucifixion on Friday argue. Either John is wrong about when the Day of Passover Preparation fell or his Jesus was crucified a day earlier than in the synoptics on their Day of Preparation, Nisan 15.

There is further circumstantial evidence for John’s crucifixion being on the Thursday. While the synoptics have the chief priests, scribes and elders witnessing the crucifixion for themselves, John doesn’t mention their presence. In his Thursday scenario, they are too busy preparing for that evening’s Passover, overseeing the ritual slaughter of thousand of animals, to attend the crucifixion. Similarly, the various activities after Jesus dies – the buying of linen and spices, the removal of the body from the cross, the preparation for burial, sundry visits to Pilate and the posting of guards (though John does not report the latter.) – do not entail any infringement of the Sabbath regulations.

Moreover, John has Jesus in the tomb for three days and nights, more or less; the supposed resurrection does indeed occur ‘after three days’ as Jesus is made to predict numerous times (19 in total.)

Nisan 16: Jesus is buried at the start of Nisan 16 (our Thursday evening),

Nisan 17: Jesus remains in the tomb throughout Nisan 17; 6pm Friday to 6pm Saturday.

Nisan 18: 6pm Saturday to the early hours of our Sunday. He remains in the tomb until some indeterminate point, either before dawn (according to John) or just after (the synoptics.)

As well as a resurrection ‘on the third day’, John’s version of events provides an added bonus. By having his crucifixion on the Day of Passover Preparation, John  is able to draw an analogy between the slaughter of the sacrificial lambs and his ‘Lamb of God’ who, in his death, replaces them as an atonement offering.

I don’t know; maybe I’ve got this all wrong. There’s a problem, I concede, with John 19.30 which implies Jesus is on the cross on Friday (though by John 19.42, when Jesus is buried, it looks like the narrative has reverted to the day before the Sabbath; Friday day time.)

The effort to harmonise the two different timelines, that of the synoptics and that of John, involves having two different Days of Passover Preparation (Thursday and Friday) and indeed, two Passovers (Friday and Saturday). Does this seem likely to you? Two lots of lambs to be slaughtered and two celebrations on two consecutive days – I mean, these people weren’t made of money! Isn’t it far more likely there was one Day of Preparation and one Passover? If so, who is right about when they fell? John or the synoptic writers? They both can’t be. Whether apologists like it or not, isn’t it more likely that the fourth gospel has Jesus crucified on the same Day of Preparation that the synoptics mention (the Thursday), while in the synoptics – all based, let’s remember, on Mark’s account – he dies on the Friday after the Passover meal as they relate? It makes more sense of the conflicting timelines than attempting to mash them both together when they won’t. One or other, John or the synoptics, got it wrong about the day Jesus died; perhaps both did.

One thing’s for sure, what follows is pure unadulterated myth.

On what day did Jesus die?

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Blog338Passover

I’ve been ‘discussing’ with a commenter on Gary Matson’s Escaping Christian Fundamentalism blog the incongruities between the synoptic gospels and John’s gospel in their accounts of the crucifixion. Specifically, the day on which it took place. While tradition has it on a Friday, it has long been debated whether this is the case; see Michael J. Alter’s The Resurrection: A Critical Enquiry for an excellent overview.

Scholarly consensus is, it has to be said, that Jesus did indeed die on a Friday. However, as discussed last time, one of the many problems surrounding the date of the crucifixion is that we don’t know the year in which it happened. We don’t therefore know the precise time of the Passover that the gospels say occurred around the time of the crucifixion. If we presume that it was during the month of Nisan in AD 33 (again, refer to Alter), then the monthly Passover was on the Thursday. The problem is, we do not know if Jesus died in AD33, or even in the month of Nisan. If the end of his life was in some other year or month (and there are good reasons for thinking it may have been), then the Passover would, in all probability, have fallen on a different day.

A Friday crucifixion creates significant problems. The first is that the synoptic gospels tell us that Jesus’ body was placed in the tomb ‘in the evening’. The evening of Friday (our time) is, and was, the start of the Sabbath, which would have prohibited any activity, including those the synoptic gospels tell us took place during the evening that followed Jesus’ death. These include Mary Magdalene, who apparently could find a shop open on the Sabbath, buying and preparing spices to anoint Jesus’ corpse and Joseph of Arimathea purchasing linen in which to wrap it. It also involves Joseph visiting Pilate to persuade him to release the body and then taking it down from the cross himself. All of these activities qualified as work and were strictly forbidden.

How to get round the problem? The apologist on Escaping Chrsitian Fundamentalism  has been making the case that ‘evening’ in first century Palestine was between 3pm, when Jesus died, and 6pm or thereabouts, when the sun set and the Sabbath began. There is some evidence this period was indeed known as ‘early’ evening. However, the word used for ‘evening’ in the gospels – ὀψίας – always signifies ‘late’ evening (Alter, p98). My apologist, however, argues that people in first century Palestine went to bed early, once the light began to fade (even though the gospels themselves suggest otherwise), so when the gospel writers refer to ‘the evening’ they must actually be referring to ‘late afternoon’.

The second, and to my mind more significant, problem is that a Friday burial, even if before the Sabbath began, means that Jesus was in the tomb for, at most, thirty-six hours; Friday evening to (before) dawn on Sunday when Mary Magdalene and the other women visited the tomb and decided he had risen. Thirty-six hours is only half of the ‘three days and three nights’ Jesus is made to predict he would be buried (Matthew 12.40). The writers of the gospels must surely have known this, and yet they all choose to maintain Jesus’ prediction in one form or another. Perhaps it was too well known to exclude. Or perhaps Jesus wasn’t executed and buried on a Friday.

I have been arguing with my apologist that John’s gospel addresses these two problems by locating the crucifixion a day earlier, on the Thursday, and also by having Jesus die long before 3pm. While the synoptics all say (copying from Mark) that he was put on the cross at 9am and died six hours later, John suggests that the crucifixion took place at around noon and that Jesus died quickly. John’s alternative scenario gives those involved in the burial time to prepare for it (a problem in the synotics) and allows the interment to take place in the evening proper, late Thursday evening not being part of the Sabbath. It also grants a period much closer to the prophesied three days and nights for Jesus to remain in the tomb.

Most scholars, however, agree that all four gospels record the crucifixion as taking place on a Friday. So what is my evidence that John’s gospel suggests otherwise? I’m glad you asked…