As we’re now approaching the Easter weekend, it’s a good time to be more critical and maybe parse that narrative of the death and resurrection of Yeshua. To be truthful, even when I was still a practicing Catholic at Mgsr. Pace High, the Easter narrative bothered me. The timeline, as well as the behavior of the main personae didn't seem to make any sense. The teaching Marist brothers also weren't much help, content to just fob questions off with "Take it on faith. Not everything in the good Book can be subject to logic or reason."
Why not? Well, maybe that's why I became an atheist.
One of the first puzzling passages one encounters is Matthew 28:2, which takes
up the story after the crucifixion and after two women arrived
at the tomb. We read therein:
"And, behold, there was a
great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and
rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it."
The passage relates that the stone was rolled away after the women arrived, and
in their presence. However, Mark's Gospel says
it happened before the women arrived:
"And they said among
themselves, Who shall roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And
when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very
great."
Meanwhile, in Luke one finds:
"And they found the stone
rolled away from the sepulchre."
Can't these scribes of the synoptic gospels agree on anything? But
wait! Maybe we can arrive at a supermajority for truth! John concurs with
Luke: No earthquake, no rolling stone. It is a three-to-one vote: Matthew
loses. Else the other three are wrong. If logic rules then an event cannot
happen both before and after the key subjects arrived.
Now, some bible defenders may assert that Matthew 28:2 was intended to be
understood in the past perfect, i.e. showing what had happened before the women
arrived. But the entire passage is in the aorist or past
tense, and it reads, in context, like a simple chronological account.
Matthew 28:2 begins, "And, behold," not "For, behold."
If tenses of assorted verses can be so easily shuffled around, and believers
can be so gullible as to rationalize them all, then what is to keep them from
putting the flood before the ark, or the ascension before the
resurrection ? Heck, they can do anything they want!
Consider an additional problem: the fact
that in Matthew the first post-resurrection appearance of Yeshua to the
disciples happened on a mountain in Galilee and not in
Jerusalem as most Christians believe. Note the prediction by the angel sitting
on the newly moved rock:
"And
go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold,
he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him."
Assuming the angel was
delivering the message of God this had to have been of supreme importance.
Jesus- Yeshua had even predicted this himself sixty hours earlier, e.g. during
the Last Supper (cf. Matthew 26:32). Later, according to(Matthew
28:16-17:
"Then the eleven disciples went away
into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when
they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted."
Reading this at face
value, and in context, it’s clear that
Matthew intends this to have been the first appearance. Otherwise, if Jesus had
been seen before this time, why did some doubt?
We further find that Mark agrees with Matthew's account of the angel's
Galilee message, but delivers a different account of the first
appearance. Meanwhile, Luke and John give different angelic messages and then
radically contradict Matthew.
Luke relates that the first appearance is on the road to Emmaus and then in a
room in Jerusalem. John, however, says it happened later that evening in
a room, minus Thomas. These angel messages, locations, and
travels during the day are impossible to reconcile. But who’s looking, or
asking? As Fr. Hecker put it in one of our Loyola Theology classes
"I warrant not too many!"
Such contradictions don’t prove that the resurrection didn’t happen, but they do throw
considerable doubt on the reliability of the supposed witnesses. Some of whom
were flat wrong. Maybe they were all wrong. Let us also not forget Thomas
Paine’s famous words (from The Age of Reason):
"I lay it down as a
position which cannot be controverted. First, that the agreement of all the
parts of a story does not prove that story to be true, because the parts may
agree and the whole may be false; secondly, that the disagreement of the parts
of a story proves the whole cannot be true."
All of which points up
the need for judicious use of biblical exegesis to scrutinize ancient
words as opposed to blindly accepting them.
An ongoing problem that consistently emerges is that many who purport to have
mastered exegesis have often omitted textual analysis as part of it, which also
requires familiarity with one or more languages, in particular
Latin, and Greek. Thus, a person versed and educated in these languages will be
better able to at least parse the Latin Vulgate form of early biblical texts,
and also make forays into the Greek Septuagint. (Both of which we had to do at
Loyola.)
By using such language skills to examine then compare earlier and earlier
texts, one is then in a position to identify errors and obvious mistranslations
without having to have the original texts as references. Hence, one can
reliably deduce where errors have been made and also where they've
propagated on the basis of simple deduction. Again, this is once
inconsistencies are exposed.
One scholar who has plumbed the depths of critical analysis via hermeneutics is Elaine Pagels, and found the actual truth of resurrection may be more akin to what the Gnostics taught. In this sense, each person has the potential to "resurrect" himself as a Christ but must achieve the stage of gnosis first.
As Pagels has observed[1]:
Whoever achieves gnosis becomes no longer a Christian, but a Christ.
In effect, in the Gnostic teachings anyone could aspire to
becoming a Christ. Pauline Catholicism (based on St. Paul's writings), meanwhile, held there could be only one
on which all lesser humans had to depend for salvation. This was the nexus for power and control over
the masses, by way of Church hierarchy and patriarchy. Pauline Catholics
clearly detested the Gnostics because they removed any role for mediators or
middlemen. For this reason, as Pagels notes, the Catholic orthodoxy and
tradition saw fit to consistently denounce the Gnostics "while suppressing
and virtually destroying the Gnostic writings themselves[2]."
This is also a good reason to interject once more that interested readers ought
to avail themselves of the easily accessible online course, Introduction
to New Testament History and Literature by Prof. Dale B. Martin of
Yale University. (Roughly on a par with my 'Introduction to the New Testament'
course taken at Loyola in 1964-65. ) The compilation of course sessions, all on
video, can be accessed via this link:
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152
I also recommend - for those short on time - Lecture No.13, dealing with the
"Historical Jesus" (link below):
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152/lecture-13
Enjoy your Easter, but also try to be
aware of the pitfalls in taking events too literally as recounted in the
Synoptic gospels! Also, try to see there may be other profound interpretations such as Elaine Pagel's research has revealed. To this end, it also helps to be cognizant of the early history of Christianity, e.g.
See Also:
Excerpt:
"Earlier this week, Donald Trump unveiled his newest grift to squeeze money out of his cult followers: Trump-branded Bibles. Claiming the book contains the "King James version" and "also includes the Founding Father [sic] documents," Trump promised "you have to have it for your heart, for your soul." The screenshots of the video are funny by themselves, but I highly recommend watching the ad Trump cut for these Bibles. Trump radiates total contempt for Christianity....
This is Trump in his angry-bored mode, letting viewers know with his listless tone and posture that he thinks all this Bible stuff is dumb. The not-at-all subtle message of the video is that Trump doesn't believe any of this faith-in-God crap, but he definitely believes in using Christian identity as a weapon to make money and dominate his foes."
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