Take Up Your Cross

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." Mark 8:34

Perhaps one of Jesus’ most familiar sayings, the instruction to take up one’s own cross has been repeated throughout Christian history to encourage the faithful and call unbelievers to salvation.

Recently, a Christian acquaintance of mine gave his own interpretation of this verse:

My personal theory [about taking up one’s own cross] entails this key phrase: “You must be born again.” This is the beginning of faith. You have to believe that he went to the cross and [was resurrected]. Lots of nice folks go to church…and never are “born again.” Now I am not putting these people down in any way, shape, or form, but the born again experience has to be “experienced” before the kingdom of God is revealed to anyone.

My perspective on Jesus’ instruction to “take up your cross” is somewhat different. Before I get to that, it’s instructive to consider the phrase historically.

The saying first comes to us in the Gospel of Mark, written around 70 C.E. It was later copied by Matthew and Luke, who used Mark as a source. Matthew changes the wording somewhat, but sticks with Mark’s general theme. Luke copies Mark word for word, but makes one slight change, saying that people must take up their crosses “daily.” This slight change seems intended by Luke to ensure that no one misunderstands Mark to be suggesting that Christians should martyr themselves like Jesus – in other words, Jesus is speaking metaphorically; he’s not commanding people to martyr themselves. One has to wonder if perhaps members of Luke’s target community weren’t encouraging one another to martyr themselves because they thought Jesus had commanded it.

In any case, we also find this saying in the Gospel of Thomas. The Thomas gospel is contentious because scholars disagree on when it was produced. Many believe it is a product of the 2nd century – relatively “late” as Christian scripture goes. Others date it around the time of the four Biblical gospels, and still others suggest that in its original form, it pre-dated the Biblical gospels completely and was written around the time of Paul’s letters, perhaps the 50’s C.E. Regardless of one’s own perspective on the correct dating of the work, many (perhaps most) experts agree that it is independent of the four gospels of the New Testament – meaning that its author was not familiar with those texts and was not using them as source material.

This is important because one criterion that historians use to judge the historical reliability of Jesus’ sayings is the so-called “independent attestation.” If a saying shows up in two or more early texts that are independent of one another, the likelihood is higher that the saying goes back to the historical Jesus. If a saying only appears in one text, or if it appears in multiple texts but those texts are not independent of one another, the saying still might be authentic, but there is less certainty about it. For instance, if a saying appears in Mark and also shows up in Matthew and/or Luke, that still only counts as one attestation because we know Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Since Take Up Your Cross appears in both Mark and Thomas, it passes the criterion of multiple independent attestations.

This one criterion, however, does not necessarily give the entire story. Historians must also consider whether a saying fits in with historical context. In the case of Take Up Your Cross, this becomes an issue. Obviously, we know that Jesus’ life ended when he was arrested by the Jewish authorities, handed over to the Romans, convicted of sedition, and executed on a Roman cross. Before any of that happened, it is unlikely that followers of Jesus, or even Jesus himself, would have thought to make a religious metaphor out of a Roman execution device. Thus, this saying does not seem to pass the criterion of historical context. It seems far more likely that this saying was produced by post-resurrection Christians, thinking back on the life and death of Jesus. He was crucified on the cross; therefore we, as Christians, must also take up our own crosses.

Some might argue that since Jesus was God in the flesh, and since he routinely predicts his own death in the gospels, and since the gospels themselves are the infallible Word of God, Christians must accept on faith that Jesus, in fact, made this statement. To deny that may seem to some Christians as lack of faith at best, and blasphemy at worst. Indeed, such a position is faith-based, and faith-based beliefs are outside the realm of a historian’s work. I tend to agree with scholar and theologian Marcus Borg, who argues that one can believe on faith whatever they want, but what matters most is what it all means for us as Christians. Believe what you will about the nature of the resurrection, for instance, but what does it mean for you if you are a Christian?

I’ll get to the meaning of the Take Up Your Cross saying in a moment, but for the present, there is one more historical issue to consider. I have noted that while Take Up Your Cross passes the criterion of multiple independent attestations, it does not seem pass the criterion of historical context. However, there is at least one other aspect of historical context to consider.

Put simply, Jesus wasn’t exactly the first Jew to be crucified on a Roman cross. Nor was he the first Jew widely considered by other Jews to have been crucified unjustly. By the time of Jesus’ death, the Romans had been in charge of the Jewish homeland for nearly a century, and countless Jews had suffered martyrdom and persecution under their Roman overlords. This imperial oppression, in fact, was the primary impetus for Jesus’ entire life and message. You can’t possibly understand Jesus without understanding the Roman-Jewish context in which he lived and worked. Jesus’ message was prompted by resistance to the systemic evil of Roman commercialism and oppression, and Jewish high priestly collaboration with that oppression, in the first part of the first century C.E.

The point to be taken here is that plenty of pious Jews had been unjustly executed on Roman crosses long before Jesus ever came on the scene. In that sense, it is not difficult to imagine that Jesus may have used cross imagery in some of his teachings – such as the Take Up Your Cross saying at issue in this essay. If that’s the case, then this may indeed be an authentic saying of the historical Jesus, but I would argue that Jesus was likely referring to these pious Jewish martyrs, and not necessarily to his own future death. It only became about his own demise after he was executed.

So we have seen that Take Up Your Cross passes the criterion of multiple independent attestations, and might also pass the criterion of historical context. If it passes both, then I would be inclined to argue that this saying likely did come from the lips of the historical Jesus. But that second criterion is, for me, tentative at best, and I am more inclined to argue that Jesus probably never made this statement. The strength of the metaphorical cross imagery is simply too strong, too perfect, to imagine that it goes back to Jesus himself. As I noted above, only after his execution would the image of the cross have provided a powerful religious metaphor for Christians. Prior to that, a Roman execution device would hardly have been seen as religiously powerful, earlier Jewish martyrdoms notwithstanding.

As I alluded to above, all of this deals with the mode of the story: is it historically accurate – did it come from the lips of the historical Jesus – or was it created by Christians attempting to understand Jesus in light of his execution and their belief in his resurrection? I’ve given my own, albeit tentative, opinion on this, but what matters most is not the mode, but the meaning. What does the Take Up Your Cross saying mean for us as Christians?

I quoted my friend’s opinion above, and I noted that my own perspective was different. For me, Take Up Your Cross is an instruction that encourages Christians to follow Jesus on the Way. The Way was the euphemism used by early Christians to describe the Christian lifestyle – the path of God’s kingdom as illuminated by Jesus of Nazareth (“Narrow is the gate and difficult is the Way” as Jesus says in Matthew 7:14). In modern English translations, the euphemism is frequently lost because the word is often translated as “road,” giving the implication of a physical street. (Consider the story of blind Bartimaeus from Mark 11:46-52. After being healed of his blindness, many modern translations tells us that Bartimaeus “followed Jesus along the road” as he made his way to Jerusalem. What that passage really says is that Bartimaeus, after being made to see by Jesus, “followed Jesus on the Way” – in other words, he became one of Jesus’ disciples, “taking up his cross,” as it were, and following him to Jerusalem).

“The Way” is Jesus’ lifestyle of compassion and selflessness, love and mercy, openness and togetherness, acceptance and grace. It is a path diametrically, but nonviolently, opposed to the status quo and the powers that be, opposed to the systemic evils of the world, evils that oppress people and mock God’s desire for social justice. It is a nonviolent resistance to oppression and domination, cruelty and coercion – in short, the status quo of human civilization.

This is what “take up your cross” means for me. It means following Jesus on the Way, a path opposed to civilization’s violent and oppressive normalcy of power and greed, revenge and malice, self-interest and avarice.

The Cross Gospel

The Cross Gospel is an early passion-resurrection text hypothesized by Jesus scholar J.D. Crossan as one of the primary sources behind the 2nd century Gospel of Peter, as well as the four Gospels of the New Testament.

As a “passion-resurrection” text, it tells the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial, execution, and resurrection.

From a cursory examination, it seems that most accounts of the Cross Gospel go one of two ways: either they are accounts intended for a general audience that provide only a cursory explanation of the Cross Gospel without much detail (for instance, on the Internet), or they are accounts given in publications intended for academic audiences and are therefore not accessible for the average dabbler in Biblical scholarship.

My intent in this essay is to provide an overview of the Cross Gospel for armchair enthusiasts and those with a general interest in Biblical scholarship.

JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN



J.D. Crossan spent most of his career at DePaul University, where he is now a Professor Emeritus. He is widely regarded as one of the premier Jesus scholars alive today, and is both famous and infamous for his conclusions regarding Jesus of Nazareth and the history of early Christianity. Regardless of how one regards his conclusions, there are few who would disagree that Crossan is one of the most prominent, widely quoted, and widely debated New Testament scholars alive today.

THE GOSPEL OF PETER

Crossan has hypothesized what he calls the “Cross Gospel” from a study of the Gospel of Peter – a 2nd century work that has been available to scholars for more than 100 years, but which most average Christians are not familiar with.

Prior to the late 19th century, the Gospel of Peter was known only through a few references and quotations by early Church fathers, who mention it in writings from the 3rd and 4th centuries. In the 1880’s, however, a large fragment of the Gospel was discovered (like so many other lost Christian texts) in Egypt, inside the tomb of a 10th century Christian monk. That 10th century version was itself copied from just a fragment of the text, demonstrating that even in the early Middle Ages, most of the text was already lost.



The surviving text begins just after the arrest of Jesus, follows through his trial, execution, burial, and resurrection, and ends just after his tomb is found empty by Mary Magdalene and her “women friends.” It actually ends in mid-sentence, with Peter (writing in first person) going out to sea to fish together with his brother Andrew and Levi son of Alphaeus (identified in most traditions with the disciple Matthew).

Most scholars, including Crossan, agree that the original Gospel of Peter dates to the mid-2nd century – roughly 150 C.E. Eusebius, writing in the 300’s, refers to another Church historian who wrote about the Gospel of Peter around 190 C.E. So it must have already been in existence, and in wide circulation, by that time.

SOURCES FOR THE GOSPEL OF PETER

There are three obvious conclusions scholars can draw about the sources used by the writer of the Gospel of Peter. The first is that the writer depended solely on one or more of the New Testament Gospels in writing his text. The second is that the writer did not depend on any New Testament Gospel, and thus exclusively used some other source no longer in existence. The third is a combination of the first two – the writer of Peter used both New Testament sources and non-New Testament (or non-canonical) sources.

Very few scholars have argued for the second position. Most agree that the writer of Peter used one or more of the New Testament Gospels, and a fair amount argue that he also used some source not found in the Gospels and no longer in existence.

Crossan falls into the camp asserting that there are both canonical and non-canonical sources in the Gospel of Peter. He points out that if Peter is based only on canonical sources, why is there so much in the existing text that is not found in those four New Testament Gospels? A sizeable portion, perhaps more than half, of the existing Gospel of Peter has no parallels in the New Testament. It seems clear to Crossan and many others that the writer of this text was using some other source in addition to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and/or John.

THE CROSS GOSPEL

Crossan has formed the hypothesis that this “fifth source” for the Gospel of Peter is a passion-resurrection narrative no longer in existence, which he calls the Cross Gospel. He has dated this Gospel to the early 40’s C.E., roughly 10-12 years after the execution of Jesus. He has further asserted that it not only informed the passion-resurrection account of the Gospel of Peter, but was also the primitive account that informed the Gospel of Mark. Since Mark informed Matthew and Luke, and all three together informed John, Crossan has argued that the Cross Gospel is at the heart of all existing passion-resurrection narratives known to modern Christian scholarship.

This is, without question, a highly controversial view. Crossan himself has stated that when he first proposed it in the late 1980’s, it was met “with almost universal rejection” among his colleagues. I don’t think that “universal rejection” is still apparent – it seems that slowly but surely, more and more scholars are taking his proposal seriously. It remains, however, a distinctly minority view.

The primary argument against the Cross Gospel is not necessarily its existence (many scholars, as I mentioned above, agree that the Gospel of Peter uses a non-canonical source), but rather its unified content and dating.

First, as to the unified content. While many scholars argue for non-canonical sources in the Gospel of Peter, most assert that this content may have come from several sources, both written and oral, and may not represent an actual “consecutive” account (that is, an established written story with a distinct beginning, middle, and end). In other words, the content of Peter that does not come from the four Gospels of the New Testament may have been drawn from a number of different textual and oral traditions known to the writer of Peter.

Second, regarding the dating. This is perhaps the most controversial of Crossan’s arguments. Critics argue that while there may well have been some early source known to Mark which no longer exists, it is hard to equate the Cross Gospel with that Markan source.

Crossan responds to the first criticism by arguing that the material at question in the Gospel of Peter (that is, the material that does not come from the New Testament) has all the structural earmarks of a unified account – a beginning, middle, and end, as it were. If it was drawn from numerous written and textual sources, it would not demonstrate that sort of cohesion.

For instance, the text tells us that Herod Antipas, and not Pilate, ordered Jesus’ execution, and that the execution was carried out not by Roman soldiers, but by the Jewish people. Later, however, the Jewish people are stunned by the miraculous signs that take place during the crucifixion (darkening of the sun, the curtain of the holy of holies ripped in two, etc.), and appear to be on the verge of repenting and proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah. The Jewish authorities, however, having witnessed the resurrection themselves (and thus, in effect, knowing that Jesus is the Messiah), plot with the Romans to cover it up, lest the Jewish people attack them for leading them to kill God’s promised Messiah.

With the exception of the miraculous signs at Jesus’ crucifixion, none of that is found in the four Gospels of the New Testament. Yet it clearly has a narrative cohesion one would expect in a single written story – and which one would not expect from a conglomeration of various written and oral traditions. The Jews execute Jesus on the orders of the Jewish authorities, the Jews are amazed at the miraculous signs during the crucifixion, the Jews are on the verge of repenting, so the Jewish authorities cover up the resurrection to keep their own people from attacking them out of anger that their authorities led them to crucify their own Messiah.

This seems to be (and is argued by Crossan to be) a cohesive and well-established written account being used by the writer of the Gospel of Peter. Furthermore, Crossan points out that while many scholars have disagreed with his Cross Gospel hypothesis, none have managed to show how a conglomeration of oral and written traditions could have resulted in the cohesive narrative found in the Gospel of Peter.

As to the dating issue, Crossan supports his date of roughly 42 C.E. by looking at the context of the story and comparing it to similar situations in Jewish-Christian history. He specifically argues that it was created in Jerusalem during the early 40’s, after Agrippa returned from Rome as the new King of the Jews.

Agrippa was a grandson to Herod the Great, but was raised in the imperial palace at Rome.



Because of those Roman connections, he eventually was given rule of a portion of the Jewish homeland in 37 C.E. Once installed, he deposed the Roman-appointed high priestly family, and re-established the priestly family that had been in favor during the time of his grandfather, Herod the Great. The Roman-appointed family, by the way, had been involved in the deaths of both Jesus around 30 C.E. and the early Christian Stephen around 37 C.E. The Christian Jews would no doubt have been pleased with Agrippa for deposing this priestly family.

Agrippa returned to Rome, however, in 39 C.E. and stayed there for two years. When he came back to Judea in 41, he was granted kingship of the entire Jewish homeland. One of his first actions was to reinstate the Roman high priestly family that he had deposed four years earlier. Shortly thereafter, he had James son of Zebedee (one of Jesus’ disciples) put to death, and arrested Simon Peter (who later escaped). Where Agrippa had been favorable in the eyes of early Christianity before, he now became its enemy.

Crossan argues that it was in this setting that the Cross Gospel was composed. He states: “The Romans were completely innocent then [at the execution of Jesus] because that was how they appeared now [in the early 40’s]. The house of Herod and the Jewish authorities were completely guilty then because that was how they appeared now. The ‘people of the Jews’ were ready to convert then because that was how they appeared now.”

THE CONTENT OF THE CROSS GOSPEL

I have already alluded to the primary content of the Cross Gospel in the points above. Pilate and the Romans are shown to be completely innocent of Jesus’ execution. Herod Antipas orders “the Lord to be taken away” instructing them to “do what I told you to do.” But who did Herod hand Jesus over to? That question is answered a few sentences later: “…he gave them over to the people” – that is, the Jewish people.

The Jewish people then run Jesus through the streets, spitting on him, hitting him with a reed, slapping his cheeks, and whipping him. They also put him in a purple robe and place a crown of thorns on his head.

Jesus is then crucified together with two criminals. The Jews (not the Roman soldiers, as in the Gospels) cast lots for his clothes. One of the criminals derides the Jews for executing Jesus. The people respond not by torturing the criminal, but by ordering that Jesus’ legs are not to be broken, so that he will die more slowly and suffer more.

By midday, the sky goes dark and the people aren’t able to tell whether it is evening or not. They fear breaking Mosaic Law by allowing a corpse to remain crucified after sunset and the start of the Sabbath. So they give Jesus a mixture of gall (poison) and vinegar to hasten his death. It works, and Jesus cries out “My Power, O Power, you have forsaken me!” The text does not actually say Jesus dies, however. Instead it uses a euphemism and says that Jesus was “taken up.”

After this, the curtain of the Holy of Holies is torn in two and there is a great earthquake. The darkness then dissipates and the sun reappears, showing it to be the “9th hour” (that is, 3 o’clock in the afternoon). The Jews are happy because they have not broken Mosaic Law.

Because of the miraculous signs during his execution and death, “the Jews,” “the elders,” and “the priests” – that is, all the Jewish people including their leaders – realize they have made a grave error and begin to “beat their breasts” and lament over the fall of Jerusalem, which must surely be coming from an angry God.

The Jewish authorities (“the scribes and Pharisees and elders”) become concerned that if Jesus’ disciples break into his tomb, revive him, and take him away, the Jews will become convinced that he has risen from the dead. So they urge the Romans to put guards at the tomb for “three days” – the time period Jews believed it took to ensure that a person was truly dead. Pilate agrees and sends a centurion named Petronius, together with his soldiers (presumably 100 of them), to guard the tomb. The Jewish elders go to the tomb as well. Once there, they roll a stone in front of it and seal it with “seven wax seals.” They then “pitch a tent” and literally camp out in front of the tomb. On the Sabbath (Saturday), large crowds come by and see the sealed and guarded tomb.

Early in the morning on Sunday, while it is still dark, there is a “loud voice in heaven.” The heavens open and “two men” descend in a shining light and approach the tomb. The stone rolls away by itself and the two men enter the tomb. The soldiers quickly wake up the centurion and the Jewish leaders and tell them what just happen. While they are telling the story, three men suddenly emerge from the tomb. The first two men are on either side of the third man, regally sustaining him with their arms the way a king might be led by his courtiers. The heads of the two men reach to the heavens, but the third man’s head goes “beyond the heavens.” The three men are being followed by “a cross.”

At this moment, a voice from heaven says: “Have you proclaimed to those who have died?” Jesus doesn’t respond, but the cross does: “Yes.”

This scene, of course, has made the Gospel of Peter and its Cross Gospel source infamous for those familiar with it. A walking, talking cross? Crossan, however, has argued persuasively that when taken in context, it is clear that the “cross” is not the cross that Jesus was crucified on, but rather a “cruciform procession” of the Holy Ones of Israel’s history that Jesus had just freed from hell. This “harrowing of hell” is an idea that has a long tradition in Catholic Christianity. The ancient Israelites, living before the time of Christ, must, by the definitions of Christian doctrine, have been in hell. So Jesus went there during his time in the tomb and freed those “Holy Ones” from their eternal torment. In the Cross Gospel source of the Gospel of Peter, Crossan argues that these freed Holy Ones exit the tomb with Jesus, forming a “cruciform procession” behind him. He uses this to argue that the earliest passion-resurrection accounts of Jesus viewed his death and vindication as a communal event rather than simply a personal event that happened to Jesus. Jesus, together with all of Israel, was vindicated upon his resurrection. Furthermore, the heads of Jesus and his courtiers are already up in the heavens because Jesus has already been exalted to God – he’s already resurrected and ascended, in other words.

After the resurrection scene, the centurion and his soldiers, together with the Jewish authorities, report to Pilate and proclaim that “truly he was God’s son.” The Jewish authorities, however, beg Pilate to cover it up and not allow his soldiers to tell anyone. The authorities fear that the people will “stone them” if they find out that they were led by the authorities to crucify the son of God. Pilate agrees.

ANALYSIS OF THE CROSS GOSPEL

The above story is what Crossan proposes was contained in the Cross Gospel. There are a number of scenes and events in the Gospel of Peter that I did not illustrate above, including a scene where Joseph of Arimathea asks for the body of Jesus, then buries it, and where Mary Magdalene finds the tomb empty. These stories, by Crossan’s account, were drawn by the writer of Peter from the New Testament Gospels, and not from the Cross Gospel source.

As for the Cross Gospel itself, it is made explicit that the Jewish authorities urged the Jewish people to crucify Jesus, and then those people recognized their error and were on the verge of repenting. The Jewish authorities, fearing for their own safety, covered up the resurrection so that the Jewish people wouldn’t find out about it.

What is perhaps most significant, and unique, in that Cross Gospel text is that we have our only Christian story of the actual resurrection itself. In the four canonical Gospels, the resurrection has already occurred when the women find the tomb empty. Jesus then later appears. In the Cross Gospel, however, we have a story of the resurrection itself. Jesus is regally led out of his tomb by two heavenly men, their bodies already being exalted to heaven, followed by a procession of Israel’s Holy Ones who have been freed from the torments of hell. Furthermore, it is not the disciples or any of Jesus’ followers who witness this resurrection, but the Jewish and Roman authorities! The Jewish authorities are depicted as actually knowing from first-hand experience that Jesus rose from the dead, but covering it up to save their own skins.

The theological implications are fairly obvious there, and I alluded to them earlier in the context of Jerusalem in the early 40’s C.E.

Crossan argues that this text was the primitive passion-resurrection account used by Mark when developing his own, much more extensive, narrative. And following Mark were Matthew, Luke, and John. Thus, Crossan argues that familiar New Testament themes such as the purple robe, the crown of thorns, the beating and whipping, the two criminals – one of whom supports Jesus, the gall and vinegar, the decision not to break Jesus’ legs, the earthquakes, the harrowing of hell and the opening of the tombs of the Holy Ones, the sepulcher with a rolling stone door, the belief of the centurion, the “cry of dereliction” by Jesus on the cross, the heavenly messengers at the tomb – Crossan argues that all of this was original to the Cross Gospel, and informed the four canonical Gospels which were written after it.

Crossan, of course, does not argue for a literal interpretation of this Cross Gospel. He argues that it was theologically designed to show that the Romans were innocent of Jesus’ blood, the Jewish authorities were guilty of Jesus’ blood and of keeping the Jewish people from repenting, the resurrection of Jesus was a communal event of vindication for all rather than a personal event that happened to Jesus, and he argues finally that it was drawn not from “history remembered” but from “prophecy historicized.”

On that last point, “history remembered” would be an account drawn primarily from the memories of those who experienced it. Crossan, and of course numerous other scholars, have argued that the various Gospels of Jesus, both canonical and non-canonical, are not “history remembered,” but primarily “prophecy historicized.” That is, they are not based on memory, but are based on what the early Christians believed Jesus’ death meant, based on prophecy and scripture from the Jewish holy texts. Our accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection (including the Gospel of Peter), are unanimous in their assertion that Jesus’ followers abandoned him after his arrest. They weren’t there for the trial, the persecution, the execution, the burial, or even the resurrection. They do not reappear in our various texts until the women report that they found the tomb empty.

Most scholars, therefore, agree that Jesus’ closest companions didn’t really know what happened to Jesus after his arrest. Thus, the stories we get from Christian history are accounts drawn “according to the Scripture” (as stated by Paul), rather than accounts drawn from personal memory. Crossan argues that the same is true of the Cross Gospel, and that it was designed to fit the common Jewish wisdom stories of persecution before and vindication after execution (found in texts such as Isaiah, 2 Maccabees, and the Wisdom of Solomon). In effect, Crossan argues that the story is an early written account reflecting the early Christian belief that Jesus had been vindicated after his death and exalted to heaven by God.

CONCLUSION

As I made clear at the start, the Cross Gospel is a hypothetical text that has long been in wide contention among scholars. Many agree that the Gospel of Peter used non-canonical sources, but not all agree that this source was a single, consecutive narrative predating the Gospels of the New Testament.

The debate is sure to continue, but it is worth noting that when the hypothetical “Q Gospel” was first proposed by scholars in the 19th century, it was met with wide and almost universal rejection. Now, of course, it is accepted widely among scholars, and numerous arguments, conclusions, and historical reconstructions of early Christianity have been based upon it. One has to wonder if the Cross Gospel won’t enjoy the same sort of slow but sure acceptance in decades to come, as more information comes to light.

One thing seems sure: it will either become widely accepted, or it will finally be shown to be misguided. But for the time being – as Crossan has pointed out – no scholar has yet been able to show convincingly why and how it is wrong, or to make a counter-proposal that makes more sense.

Misconceptions About Biblical Content

Misconceptions about the content of the Bible seem to be widespread within the world of Christianity and society in general. This common lack of knowledge about what the Bible actually says is something that I have always found ironic among Christians. Many Christians, of course, believe that the Bible is the Word of God – the literal words of the literal God of the universe to all of humanity so that we can know and worship God. If they truly believe that about the Bible, one would expect that they would be literally gobbling the Bible up. I know I would be. Yet many Christians seem profoundly uninformed about the content of the Bible. Most of what they know about the Bible they have absorbed through worship services, Sunday School, and pop culture. It sometimes seems that many Christians don’t spend much time actually reading the Bible.

This, of course, isn’t meant as a universal condemnation of all Christians – there are plenty of Christians who read and are knowledgeable about the Bible. But it seems that the majority probably spend very little time in Bible study and harbor many misconceptions about what the stories of the Bible actually say. There are no doubt many reasons for this, the primary being that a lot of Christians are only “in it for the prize.” They aren’t that concerned with actually becoming educated Christians, following the lifestyle of the man they call Lord; instead they just want their free ticket to heaven.

Whatever the various reasons, it seems apparent that many Christians have profound misconceptions about the content of the Bible. I would like to look at a few of the more prominent ones.

THE BIRTH OF JESUS

If you were to ask Christians to describe the setting of the birth of Jesus, you would no doubt receive a hodgepodge of stories about angels, shepherds, wise men, frankincense, mangers, Bethlehem, cattle, and perhaps even a little boy with a drum. Regardless of the precise variety of answers you received, one element that I am certain would be present in just about every account would be that of the stable.



Jesus was born in a stable. Everyone knows that, right? We see it in our nativity scenes. We see it in our church plays. We hear references to it in our Christmas sermons and our Christmas songs. Together with the manger and the city of Bethlehem, it is perhaps the most recognizable aspect of the Christmas story.

Some readers may be surprised to discover that there is not a single mention, in the entire Bible, about Jesus being born in a stable.

Only the Gospel writers of Matthew and Luke mention the details of Jesus’ birth. In neither of these accounts is there any mention of a stable. Matthew tells us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and says that when the eastern Magi came to see Jesus, they visited him in a house there in Bethlehem. It is not made clear exactly when the Magi came – right at the time of the birth, or several months later. Either way, the only mention of a specific location is the house of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem where the Magi came to see the baby.

Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph traveled to a crowded Bethlehem to register for a census. Mary and Joseph had no place to stay (“there was no room for them in the inn”). So, Luke tells us, they placed the newborn Jesus “in a manger.” A manger, of course, is a feeding trough.

This image of the feeding trough is what has led to the idea of Jesus being born in a stable. Stables, however, would not have existed within the city limits in the ancient world. The Jews in particular were very concerned about uncleanness. In the 1st century, for instance, graveyards were not permitted to the west of Jerusalem because the winds blew predominately from that direction and would blow the uncleanness of death onto the city. Sacrificial animals were kept in small pens or stalls in the Temple, but cattle and beasts of burden were kept outside the city limits. Even today, how many stables do you typically find within the city limits of a town? Cattle are kept on farms, where they can graze in the fields. The idea of a stable behind a city inn in ancient Bethlehem simply does not make sense in context.

What does make sense in context is that of a roadside feeding trough. Within city limits, feeding and watering troughs were frequently placed on the roadside along city streets, where animals could be refreshed.

Flowers now adorn the feeding trough in front of this ancient Jewish structure

Like cowboys in the Old West, ancient Jews would tie their donkeys up in front of a city building where the animal could eat and drink.

More than likely, this is the image implicit in Luke’s statement that they laid Jesus “in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” Joseph and Mary, by Luke’s account, were camped out on the sidewalk, with their new baby lying in an emptied out feeding trough, because the lodging places were all full.

That doesn’t quite have the same charm we have come to love in the nativity setting inside a stable, but the roadside setting is the one implied by Luke’s account.

JESUS’ PRAYER IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE

Another famous story from the Gospels is the account of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane prior to his arrest and subsequent crucifixion. Again, like in the birth scenario above, if you polled Christians and asked them to describe what happens in this scene, you will likely get a hodgepodge of answers involving sleeping disciples and groups of torch-bearing Roman soldiers. Most would no doubt also include the image of Jesus praying so earnestly that he literally sweat blood.

First of all, the place is called “Gethsemane” in only Mark and Matthew. Luke identifies the location of the prayer and subsequent arrest as the “Mount of Olives.” John, on the other hand, does not include the scene with Jesus praying fervently while the disciples sleep. Instead, Jesus prays with all of his disciples at the table of the Last Supper, then leaves and crosses the Kidron Valley to an olive grove, where he is arrested. These different accounts are consistent, however, because “Gethsemane” is derived from an Aramaic word that meant “oil press” and John’s olive grove clearly connects to Luke’s Mount of Olives. Furthermore, John mentions that the area was a place frequented by Jesus and his companions, and many stories from the Gospels take place at the Mount of Olives. It is interesting to note, however, that the actual phrase “Garden of Gethsemane” does not exist in any Biblical text.

The modern Garden of Gethsemane

Secondly and more importantly, is the question about the sweating of blood. Only Luke includes this story. Matthew and Mark assert that Jesus was praying earnestly, but include no account of sweating blood.

I recall seeing images of Jesus’ anguish in Sunday School art when I was a child. Instead of drops of sweat, little beads of blood stood out on Jesus’ forehead, foreshadowing the blood that would drip from his head later when the Roman soldiers fitted him with a crown of thorns.



In recent years, I have read Christian apologetics arguing that the sweating of blood in extreme moments of stress is biologically possible and has been medically observed. Though rare, this condition even has a name: hematohidrosis. Under extreme stress (such as impending death situations), people have been known to sweat blood. It usually occurs in folks with high blood pressure. Faced with a traumatic crisis, small blood vessels near the surface of the skin can contract and begin to hemorrhage. Since sweat glands activate during high stress events, if these vessels are near sweat glands, the blood can mix with the sweat, giving the appearance of sweating blood.

This has been used to argue that Luke’s account of Jesus sweating blood is historically accurate, since the ancient world certainly had no concept of the medical condition known as hematohidrosis. I have also seen it used to support the authorship of Luke’s Gospel – tradition attributes the text to Luke, a companion of Paul mentioned in several of Paul’s letters. In one of these letters, Paul mentions that Luke is a doctor. Apologists have argued that the issue of Jesus sweating blood would have been of interest to Luke, since he was a medical professional. This, according to the argument, is the reason why only Luke mentions the event.

The problem, however, is that Luke doesn’t actually say Jesus sweat blood, which makes all the arguments above rather moot. Instead, Luke says: “…his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.”

Luke is simply writing descriptively in this passage. He is using a basic middle school descriptive technique – a simile, likening Jesus’ sweat to blood. Jesus was sweating so greatly because of his earnest praying that his sweat was like big drops of blood. There is nothing in this passage to imply that Jesus was actually sweating blood itself.

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, the verse in question does not even exist in the earliest manuscript fragments of the Gospel of Luke. Many modern English translations, such as the NIV and NRSV, even mention this in footnotes. It appears to be a later addition to Luke’s original text, added perhaps by an overzealous scribe wanting to embellish the story and make it more dramatic and descriptive.

In the end, whether the verse is original to Luke’s Gospel or not, the story does not tell us that Jesus sweat blood. Instead, it simply makes a descriptive simile, comparing Jesus’ sweat to great drops of blood.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

The Ten Commandments are the foundational list of rules for both Jews and Christians around the world. They are to the Judeo-Christian tradition what the Noble Eight-Fold Path is to Buddhist tradition. While many Christians would perhaps struggle to name all ten off the top of their head, most could probably provide at least five or six at a moment’s notice. Don’t kill, don’t covet, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, and so on.

The Ten Commandments frequently have caused divisions in society in recent decades. Court battles have been waged over posting the Ten Commandments in courthouses and on other government buildings and properties. The list has become a defining part of the battle over the separation of church and state. Proponents will argue that the list is “non-denominational” and simply provides a moral standard that most people – Christian or otherwise – can agree with. Opponents argue that it is an entrenched part of a specific religious tradition, and our constitution disallows the government to support one religion over another.



But is the list familiar to us as the “Ten Commandments” actually the heavenly-ordained list of rules given by God to Moses and ultimately everyone on earth?

There is no question, of course, that the list most Christians know as the Ten Commandments exists in the Old Testament. Both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 give more or less identical lists of these commandments. What many Christians don’t realize is that these commandments were later done away with and replaced by God.

Many Christians are familiar with the story of Moses breaking the first set of tablets that God gave him. This is a story frequently told in Sunday School classes and parodied in comedies like Mel Brooks’ “History of the World Part I.”

Exodus chapter 32 tells us that when Moses saw that the Israelites had built a golden idol in the form of a calf, he threw the tablets to the ground and destroyed them in anger. Later, in chapter 34, Moses is instructed to replace the broken tablets and bring them to God so that God can re-inscribe them.

What most people don’t realize is that when God replaced the tablets Moses had broken, he changed the commandments too.

The new commandments could not have been more different than the first set. In order, they go as follows:

1. Do not worship any other God.

2. Do not make a treaty with any foreigners in Canaan (i.e., the Promised Land).

3. Do not make idols out of metal.

4. Celebrate the Feast of the Unleavened Bread in the month of Abib (March-April).

5. The firstborn son belongs to God, including firstborn males of livestock. When you sacrifice your firstborn male donkey, you can get a lamb in return. If you don’t sacrifice your firstborn male donkey, break its neck. All firstborn sons should be given to God (into the priesthood).

6. Rest on the seventh day of the week.

7. Celebrate the Feast of Weeks during the wheat harvest and celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year. Also, all men should go to Jerusalem three times each year.

8. When sacrificing, do not mix blood and yeast and do not let any sacrificial food from the Passover feast remain until morning.

9. The first blooming of any crops must be sacrificed to God.

10. Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

When you compare this list to the other one, the differences are pretty stark. Nothing about lying, stealing, murdering, coveting, committing adultery, etc. This is a very “Jewish” list, reflecting the strict orthodoxy of the post-Exilic period. In early eras, the Jews had the original Ten Commandments tradition. Time passed. Theological ideas evolved. The Jews were eventually conquered and sent into exile in Babylon. “New” commandments were envisioned, commandments designed to protect Jewish tradition and Jewish unity in the face of assimilation with Gentile Babylonian culture. Thus, the story of Moses breaking the original tablets and receiving new commandments from God was born and added to the developing textual tradition.

That’s all academic scholarship, however. The fact remains that the book of Exodus gives us two lists of the Ten Commandments. The first list was broken and therefore made invalid; so God gave Moses a second list. Yet Christians tend not only to focus on the first list, but many don’t even realize that second list exists.

The reason, of course, why the second list is largely ignored in Christian tradition is because of its stark Jewishness. It deals almost entirely with Jewish law and tradition – laws and traditions that Christians no longer follow. Why the laws and traditions of the earlier list are not also rejected as part of the Mosaic tradition Christians don’t follow is anyone’s guess. I would argue, however, that it is because Christian tradition has kept the parts of the Old Testament that are palatable to modern sensibility, and rejected the rest as invalidated by the resurrection of Jesus.

THE CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS

I have written before about issues surrounding Jesus’ crucifixion. Most Christians, if asked to describe the method of Jesus’ death, would tell you that he was nailed to a cross.

The very idea that Jesus’ death did not involve being nailed to a cross may seem to border on outright heresy. If there is anything that all Christians understand, it is that Jesus was nailed to a cross, died, and was resurrected on the third day.



I am not here to argue that Jesus was not crucified. I certainly believe he was. Instead, I simply wish to point out that no text in the New Testament ever tells us that Jesus was nailed to his cross.

None of the accounts of the crucifixion describe how Jesus was affixed to the cross. The accounts simply tell us that he “was crucified.” The Gospel of John, however, describes a resurrection scene that appears nowhere else, wherein Thomas demands to see the nail marks in Jesus’ hands (but not his feet). This, clearly, implies that Jesus was nailed to his cross, at least at the hands.



This story, however, comes in a resurrection scene, and seems to be directed at 1st century skeptics who argued that whoever it was that the disciples thought they saw, it was not Jesus. This story contradicts that skepticism – it says the disciples saw the wounds in Jesus’ hands, so it must have been Jesus and not an imposter.

There is a lot of debate in historical circles about how crucifixion was carried out in the ancient world. The Romans did not invent the practice; they got it from the Greeks, who appear to have taken it from the Persians. Sources from these ancient civilizations rarely describe how crucifixion was carried out, but when they do give a description, it usually involves tying the victim to the cross, not nailing them. In fact, there is no known account of a victim being nailed to a cross until the Jewish-Roman war of 66-70 C.E. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that during this war, the Romans not only crucified thousands of people, but they even nailed some of them to their crosses, as a sort of vicious joke. The implication is that this was an uncommon and unheard of act of brutality.

Added to this is the fact that only one body of a crucifixion victim has ever been identified. This body, discovered in 1968 and dated to the 1st century, had a spike still sticking through the heel, but no obvious wounds to the hands, implying that the victim was nailed by the feet, but hung at the hands by rope. One has to wonder if this is not one of the crucifixion victims referred to by Josephus.



Either way, no other ancient crucifixion victim has ever been identified. If nails were commonly used in crucifixion, one would expect ancient bones to turn up now and then showing evidence of nailing. If crucifixion, on the other hand, was more commonly carried out with ropes, no physical evidence would exist in ancient bones – which would explain why only one ancient crucifixion victim has ever been identified.

Written several decades after the atrocity of the Romans nailing victims to crosses, it is easy to see why the writer of John presupposes that Jesus was nailed to his cross. By then, it would have been widely known that the Romans used nails in crucifixion. However, people such as the writer of John may not have realized that the Romans did not start this practice of nailing people to crosses until the Jewish war of the late 60’s – forty years after Jesus’ own crucifixion.

That the Romans would not have typically used nails for crucifixion makes sense in context. The Romans were nothing if not practical administrators. To use good and precious iron on a crucifixion victim would have been a wasteful extravagance. Crucifixion was reserved for the worst of criminals; it was considered the lowest and most inhumane form of execution. It had that reputation because it was humiliating (victims were usually crucified naked after being beaten), and it was a slow, torturous, excruciating death by suffocation (pressure on the diaphragm, caused by the unnatural angle of the limbs, would hinder and eventually halt respiration). Ancient accounts tell us that the Romans executed tens of thousands of people this way. It would have been too costly and too time consuming to use nails in these crucifixions.

So while we know that nailing was sometimes involved in crucifixion, and we know specifically that Romans nailed crucifixion victims in the late 60’s C.E., the wealth of information we have on this ancient practice implies strongly that crucifixion most commonly involved using rope, not nails. Added to that is the fact that none of the New Testament’s crucifixion accounts mention nails. Among the Gospels, only one Gospel – the latest to be written – gives any implication of nails being used in the crucifixion, and that was written in a resurrection account, not the actual crucifixion account. Finally, there is the fact that Jesus’ crucifixion would not have been anything special to the Romans carrying it out – it was just another execution like thousands of others they had performed. There would have been no reason, therefore, for them to break with custom and use nails with Jesus instead of ropes.

Thus, there is very little reason to suppose, either historically or even Biblically, that Jesus was actually nailed to his cross.

Most of the above, however, is historical analysis and interpretation. The fact remains that John’s Gospel does say, albeit in a resurrection account, that Jesus was nailed – at least in the hands – to his cross. Therefore, is it fair for me to say that the idea of Jesus being nailed to his cross is a “misconception” among Christians about Biblical content?

From one perspective, no. If a Christian believes Jesus was nailed to his cross, he or she can certainly support that by pointing to the Doubting Thomas story. So it is not the same, for instance, as the issue with the stable described above.

However, we already know that John gets some of his facts wrong – or, at least, his facts contradict many of those in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John, for instance, says explicitly that “Jesus carried his own cross” up to the place of resurrection. The other Gospels, however, all say explicitly that Jesus’ cross was carried by Simon of Cyrene, because Jesus was not able to carry it. John’s wording (“carrying his own cross”) almost sounds designed to contradict those earlier Gospel accounts that depict Jesus as being too weak to carry it himself. John’s Jesus was not weakened at all. And that depiction of Jesus being strong even in the face of death is carried on through John’s execution account. Unlike the earlier Gospels, Jesus does not openly “suffer” on his cross in the book of John. Instead, he ties up his personal matters by putting his mother into the care of one of his disciples, and then after asking for a drink, he dies with dignity. Compare that to Mark, for instance, where Jesus cries out to God “Why have you forsaken me!” and then gives another “loud cry” before dying. Remember, too, that John did not include the scenes included in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where Jesus is praying in earnestness and fear in the Garden of Gethsemane. John’s Jesus, unlike those found in the other Gospels, is supremely confident, powerful, and calm all throughout his passion story.

Referring again to the contradiction between John and the other Gospels about Jesus carrying his cross, is it not also possible that John got his facts wrong when he presupposed that Jesus had been nailed, and not tied, to his cross? It seems likely, given the historical, contextual, and textual background.

Other misconceptions abound regarding Jesus’ crucifixion. I recently had a Christian tell me, for instance, that Jesus was beaten with a cat o’ nine tails on his way up to the hill where he was crucified.



While it is true that the Gospels depict Jesus as being beaten, none of the accounts mention a whip of any kind, and instead say that Jesus was beaten with fists and with a staff. Furthermore, none of the depicted beatings happen on the journey to the place of crucifixion. Finally, the place of crucifixion is never called a hill or a mound or a mountain or anything other than simply a “place.”

CONCLUSION

The problem that leads to misconceptions about Biblical content is twofold: first, many Christians frequently don’t actually read their Bibles; and second, they instead get much of their information by absorbing it through popular culture – television, movies, music, etc.

We imagine, for instance, three wise men on camels, a star, a stable, shepherds, angels singing in the heavens, and the baby Jesus surrounded by lowing cattle. Those images are conglomerations of two different accounts, effectively creating a third account that does not actually exist, and incorporating details that are wrong (for instance, the Bible never tells us how many wise men there were, says nothing about camels or cattle, and of course also doesn’t mention a stable). We also imagine Jesus being whipped, spit on, and jeered as he proceeds uphill through the gathered angry mob to his place of crucifixion, where he his nailed to a cross.

Many of these sorts of images come from art and pop culture, not the Bible.

The Method of Jesus' Crucifixion

It is almost universally understood among Christians and those familiar with the stories of the New Testament that Jesus of Nazareth was executed by being nailed to a cross.

Like most other people, this is a fact of history that I have never really questioned. I still do not question whether Jesus was executed by means of crucifixion, but lately I have begun investigating the historical basis for assuming his crucifixion actually entailed being nailed to the cross.

It is a known fact that the vast majority of Roman crucifixions did not actually involve nails or spikes. The condemned were simply tied to a cross and left to the elements, where they would slowly suffocate due to the position of the body. The whole purpose of crucifixion was to make the victim suffer a slow, agonizing death, not otherwise involving bodily violence. Driving spikes through the wrists or feet could have hastened death and therefore reduced the severity of the penalty. Perhaps more importantly, nails or spikes would have been a costly extravagance, and the Romans were nothing if not practical. With the tens of thousands of criminals and prisoners-of-war that the Romans are said to have crucified, it would have been cost-prohibitive to use anything other than ropes. This is why the historical data shows that most crucifixion victims were bound to the cross, not nailed.

With this in mind, we turn to the stories from the Bible. Readers may be surprised to discover that not a single account of Jesus’ crucifixion from the four Gospels says that Jesus was nailed to the cross. Instead, the writers simply note that Jesus was “crucified.” The images we have of Jesus’ executioners painstakingly affixing him with spikes to the cross come to us from art and film, not from the stories of the Gospels.

In fact, in our modern English-language Bibles, the word “nail” only appears three times in the New Testament. In at least two of these spots – Acts 2:23 and Colossians 2:14b – and possibly in the third – John 20:25b – the word is actually mistranslated.

Acts 2:23 (NIV) – “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”

In this passage, the phrase translated as “nailing him to the cross” was based on the single Greek word prospegnymi, which does not mean “nailing to a cross,” but rather simply “to fasten.” In other words, wicked men put Jesus to death by fastening him to a cross. The method of this fastening, whether by nails, ropes, or some other method, is not implied. We know, however, that the same person who wrote Acts also wrote the Gospel of Luke, and as already noted, neither Luke nor any other Gospel writer, when describing the crucifixion, mentions that Jesus was actually nailed to his cross.

The second passage in question, Colossians 2:14b, says: “…he took [our sin] away, nailing it to the cross.”

This passage comes from a letter that may have been written by Paul, but was more likely written much later by someone writing in Paul’s name. Either way, the image provided by this translation is metaphorical – the writer is saying that our sin was “nailed to the cross” with Jesus. However, the Greek word used here – proseloo – simply means, as in the passage in Acts, “to fasten.” So again there is no implication in the original Greek whether this fastening involved nailing, tying, or some other method.

The final passage in question comes to us from the Gospel of John. However, it does not appear in the crucifixion scenes. Instead, it occurs in the resurrection scenes, specifically the famous account of “Doubting Thomas.” In 20:25b, Thomas says: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

The Greek word used here is helos. This is a very obscure word that is not attested in very many ancient Greek sources outside the New Testament – and its only occurrence in the New Testament is in this one passage. This means that the meaning of the word must be inferred from the context in which it is used. Most ancient Greek dictionaries suggest that it probably meant “spike” or “stud,” but some sources translate it as “talon,” “claw,” or “fingernail.” It is notable to point out that in the few ancient sources outside the New Testament where the word is used, the context seems to point more strongly to the latter group than the former, meaning it may have more likely referred to a fingernail than a spike.

If you read this passage in John as though the “nail” marks referred to were fingernail marks, it still makes sense in context. A crucifixion victim would no doubt have been tensing and squeezing his hands in pain and suffering, potentially digging his fingernails into his palms. Perhaps John’s Thomas was referring to this when he talked about “nail marks.”

Of course, that seems far-fetched, but even if we assume that John did, in fact, mean spikes, it is still notable to point out that the one and only reference to Jesus being nailed to his cross comes in the last of the Gospels, one of the last overall books to be written in the New Testament, composed somewhere around 100 C.E., or 70 years after Jesus’ death. And even then it comes in a resurrection account, not in the actual description of the crucifixion.

This rather late appearance in the Biblical texts of actual nails being used in Jesus’ execution is made even more significant when we consider the historical context. I have already noted that crucifixion in ancient Rome involved tying the victim to a cross, not nailing them. However, there is at least one account in secular records of the Romans actually nailing victims to crosses. This comes to us from the historian Josephus, who chronicles the Jewish-Roman War of 66-70 C.E. This war, of course, culminated in the final destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and sent the Jews into political exile for the next two millennia. Josephus tells us that the Romans, during their siege of Jerusalem, executed numerous Jewish rebels by crucifixion, and Josephus notes with horror and shock that many of these people were actually nailed to their crosses. The obvious implication in the tone Josephus uses is that this was an especially vicious and unusual anomaly.

This siege of Jerusalem, of course, had a dramatic impact on the texts of the New Testament, because many of them were written during, or just after, these world-changing events within Jewish history. If Josephus’ impression is anything to go by, it is safe to assume that Jews everywhere would have been aware of how the Romans not only crucified a large number of Jewish rebels, but even nailed them to their crosses. It would be easy to see, then, how the idea of Jesus being nailed to his cross might have crept into some of the stories of Jesus’ crucifixion – such as the Doubting Thomas story in the Gospel of John. The fact that the Romans of the early 1st century – in the time of Jesus – did not tend to crucify people with nails would have been lost on the writer of John, who was writing after the horrific events of 70 C.E. when the Romans actually did crucify people with nails. John’s account, then, may very well be a clear and obvious case of a Gospel writer writing modern perspectives back into the story of Jesus.

Whether Jesus was crucified with nails, or simply tied to his cross, does not, of course, really change anything for Christianity, theologically speaking. For those with a peculiar obsession with Jesus’ physical suffering (something that seems to be a hallmark of many conservative Catholics), this may be problematic, but otherwise it should not have any significant bearing on one’s faith.

More than anything else, this is simply an interesting tidbit that can help to illumine the difference between what many Christians commonly believe about Jesus and what the Bible actually says.

Easter Week Day 2 - The Burial of Jesus

Christian Easter traditions state that, after Jesus was crucified, he was taken down from the cross and buried by a mysterious character named Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph was a wealthy Jewish leader, and, so the story goes, he used his own tomb to bury Jesus’s body, covering the tomb entrance with a large, round stone.

These images are an integral part of the Easter story, and have given rise to our concepts of the “stone” being “rolled away,” the angel perched atop the stone to announce Jesus’s resurrection, and the women “entering the tomb” to anoint Jesus’s body.

A recent scholarly account that I have come across argues that Joseph of Arimathea is a fictional character (which I believe is probably true), and that, in fact, Jesus was probably not buried in a tomb at all.

This argument is based on several intriguing textual clues, as well as the custom of the times. In ancient Rome, when criminals were crucified, their bodies were taken down by the soldiers and buried in common, mass graves. The only reason Christian tradition holds that this was not true for Jesus is because of the Joseph of Arimathea story (which the Gospel of John adds to by including another Jewish leader and secret follower of Jesus, a man named Nicodemus, who appears several times in John’s account). If evidence exists to suggest that the Joseph of Arimathea tradition is fictional, then the only assumption that can be made is that Jesus was buried by the soldiers in a mass grave. Thus, we turn to the texts.

The first clue involves the reason for the visit to the tomb by the women. In this tradition, the women come on the morning after the Sabbath to “anoint” Jesus’s body. This seems a strange thing for them to do, considering that all the Gospel accounts of Joseph of Arimathea state that Joseph anointed Jesus’s body and prepared it for burial. There would be no reason for the women to go two days later to anoint Jesus’s body again. In fact, for an ancient Jew, to mess with a dead body that had already been prepared adequately and buried would have been a desecration. This suggests, perhaps, that there are echoes of earlier traditions in this later Sunday morning tomb story – that is, an early tradition might have stated that female followers of Jesus went to find Jesus’s grave so they could give him a proper Jewish anointing, since he was otherwise buried by non-Jews in a common grave.

The second clue involves the common Gospel theme of how Jesus’s followers abandoned him at the hour of his death. With the exception of John’s Gospel, which states that the “disciple whom Jesus loved” remained by Jesus’s side to the end (a rather transparent attempt by the writer(s) of John to glorify the disciple John, who was the patron of this particular group of Christians), the Gospels tell us that all of Jesus’s followers and disciples scattered at the crucifixion. Jesus was effectively abandoned to the authorities, as his followers attempted to save their own skins. Thus, there was no one around to stop the soldiers from taking Jesus’s body and burying it according to Roman custom.

This is the reason, no doubt, for the genesis of the Joseph of Arimathea story – since it was widely known that Jesus’s followers had abandoned him at the end, Jesus’s biographers had to come up with some way of getting Jesus from a common Roman grave to a tomb that could later be found empty. Thus, Joseph of Arimathea shows up suddenly in Mark’s Gospel to take charge of Jesus’s body.

If this is true, it does not, in my opinion, mean that Mark and the other Gospel writers were making it all up. By the time of Mark’s Gospel, around 70 C.E., the empty tomb tradition was well established in the budding Christian community. Mark simply had to come up with a way to account for the fact that no one had been around to bury Jesus, other than the Roman authorities. So in order to reconcile that problem, it seems likely that he came up with the character of Joseph of Arimathea.

When we look to the earlier New Testament texts, we find no mention of this Joseph, or even of anything like an empty tomb or a rolled away stone. Paul, the earliest New Testament writer, says only that Jesus “was buried.” There is no elaboration at all – no mention of a “tomb” and no mention of any of the events surrounding the tomb. In fact, outside of the Gospels and Acts, there is no mention of a tomb for Jesus at all in any New Testament writing.

The final textual clue – and perhaps the most compelling – comes to us from the book of Acts. It is found in a sermon attributed to Paul – the same Paul who never, in his own writings, mentioned anything about an empty tomb or a burial by Joseph of Arimathea. The passage, found in Acts 13, states the following: “The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.”

Pay special attention to that final sentence. Paul, speaking through the pen of the writer of Acts, states that the Jewish authorities, through Rome, took charge of Jesus’s burial!

The writer of Acts was the same writer who wrote the Gospel of Luke, and that writer’s Gospel, like the others, includes the Joseph of Arimathea tradition. However, it would appear that, in this portion of his second volume, while transcribing a sermon attributed to Paul, Luke fell back into an earlier tradition surrounding Jesus’s burial – one that knew Jesus had been buried by the authorities, not by his own followers.

The clues all add up to indicate that perhaps Jesus was not buried in a tomb at all, but rather in a common Roman grave, with the other criminals (and there may have been many) who were executed with him.

I can’t say, at this point, that I find this argument totally convincing – I think there is probably no way to know for sure. Maybe he was buried in a private tomb and maybe he wasn’t. However, I think the clues and the conclusion are consistent and intriguing, and if nothing else, I think it points strongly to the reality that the stories of Jesus are Jewish midrash, written metaphorically and for the purpose of describing, through the lens of Jewish spiritual tradition, the transcendent God-experience met in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Easter Week Day 1 - The Tradition of Three Days

Christian tradition states that Jesus was crucified on Friday afternoon, died near sundown, was taken down from the cross and buried, remained dead throughout Saturday, then rose sometime before dawn on Sunday morning (the “first day of the week”).

Bearing this in mind, did Jesus make a mistake in predicting the amount of time before his resurrection? If not, how can the following be explained:

Mark 8:31 – He [Jesus] then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.

Matthew 12:40 – (Jesus speaking) “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

You can do the simple math here. Three days from Friday evening is Monday evening, not Sunday morning. According to tradition as I outlined above, Jesus was dead for about 36 hours – not even two full days. Yet in Mark, and again in Matthew, Jesus predicts he will rise “after three days” and that he will be “three days and three nights” in the heart of the earth.

Those who claim biblical infallibility are faced with a dilemma here. They must either admit that Jesus – the divine Son of God – got his own resurrection prediction wrong, or they must admit that the bible is fallible. It simply can’t be both ways. Either Jesus was dead and buried for a day and a half (as the “first day of the week” resurrection tradition implies), or he was dead and buried for three days and three nights, as an apparently earlier Christian tradition stated.

When you take a deeper look at the Synoptic texts (that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke), a clear progression of events begins to come to light surrounding the three days/first day of the week dichotomy. (I exclude the Gospel of John from this because John has no references at all to Jesus predicting the progression of days between his crucifixion and his resurrection.)

To start, it is important to understand the background of just what “three days” meant to the average first century Jew. Three days, according to Jewish apocryphal teachings, was the amount of time that would pass after the end of the world before the ushering in of the kingdom of God. Obviously, this is counter-intuitive, as there could be no “days” after the “end of the world.” But that mindbending concept was sort of the point of the mythology – the kingdom of God is bigger than our concept of reality and stands squarely outside of our concept of space and time. Thus, the idea of significant events occurring around a 3-day time frame was common in Jewish scripture. In the Old Testament, there are no less than 70 different references to events occurring either “on the third day” or “after three days” or “within three days,” etc. Like the number 12 and its various multiples, 3 was an important number to the ancient Hebrews, and “three days” was a spiritual concept that was never meant to imply literal chronological time.

When the Gospel writers sat down to write their accounts of Jesus’s life, they had a clear and spiritually-relevant image of the significance of “three days.” As they wrote their accounts, they used this Jewish image midrashically – that is, they incorporated this ancient Jewish apocryphal concept into the story of Jesus of Nazareth as a means of displaying the importance of Jesus’s teachings on their own spiritual awakening.

However, in doing so, they also needed to fix the competing traditions within the Christian community of Jesus being dead “three days” before his resurrection (which appears to be the earlier tradition), and Jesus rising on “the first day of the week” (which appears to have developed sometime later).

Mark, the first gospel writer, writing in about 70 C.E. (that is, about two generations after the death of Jesus), does not appear to have a problem with the conflict. Throughout his Gospel, and on more than one occasion, he has Jesus predict that he will rise from the dead “after three days.” However, during his resurrection account, he goes with the dawn of Sunday morning tradition, stating that the women went “on the first day of the week” to anoint Jesus’s body and subsequently found the tomb empty.

Matthew was the next Gospel to be written, and it was composed about 10-15 years after Mark, around 80 C.E. The defining characteristic of this Gospel is its target audience of Jewish Christians. The Gospel is full of references to Old Testament stories and prophecies, and the purpose of the writer was clearly to persuade those of the Jewish faith and culture that Jesus was the anointed one of God, predicted and expected so frequently in Jewish scripture. Much of Matthew’s text is drawn directly from Mark, and it is almost universally accepted within scholarly and even most theological circles that Matthew used Mark’s Gospel as an outline. Much of Matthew has word-for-word transcriptions of Mark’s story. Interestingly, with the exception of the above-referenced verse wherein Jesus predicts his death to last three days and three nights, Matthew changes all of Mark’s “after three days” comments to “on the third day.”

Thus, you have examples like Matthew 16:21 – From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

As noted above, the one occasion where Matthew does use the “three days” motif is when Matthew is linking Jesus to the Old Testament story of Jonah. Clearly Matthew couldn’t change the established text regarding Jonah, so he stuck with the “three days” motif and had Jesus predict his time “in the heart of the earth” as “three days and three nights.” Again, Matthew’s purpose was to link Jesus to Old Testament prophecies and stories, and here he seems to have had a difficult choice to either connect Jesus to the Old Testament character of Jonah and therefore abide by the “three days” tradition, or throw the Jonah link out completely. He clearly decided it was more important to keep the Jonah link there, since it served his target purpose. Everywhere else, however, he changed “three days” to “on the third day,” obviously trying to account for Mark’s contradiction.

Luke, writing about 90 C.E. and 20 years after Mark, also used Mark as a guide and also carried on Matthew’s tradition of changing all of Mark’s “three days” statements. Whereas Mark has 5 different references to Jesus talking about his resurrection occurring “after three days,” Luke has no references using “three days” at all, and instead has 5 references to “on the third day.”

It seems quite clear that Matthew and Luke, writing later and using Mark as a guide, systematically changed all of Mark’s “three days” references to “on the third day,” since such a phrase could reasonably be construed to imply the first day of the week (that is, Sunday). It was a way for Matthew and Luke to reconcile the competing traditions of Jesus rising on Sunday morning and Jesus being dead for “three days.”

John Shelby Spong argues that the resurrection was a real event involving real experiences with real people, but he believes it was a kind of spiritual awakening, centered around Peter, and occurring after a lengthy passage of time from the date of Jesus’s death. The stories of dead bodies reanimating, empty tombs, a 3-day time frame between death and resurrection, and Jerusalem as the setting for the resurrection, Spong argues, are simply midrashic techniques and mythology, developed into the story in the intervening decades after the resurrection experience.

I find his arguments persuasive.