Another spin on it.
It seems that very early on Jesus was never even born! He simply descended from heaven (per a recent recontruction of UrMark). Later the need to humanize him lead to a birth narrative and virgin legends (both pulled from Pagan precedent). The giving Jesus a brother seems to have had 2 sources. The Gnostics and the Synoptics (in remnants) refer to jesus as having a mortal Twin brother Thomas in the image of various mythologies of the past. (hercules had the mortal twin brother Iphicles, hercules from the Divine seed the brother from his earthly fathers seed, yet born at same time.) The need by proto-orthodox camp to oppose the docetic notions of Jesus may have inspired the creation of physical siblings. Ironic. The Jewish camp who reviled the notion of virgin birth pobably favored the Jewishness of a large family. I don't know whether they interpreted Jesus stories literally (there exist ancient polemics that suggest both yes and no.)
Later the 'ever virgin' doctine (roots in 2nd century) made jesus' brother an embarassment. The "twin" became just some unremarkable apostle. The "brothers" became cousins or disciples. The Jewish camp certainl survived 70CE (they had discontinued sacrifices anyway) they were apparently relocated after 135. There influence was still threatening throughout this time and to a lesser dgree even later. At some point in time (c. 100?)James the Just (leader of rival sect) had become equated with James a brother (fleshly) of jesus from the early Gospel forms. This naturally led to the anti-James insertion in John 7:5 (than contradicts verse3) and Mark 3:21 (which interupts the passage). It's a clash of agendas and traditions.
Resurrection Appearance to James the Just
by Leolaia 77 Replies latest watchtower bible
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peacefulpete
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Narkissos
Leolaia: I did read most of Hartin's book while working on James last year (and also some of his less technical A Spirituality of Perfection ? Faith in Action in the Letter of James, Collegeville, The Liturgical Press, 1999). Quite interesting indeed.
Your comment confirms that James' apparition is probably secondary to Paul's. As it is not mentioned even in Acts, where it could have been useful (since James-the-brother-of-Jesus is not a disciple in Luke, and there is no explanation for his prominence in the "Christian" ekklesia in Acts), this is an argument in favor of later interpolation in 1 Corinthians 15. (Elsewhere Paul dismisses the Jerusalem leaders' "natural" connection to Jesus as "fleshly", cf. Galatians 2:6; 2 Corinthians 5:16; 11; and "Christ's party" in 1 Corinthians 1:12; 3:22 could well be James'.)
My impression is that EpJames' reference to moral law is quite different from James' obvious reference to ritual law. In the Hellenistic vs. Hebrews controversy of the first century (of which we have but a faint and distorted echo in Acts 6--7) the author of EpJames would have been antagonistic to James. But it may indeed fit a secondary reception of Q material as you suggest.
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Leolaia
That would seem to be Doherty's thesis. I personally lean much more towards Sheehan's thesis of Jesus as a real person who was later deified, with Pauline and Gnostic groups drawing on Hellenistic syncretistic concepts ubiquitous in the diaspora. The main problem with Doherty, as I see it, is that it is biased too much toward the "mystery" conception of Jesus; adoptionist christologies appear to be just as old as docetic ones, and whereas the entire emphasis of Paul's gospel was on Jesus' death and resurrection, Jewish-Christian groups who expressed adoptionist views showed much less interest in Jesus' death and resurrection and focused themselves on the moral philosophy and lifestyle advocated by Jesus. The early formation of Q within a Greek-speaking Jewish-Christian community at the same time as Paul's activity would strongly argue for the antiquity of this view of Jesus (which aside from its didactic character also espouses the adoptionist view of Jesus in Q 3:21b-22).
Paul himself is dependent on the body of oral teachings attributed to Jesus, alluding to them mainly in concentrated blocks in his epistles: (1) There is a block of didactic Jesus sayings in 1 Corinthians 7-9 which Paul mostly attributes to the "Lord" (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 = Mark 10:6, Matthew 19:3-9; 1 Corinthians 7:25 = Matthew 19:10-12; 1 Corinthians 9:14 = Luke 10:7), a second block can be found in Romans 12-14 (cf. Romans 12:14 = Luke 6:27; Romans 12:17 = Luke 6:29; Romans 12:18 = Mark 9:50; Romans 13:7 = Luke 20:20-26; Romans 13:8-10 = Mark 12:28-31; Romans 14:10 = Luke 6:37; Romans 14:13 = Luke 17:1-4; Romans 14:14 = Mark 7:15), and a third block in 1 Thessalonians 5 can also be detected (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:2 = Luke 12:39, 1 Thessalonians 5:13 = Mark 9:50; 1 Thessalonians 5:15 = Luke 6:29). Other scattered resemblances to Jesus sayings include 1 Corinthians 2:9 = Gospel of Thomas 17, 1 Corinthians 4:8 = Gospel of Thomas 81; 1 Corinthians 10:27 = Gospel of Thomas 14:2; 1 Corinthians 13:2 = Gospel of Thomas 48; Galatians 2:28 = Gospel of Thomas 22:4; and Philippians 3:3 = Gospel of Thomas 54. This would argue for the antiquity of oral tradition of Jesus sayings as anterior to even Paul and this very early view of Jesus as a didactic teacher fits better with viewing the Jesus tradition as having its initial locus in an actual teacher/rabbi than in a metaphysical construct that was later turned into a human figure with a historicizing backstory.
And as I discussed in an earlier thread, the deification of Jesus occurs almost effortlessly from the inertia of Jesus' own sayings: his circumlocutional reference to himself as a son of man "humble human being" in sayings such as Matthew 8:20 (cf. Job 25:4-6; Psalm 8:3-6) was easily converted into that of the Messianic Son of Man figure who sits on the Judgment Seat on the Day of Judgment (cf. Daniel 7, 1 Enoch), and new sayings about Jesus coming on clouds to judge the world (cf. Mark 8:38; 13:26; 14:62) were recruited almost verbatim from apocalyptic works such as 1 Enoch, and the Jewish War of A.D. 68-70 almost surely encouraged this shift. Jesus' calling God "Abba" or "Father" was derivative of his philosophy of God's intimacy with humankind (a view in direct opposition with the religious orthodoxy in Jerusalem and also expressed in apocalyptic works that restrict God to "third heaven") as "the Kingdom of God" -- a view that builds on the old Israelite notion of God's physical presence in Jerusalem and his Temple but designates the community of believers as the "Temple" or "Kingdom" where God now resides. This general intimacy was then later construed as a special intimacy Jesus alone had with God as his "Son," and this led to the title "Son of God" that applies to the Davidic Messiah (cf. Psalm 2:6-7) which comports well with Jesus' theme of the "Kingdom of God"....and within the context of Gentile Christianity which had little interest or understanding of Jesus as a Davidic Messiah, the title "Son of God" was understood in a secular Roman sense as referring to the deified ruler. When these trends interact with the syncretistic and Hellenistic notions of a pre-existent Logos, the dying-rising god of mystery religions, and the notion of angelic revelation of secrets (cf. Daniel, 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch, the merkebah), the deification of Jesus was almost certain. Jesus' message of God's presence among men became shifted to a belief in Jesus as God's presence among men.
But I do not view the dying-rising god theme, for instance, as original to the Jesus tradition. Otherwise, why do not the Q sayings of Jesus themselves make reference to this theme? The sheer absence of this theme in my view is strong evidence that it is secondary to the earlier didactic theme of the Jesus tradition. And the didactic theme (which incidentally is the focus of the Epistle of James and the Didache, which also derive material from the pre-gospel Q tradition and not from the finished gospels) comports better with an original Jewish-Christian conception of Jesus as a teacher of moral philosophy. I think Sheehan has a plausible theory of the genesis of the resurrection theme in Christianity, as an application of what Jesus said about those safeguarded by God in his Kingdom into a belief that Jesus himself was safeguarded from death and not abandoned to Hades. Here is my take on the matter. This raising, as understood in the context of first-century Judaism, was like the raising of Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Isaiah to Paradise. None of these figures were rising-dying gods. I think that is the whole original essence of the Easter belief; Jesus lived for the Kingdom of God and thus he was saved from Hades like the great patriarchs and pious men of old. The early visions and epiphanies of Jesus were visions of Jesus in God's company in Paradise (or on earth prior to his transferal to Paradise -- more on that later); that is the kind of experience suggested by 2 Corinthians 12:1-6. That is why he is accompanied with Moses and Elijah in the Transfiguration stories (cf. Mark 9:1-13); it is a foreshadowing of what was to come. That is why Jesus relates the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus promising the salvation from Hades of those living a virtuous life (Luke 16), and in the parable the poor man Lazarus is depicted as in the fellowship of Abraham -- again showing dependence on the common Jewish notion of the assumption from death of the virtuous men of old. Jesus originally was no more of a "dying-rising god" than Lazarus or Moses or Abraham.
The crucial shift is the change from the "raising" of Jesus (egerthanai) to the "resurrection" (anastenai) of Jesus -- it is the latter notion that requires the survival of Jesus' body beyond death. The original gospel of Mark, known to Matthew and Luke, as you may recall only spoke of the "raising" of Jesus. Now, as you may recall from my "Ascension of King David" thread, the common Jewish belief in the first century was that those who ascended to heaven did so at death or shortly afterward, and left their physical bodies behind to decay (cf. Jude 9 on the matter of the "corpse of Moses"). Now the original version of Mark, as preserved by Matthew and Luke, Jesus was "raised" immediately at his moment of death: "And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit (apheken to pneuma)" (Matthew 27:50). Luke 23:44-49 says: "Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (paratithemai to pneuma mou)!' And having said this he breathed his last." John and the Gospel of Peter are also dependent on the same Passion tradition and John 19:30 says Jesus "bowed his head and gave up his spirit (paredoken to pneuma)," and Gospel of Peter 5:19 says that "having said this he was taken up" (anelephthe; cf. analephtheis in Acts 1:11 referring to Jesus' ascension). The redaction of Mark that produced Secret Mark, however, replaced all the occurrences of Jesus being "raised" (egerthanai) with him being "resurrected (anastenai)", and the redactor also tellingly deleted the reference to Jesus giving up his spirit; Mark 15:37 simply says: "And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last." The same redaction added the two stories of physical resurrection -- one of the demonized epileptic boy (which is still preserved in Mark 9:26-27) and the resurrection of the rich young man (preserved only in Secret Mark, but which also appears in independent form in John 11). These stories, following predictions the Passion in the narrative, are intended as foreshadowings of Jesus' own resurrection. And it was this redaction that infused the gospel with mystery cult "dying-rising god" motifs -- particularly the notion of death as baptismal initiation (cf. Mark 10:38-39 and the repeated motif of the naked man in a linen cloth). So all this appears to be strong evidence of mystery religion influence as being a later stage in the development.
So we first have the original notion of Jesus ascending to heaven at his death like Abraham and Moses (leaving his body behind to decay), and then when Jesus was identified with the Son of Man figure in 1 Enoch who stands at the right hand of God, his "raising" involved not just preservation into blessedness but a "glorification" into the Messianic figure who will judge the world. This gives rise to an adoptionist belief that Jesus became the Son of God at his "raising", though others also believed that the annointing as Messiah and Son of Man occurred at Jesus baptism (i.e. the view of Mark). Docetic notions of the Revealer ascending into heaven immediately at death (cf. the Gospel of Mary) also drew on the early notion of Jesus' ascension at death. But the Pauline use of mystery religion mysticism took a different approach. The "dying-rising god" concept that contributed to the deification of Jesus motivated the shift from egerthanai to the anastenai of Jesus -- that the Christ who died was physically brought back to life, like Osiris who was redeemed from death when Isis reconstituted his body and breathed life back into his body. The mystery religion notions that were recruited in the shift from egerthanai to anastenai had to be reconciled with the pre-existing tradition about Jesus' Passion. Jesus was not reanimated immediately on the cross and thus his ascension had to occur at a later time. There had to be a delay of some sort where his reanimation could occur unseen. Thus we encounter the creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (which was not part of the possible interpolation that follows, since v. 12 follows the thought from v. 4 and it logically depends on an earlier mention of Jesus being "raised from the dead") that says that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised (egegertai) on the third day according to the Scriptures." That he has reinterpreted the term egerthanai as meaning anastenai "resurrection" is evident from v. 12 where he uses the terms interchangeably. Thus Paul has modified the adoptionist view of Jesus' Sonship as the result of his resurrection: Jesus Christ "was declared the Son of God with power by his resurrection (anastaseos) from the dead." The same view is expressed by the Lukan Peter in Acts 2:32-36 who says "this Jesus God resurrected (anastesen) ... [and] exalted to the right hand of God, having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit ... and God has made him both Lord and Christ." This Lukan Peter then proceeds to argue against exactly the type of "raising" which I believe was original to Christianity: that Jesus was raised into Paradise like King David (Acts 2:34). Luke denies that such types of ascensions have occurred (despite his inclusion of the Parable of Rich Man and Lazarus and the Transfiguration story in his Gospel, which undermine this very claim), and specifically says of Jesus that "he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay" (Acts 2:31). The first claim is perfectly consistent with the earlier notions of Jesus' ascension, the second is not.
The Empty Tomb story was then recruited as the proof that Jesus was indeed physically resurrected from the dead. The earliest version was that of Mark which is problematic because it cuts off abruptly in 16:8, and this has given rise to a host of exegetical problems. Was there a suppressed ending? The thing is that obvious about the Empty Tomb story in Mark is that it is not the original form of the story because it shows signs of Secret Mark redaction: the mention of the "young man" (neaniskon) just like the individual Jesus had resurrected and the women being "astonished" (ekthambeisthe), a term that is a repeating feature of Secret Mark. The parallel version in Luke instead refers to "two men" (andres duo) and the women being only emphobon "afraid" (Matthew adds that they had kharis "joy" in addition to phobon "fear"). It is hard to tell because both Matthew and Luke themselves heavily redacted the story for their own purposes, but it seems probable that they did not know the Secret Mark redaction. Now what is intriguing is that Mark (representing the Secret Mark redaction) implies that the tomb was empty by having the young man say: "He has risen (egerthe), he is not here; see the place where they laid him. (Mark 16:6). Now the first half of the phrase is consistent with view that Jesus was spiritually raised, while the second half specifically claims that the tomb was empty implying a physical resurrection. This statement also occurs in its entirety in Matthew 28:1-8, but interestingly the highlighted phrase "see the place where they laid him" is missing in the parallel passage in Luke 24:6 and some manuscripts go further and omit the entire statement. The phrase in Luke 24:6 however is preceded by a rather astonishing statement that is absent in the Markan and Matthean versions: "Why do you seek the living among the dead (ton nekron)?" Indeed, nowhere does the Lukan account actually mention an empty tomb and this deficiency must have been early felt because Western manuscripts add the following Johannine-based interpolation: "But Peter arose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings only" (Luke 24:12).
This raises an intriguing possibility in my mind which at this point could only be regarded as a hypothesis: What if the original version of the Empty Tomb story wasn't an Empty Tomb story at all? What if the original version was that Mary and Salome went to the tomb to "annoint" the body (cf. Mark 16:1), and there they encounter an angel (cf. Matthew's "an angel of the Lord," Luke's "two men in dazzling apparel" which Secret Mark has converted into a "young man") who tells them not to annoint the body that is in the tomb because as he says, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? For he has risen, he is not here." The original notion was that Jesus had already left his body at death and ascended to heaven, and was thereby "annointed" by his ascension (cf. the primitive adoptionist notion partially preserved in Acts 2:32-36 and Romans 1:3-4), and so why do they seek the "living" Jesus in his "dead" corpse? This original concept would have then been systematically obliterated by Secret Mark, Matthew, and Luke in their own idiosyncratic ways to advance the notion of Jesus' egerthanai as anastenai, but traces of the original notion still remain intact throughout the different tomb stories.
So Paul also buys into the notion of egerthanai as anastenai and his discussion of Jesus' resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 makes clear that he understood resurrection in a physical sense. Yet it is not clear whether he understands Jesus' resurrection in the sense that would leave an Empty Tomb, as he describes it as glorifying Jesus as "a life-giving spirit" and likens His resurrection as a plant growing from a seed which is then discarded (1 Corinthians 15:37, 45). Paul thus holds onto the view of Jesus' resurrected body as a spiritual body and not of the flesh. Docetists would solve the problem by positing that Jesus never had a physical body, and thus his resurrection simply a "raising" of the spiritual body he always had. 1 Clement 25:1-5 comes up with a better analogy of the resurrection that better fits the Empty Tomb story: Jesus' resurrection was like the phoenix being reborn and rising with a new body from the ashes of the old. It is nevertheless unlikely that Paul would have viewed Jesus' body as left behind to decay since he says that Christians at the Last Trumpet would similarly be "changed" (allagesometha) into an incorruptible (aphthartoi) "spiritual body" (pneumatikon), and "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:44-50). So despite the bad analogy, Paul viewed Jesus' resurrection as converting his fleshly earthly body into a spiritual incorruptible one. This view of a purely spiritual body is especially suggested by the resurrection appearance in Luke 24:13-35 where the resurrected Jesus met two men on a road, gave them Eucharistic bread to eat, and then "vanished from their sight". These epiphany stories were, of course, perfectly consistent with the docetic view that Jesus lacked a physical body even in life and the Pauline view was insufficient for refuting docetism because it concurs with docetists in the spiritual nature of Jesus' resurrected body. And so we find a still later stage where epiphany stories began to emphasize the material corporeality of Jesus' body such as Jesus showing the wounds on his hands and feet and eating a meal with his disciples (Luke 24:36-43; John 20:24-28; Ignatius, Smyrnaeans 3:1-3). Ignatius goes so far as saying that those who touched him were "closely united with his flesh and blood (te sarki autou kai to haimati)," expressing almost the opposite view of Paul.
It is also not clear whether Paul believed that there was a delay between Jesus' resurrection and his ascension to heaven. The original sense of egerthanai was that Jesus was "taken up" when he died but when Paul and other Christians identified it with anastenai, the "raising" was no along associated with an ascension but with Jesus' resurrection only. This opened the possibility of a delayed ascension, of a further earthly ministry of Jesus that intervened between resurrection and ascension. It is in this context that Matthew 28:18-19 has Jesus giving the commission to the disciples "to make disciples of the all the nations", Pseudo-Mark 16:15 presents Jesus as telling his disciples to "go out to the whole world and proclaim the good news in my name," Luke 24:47 has Jesus asking that "repentence for the foregiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations," and John 21 has Jesus giving patoral authority to Peter. Strikingly, however, the Gospel of Mary has Jesus giving his commission before his death:
"When the Blessed One had said this, he greeted them all. 'Peace be with you!' he said. 'Acquire my peace within yourselves. Be on your guard so that no one deceives you by saying, "Look over here!" For the seed of true humanity exists within you. Follow it! Those who search for it will find it. Go then, preach the good news of the domain. Do not lay down any rule beyond what I ordained to you, nor promulgate law like the lawgiver, or else it will dominate you.' After he said these things, he left them. Then they were distressed and wept greatly. 'How are we going to go out to the rest of the world to preach the good news about the domain of the seed of true humanity?' they said. 'If they didn't spare him, how will they spare us?' " (Gospel of Mary 4:1-5:3)
This gnostic gospel takes the view that Jesus left them right at his death, as the phrase "if they didn't spare him" shows that Jesus did simply return to heaven but died a martyr's death. The interesting thing is that the commission is given not after but before his death, right after Jesus' statement about Deceivers which is paralleled by Mark 13:5-6. What follows the End Times lecture in Mark's gospel is the Last Supper, and though the original form of Mark contained a Eucharistic narrative that mentions the bread is being "my body" and the wine as being "my blood" (as it is shared between Matthew and Luke), it has occurred to me that in an even earlier form of the Passion narrative, the transubstantiationary theme that derives blatantly from Hellenistic mystery religions was absent, and instead the Last Supper was the original scene where Jesus gave the Commission to the apostles. Indeed there is some evidence for this. The Didache gives the earliest description of the Eucharist and the prayer that goes along with the breaking of the bread has nothing to do with Jesus' body but everything to do with making disciples:
"We give you thanks, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you have made known to us through Jesus, your servant; to you be the glory forever. Just as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and then was gathered together and became one, so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom." (Didache 9:3-4)
Here the bread is likened to the "life and knowledge" of Jesus is to be scattered "upon the mountains" and bring together the church "from the ends of the earth." It unspecified whether the commission is viewed as to the Gentiles or to the Jews scattered in the diaspora. Viewing the Eucharist in these terms makes a lot of sense. The temptation in the wilderness story likens "bread" with "every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4), a quote from Deuteronomy 8:3 which reveals that the likening of bread with both "life and knowledge" rests on a traditional Jewish basis. Mark 2:25-26 also makes an allusion to 1 Samuel 21 in which Jesus says: "Did you never read what David did in his time of need when he and his followers were hungry, how they went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the loaves of offering which only the priests are allowed to eat, and how he gave some to the men with him?" The obvious connection is that Jesus is freely dispensing "bread" (interpretations of the Law) that the Pharisee priests believed they had a monopoly on. Jesus' feeding of the multitude in Mark 6:30-44, which explicitly contains the Eucharistic motif of breaking the bread, could similarly be seen as a metaphor for the distribution of "life and knowledge" among the people Jesus teaches (cf. Mark 6:34 where Jesus has also "set himself to teach them [the multitude] at some length"). There may also be a link with the wheat in the Parable of the Sower where Jesus says: "What the sower is sowing is the word. Those on the edge of the path where the word is sown are people who have no sooner heard it than Satan comes and carries away the word that was sown in them. Similarly, those who receive the seed on patches of rock are people who, when first they hear the word, welcome it at once with joy. But they have no root in them, they do not last," etc. (Mark 4:14-20). If there were similar sayings about "the word" being "bread," it is thus quite simple to understand how those with a Logos christology came to identify Jesus as the bread (cf. John 6:31-58) and also the Eucharistic bread as Jesus "body". The more original meaning though would have been identifying bread with the message, the teaching and moral instruction (didakhe) of Jesus, and thus it seems quite plausible that an early story about the Last Supper related it as the scene of the great Commission and originally designated the Eucharist as a metaphor of the didakhe the disciples were to spread. The metaphysical reinterpretation of the Eucharist however detached the Commission from this original context and relocated it to the newly created period between Jesus' resurrection and his ascension.There is one more implication of the delay between Jesus' death and resurrection, necessitated by the reinterpretation of Jesus' egerthanai as anastenai. As already stated, the original idea was that Jesus was "taken up" to heaven at the moment of his death. However if Jesus experienced a delay of up to three days between his death and his resurrection (inspired by, among other things, Hosea 6:2-3 which says: "He has struck us down, but he will bandage our wounds; after two days he will bring us back to life, on the third day he will raise us"), he would have possibly spent some time in Hades. This is the view of Luke in Acts 2:23 when he says that Jesus' resurrection "freed him of the pangs of Hades." But this statement brings us to what Jesus said to the good thief in Luke 23:43: "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in Paradise." Now it is true that in 1 Enoch and several other Jewish writings, Paradise was viewed as a subdivision of Hades. But when we look at writings that directly refer to the ascension of the patriarchs and faithful men of old into Paradise (such as Testament of Abraham, Testament of Isaac, Testament of Jacob, Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Zephaniah), Paradise is usually conceived as in heaven (cf. also 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 where Paul equates "Paradise" with "third heaven"). The best example is the Testament of Abraham, which states that "the angels escorted [Abraham's] precious soul and ascended into heaven ... [taking] my friend Abraham into Paradise, where there are the tents of my righteous ones and where the mansions of my holy ones, Isaac and Jacob, are in his bosom" (20:6-14; cf. the "Bosom of Abraham" in Luke 16:23). The Apocalypse of Zephaniah also clearly distinguishes between Hades and the abode of the "ancient worthies". Thus, notwithstanding my earlier position, I think that Luke 23:43 most probably claims that both Jesus and the good thief were "taken up" into heaven on the day they died. It knows nothing of a delay between Jesus' death and resurrection and most likely draws on a tradition independent of the Empty Tomb stories. But having Jesus resurrected on the "third day" normally implies that Jesus spent some time in Hades. The obvious question, then, was what did Jesus do when he was in Hades. Exegesis of Psalm 68:18 seemed to provide an answer; the loose quotation in Ephesians 4:8 reads: "When he ascended to a height, he captured prisoners, he gave gifts to men." The original referrent in Psalms was God as divine warrior, but deutero-Paul interprets the Scripture as referring to the ascension of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit. Deutero-Paul continues: "When it says he ascended, what can it mean if not that he descended right down to the lower regions of the earth" (Ephesians 4:9). The capturing or perhaps freeing of prisoners from Hades, may also have something to do with the statement in 1 Peter 3:18 that "in the body he was put to death, in the spirit he was made alive (zoopoietheis), and in the spirit he went to preach to the spirits in prison." The traditional interpretation is that Jesus preached to these prisoners of Hades during the three days he was dead. The problem though is to what event does the verb zoopoietheis refer to? The passage does not use the otherwise familiar egerthanai and anastenai words. Is the idea that when Jesus died he was quickened and "made alive" in the sense that he had a spiritual "raising" akin to egerthanai "being raised" but instead of ascending to heaven he first descended to Hades or "the prison" referred to in 1 Enoch where the spirits of the giants and the rebellious spirits were being held? I'm not sure, but 1 Peter 1:3 does refer to the "resurrection (anastaseos) of Jesus Christ from the dead" and the statement in 1 Peter 1:21 that "God raised (egeiranta) him from the dead and glorified him" also indicates that he understood Jesus' raising (egerthanai) as the same as his resurrection. Perhaps zoopoietheis is being used roughly similarly to the original sense of egerthanai; on the other hand, it could also be possible that zoopoietheis is also synonymous with Jesus' resurrection, and the preaching to the spirits in prison occurred some unspecified time afterward. The most natural way of understanding the verse, though, is that it refers to a time when Jesus was in Hades, the abode of the dead, where he "preached" and presumably "saved" some of the souls in Hades. But did they have the opportunity of going to Paradise like the good thief? There is nothing in 1 Peter that points to this, though interestingly the mention of "captured prisoners" is associated in Ephesians with Jesus' ascension "to a height".
There is nothing in the ascension stories of the gospels (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50-53; John 20:17-18; Acts 1:6-11) that suggests that Jesus took to heaven the newly-resurrected righteous dead. But in this vein there is one reason text in the gospel tradition: Matthew 27:52-53 which states that during the earthquake at Jesus' death, "the tombs opened and the bodies of many holy men rose from the dead, and these, after his resurrection, came out of the tombs, entered the Holy City and appeared to many people." The concept seems to be related to that of Ephesians 4:8-9 which implies that when Jesus ascended he took "the prisoners ... [of] the lower regions of the earth". The difference is that the tradition related in Matthew speaks of a bodily resurrection of the "holy ones" from the dead. More importantly, the statement in Matthew (which doesn't refer to any ascension of these resurrected ones) directly contradicts Paul's doctrine on the resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 states: "But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep. Death came through one man and in the same way the resurrection of the dead has come through one man. Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ; but all of them in their proper order: Christ as the first-fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him." Matthew 27:51-52 , by stating that "the bodies of many holy men rose from the dead" at the moment Jesus died suggests that the resurrection of the righteous happened before Jesus was resurrected -- in fact, at the very moment he died. Here the "proper order" is reversed. Paul believes that "all who have fallen asleep", "all [who] die in Adam" (whom he equates with those "dead in Christ," since they have been redeemed by Him) would rise at Christ's return. This is the same view expressed in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, where those "dead in Christ" (presumably all who have been redeemed by Christ) "will be the first to rise" at Christ's second coming. 2 Timothy 2:18 (of the Paulinist school) specifically refutes the notion that "the resurrection has already taken place."
So what's the deal with Matthew's narrative? It is important to note that this story about the holy ones rising from the dead was a Matthean addition to the original Markan account. This story is absent in Mark 15:38, and it doesn't appear in the Lukan version of the account (Luke 23:45 ). In fact, other early gospels based on the same crucifixion narrative also omit any mention of this resurrection but mention the splitting of the temple veil (cf. Gospel of Peter 5:15-20; Gospel of the Nazoreans, Fr. 21, 36; Acts of Pilate 11:1-3 ). Now this in itself is quite remarkable since the resurrection of the holy ones would have been an awesome event, even more so than the tear in the temple veil, yet it is nowhere mentioned by Mark, Luke, John, or any other gospel except of Matthew and later versions of Matthew. Furthermore, it is fairly certain that the account in Matthew has been altered in its wording. The biggest problem are the words "after his resurrection", which -- most bizarrely -- delays the appearance of those resurrected for three days (Matthew 27:53 ). This totally defeats the whole purpose of having them raised when Jesus dies on the cross as something that led the centurion to confess Jesus as the Son of God (Matthew 27:54). The centurion certainly could not have been awed by their resurrection if the resurrected dead did not leave their tombs! The delay however does bring the canonical account into line (partially) with Pauline theology, which proclaims Jesus as the "first fruits" of the resurrection. For Paul, the "saints" could not arise before Jesus himself has risen. Yet the gloss fails to bring Matthew fully into line with Pauline theology since the bodily resurrection of the righteous dead still takes place before Jesus. There is actual textual evidence that the text in Matthew has been altered. One of its earliest witnesses was the Diatesseron, a gospel harmony produced by Tatian at the end of the 2nd century. This harmony was in turn based on the one produced by Justin Martyr several decades earlier. The Pepysian Harmony and the Ephrem Commentary both attest the Diatessaron reading as follows:
And with that, the veil that hung in the temple before the high altar burst in two pieces, the earth quaked, and the stones burst, and the dead men arose out of their graves. And entering the holy city, they appeared to many. And the centurion and those with him, who stood facing Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, and said with awe, "Truly this was the Son of God!"
Here the interpolated gloss does not appear and the appearance of the risen dead in Jerusalem occurs at the same time as Jesus' death and was witnessed by the centurion. This reading makes better sense with the context. It also lacks the greater detail of the canonical account in this passage -- all of which is theologically loaded: "bodies" (more specific and agreeing with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:35-44), "of saints" (certainly superior to the mere "dead" of the Diatessaron, and therefore more developed, and also Pauline), "who had fallen asleep" (again a more elegant description, and again used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:20 and 1 Thessalonians 4:14 ). All this suggests that the Diatessaron's reading is earlier and preserves a more primitive version of the text than does the canonical text, which has been revised to bring it into conformity with Pauline theology.
It is not a forgone conclusion, however, that Jesus had to have gone to Hades during the three days, for there is another possibility. He may have just hung around earth (possibly in the company of angels) as a disembodied soul. In fact, this is probably the real immediate source of the three-day motif. According to rabbinical tradition in the Talmud, the soul in death hovers over the grave until the body is entirely consumed (Shab. 152b). It was widely thought that the dead could come back to life within three days of death; during the first three days of death it was customary for relatives to visit the grave to see of the loved one had come back to life (Massek. Sem. viii), and when Mishnaic custom began to require quick burials, the tomb was not immediately sealed over the dead. The Testament of Job, attesting the older burial custom, says that "after three days they laid [Job] in the tomb in a beautiful sleep" (53:7). I find it a viable possibility that the early "appearance stories" of Jesus were placed within this three-day window (during which time Jesus was a disembodied spirit), only later to be relocated to after the resurrection on the third day. When we examine the ascension stories, we find several describing ascensions within three days after death. According to the Life of Adam and Eve, three days after the death of Adam his soul was handed by God to Michael the Archangel which assigned it an abode in third heaven (Life of Adam and Eve; cf. the Talmud, Gen. R. vii; Haggadah 12b which also posit the same three days), while the body was buried by Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael near Hebron. The Testament of Abraham stated that when Abraham died, Michael the Archangel snatched him from the clutches of Death while meanwhile "they tended the body of the righteous Abraham with divine ointments and perfumes until the third day after his death. And they buried him in the promised land at the oak of Mamre, while the angels escorted his precious soul and ascended into heaven" (20:10-11). Most telling however is 4 Baruch 9:9-14. In this text, a Christian interpolator has turned a reference to the death of Jeremiah into a foreshadowing about Christ, and it tells not a story of an ascension but a resurrection:
"And all the people heard their weeping and they all ran to them and saw Jeremiah lying on the ground as if dead. And they tore their garments and put dust in their heads and wept bitterly. And after this they prepared to bury him. And behold there came a voice saying, 'Do not bury the one who yet lives, for the soul is returning to his body!' And when they heard the voice they did not bury him but stayed around his tabernacle for three days saying, 'When will he arise?' And after three days his soul came back to his body and he raised his voice in the midst of all of them and said, 'Glorify God with one voice! All of you glorify God and the Son of God who awakens us -- Messiah Jesus -- the light of all ages, in inextinguishable lamp, the light of faith." (4 Baruch 9:9-14)
This conception of Jesus' resurrection is perfectly consistent with the Jewish belief that a dead person could come back to life within three days. The extent to which this widespread Jewish notion derives from the Hellenistic milieu is uncertain, but it clear that the case of Jesus' resurrection could have initially been undertsood as a reuniting of the hovering soul to the body and this notion need not derive directly from Hellenistic mystery religions. When we take a step back and survey what we have already considered, we find a stunning array of different ideas of how Jesus came back from the dead. He could have rose at death as a spirit to Paradise (like in the case of Isaac and Moses, and as in the promise made to the good thief), he could have risen as a spirit to Paradise on the third day after his death (like in the case of Adam and Abraham), he could have been reunited with his body and resurrected on the third day after his death (like in the case of Jeremiah) and ascended to heaven on the same day, he could have been resurrected on the third day after his death and spent some time with his disciples and then later on ascend to heaven (this became the later dominant view in Western "orthodox" Christianity), he could have spent time with his disciples in the three days following his death or he could have been in Hades during this time, etc. etc. It is amazing how one dominant homogenized Christian view emerged out of the multiplicity of alternatives.
Anyway, that's my crude reconstruction of the whole Jesus resurrection belief, and I'm pretty convinced that while the mystical "dying-rising god" concept had a powerful influence on the development of first century Christianity, it wasn't the origin of the notion of Jesus having "risen," which instead derives from traditional Jewish concepts (which may have in turn been influenced by Hellenistic ideas). And the pattern of development makes a lot of sense to me if we start with Jesus as a real teacher who subsequently became viewed as preserved from death in Paradise like the faithful men of old, then glorified, then resurrected, then deified, than work the other way around.
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Narkissos
Awesome post (I?m getting short of superlatives...). The material you brought in about the ?three days? was especially illuminating to me.
I would however raise (!) a linguistical objection about egeirô pertaining to the vocabulary of elevation, or ascension (taking up/being taken up): in the NT this includes hupsoô (Mt 11:23//Lk 10:15; John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32ff [in the Johannine version the very act of crucifixion is interpreted as elevation ?from the earth?]; Acts 5:31), huperupsoô (Philippians 2:9), airô (Luke 23:18; Acts 8:33; cf. the possible overtones in John 1:29; 10:24; 17:15; 19:15,34,38; 20:2,13,15; Acts 21:36; 22:22; Colossians 2:14), epairô (Acts 1:9), analambanô (Acts 1:2,11,22; 10:16; 1 Timothy 3:16; Ps-Mark 16:19; cf. analempsis in Luke 9:51), anapherô (Luke 24:51) and even harpazô (Acts 8:39; 2 Corinthians 12:2,4; 1 Thessalonians 4:17; Revelation 12:5). But I doubt egeirô belongs to the same semantic range. When it is not a fair synonym of anistèmi (meaning resurrection as a raising/rising up from the dead), its special nuance is IMO this of awakening (e.g. Mark 4:38f; see the use of the two verbs in 5:41f for instance). So it is very appropriate for a spiritual, not corporal concept of ?resurrection?, but the sense of elevation seems to be absent. It has often been remarked that Pauline theology uses prioritarily egeirô, and the rare occurences of anistèmi consequently have been used as a clue for detecting (earlier or later, in the case of interpolations) non-Pauline material in Paul.
One very important link as regards elevation and the title son of God is, in my view, the Hellenistic Wisdom of Solomon, where both are used to express the divine justification of the persecuted righteous (the literary connections with the Passion narratives are many and obvious). Just a few well-known examples:
2:13ff (words of the wicked about the righteous one): "He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God's child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected."
3:1ff: But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little (cf. Hebrews!), they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them. In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. They will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever.
4:10f (on the fate of the childless faithful): There were some who pleased God and were loved by him, and while living among sinners were taken up. They were caught up so that evil might not change their understanding or guile deceive their souls.
5:1ff: Then the righteous will stand with great confidence in the presence of those who have oppressed them and those who make light of their labors. When the unrighteous see them, they will be shaken with dreadful fear, and they will be amazed at the unexpected salvation of the righteous. They will speak to one another in repentance, and in anguish of spirit they will groan, and say, "These are persons whom we once held in derision and made a byword of reproach--fools that we were! We thought that their lives were madness and that their end was without honor. Why have they been numbered among the children of God? And why is their lot among the saints?
The background of the N.T. uses of ?son of God? is very complex and interesting (I hope I am able to post something on this subject in the next few days). But what seems to be new here is that it is combined with post-mortem elevation, in a way which certainly did much to relate the crucified Jesus to the wealth of the "Son of God" motive (including Jewish, Hellenistic and "pagan" material).
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Leolaia
Well, I'm pretty pissed off right now. I just wrote a very long, nice response for the last 5 hours or so and then my computer froze and I lost the whole thing, except for what I could take a picture of with my digital camera. So all the great examples and quotes I was going to use are gone. Oh well. Maybe that's telling me I spend far too much time posting to his board.
I wanted to thank you for pointing out my error which could have been avoided if I read up a bit more on the nuances of egeiro "to awaken, rouse" but it actually fits very well with the rabbinical and traditional Jewish view of death, which views it as like sleep and the dead being in a dreamlike state. The Testament of Abraham also describes the same thing, of Death taking Abraham as like in a dream. The use of egeiro in the sense of "awakening from death" is especially overt in the liturgical fragment in Ephesians. I then speculated about the use of the verb "making alive" in 1 Peter and statement in Acts of Jesus simply being "alive" as relating to this original sense. There is indeed nothing specific of resurrection that is entailed by egeiro. I also wondered if the hymn in Ephesians could perhaps suggest that the original sense of anastenai is not resurrection but "standing up" from among the dead and being "made alive" as a spirit. There is a statement in the Testament of Abraham which I quoted, wherein when Abraham died he was "cleaved to Death" but Michael the Archangel came immediately to free him loose and prepared for him to ascend to heaven three days later. The "freeing" of Abraham from Death struck me as similar to Jesus being made alive.
I am now looking at the words used in the gospels to refer to what happened to Jesus as he died on the cross. Matthew 27:50 says that Jesus "released his spirit" (apheken to pneuma). This same word occurs in Matthew 18:27 to refer to a release from debt and seems to simply refer to a spiritual release that occurs at death. But John 19:30 has the verb paradoken "deliver up" which implies that Jesus was handed over to someone, and Luke 23:46 explicitly has Jesus entrusting or depositing (paratithemai) his soul into the hands of the Father. This latter phrase is most consistent with Jesus' soul being taken from the cross into the Father's domain, but not in a manner that overtly describes a spatial ascension. The phrase in the Gospel of Peter is more explicit: that Jesus was "taken up" (analephthe) on the cross. This same phrase is used to refer to Jesus' ascension in Ps.-Mark 16:19 ("he was taken into heaven," anelephthe eis ton ouranon), Acts 1:2, 11 ("taken up from you into heaven," anelephtheis aph' humon eis ton ouranon), and probably in 1 Timothy 3:16 ("taken up in glory," anelphthe en doxe), but most significantly it is used to describe Elijah's ascension to heaven in 2 Kings 2:11 (LXX) which says that Elijah was "taken up to heaven" (anelphthe ... eis ton ouranon). A similar word is used in John 14:3 to refer to Jesus "taking" (paralepsomai) his disciples with him into his "Father's house". Another reminiscent text is 2 Corinthians 12:2-3 which refers to being "caught up" (harpagenta), possibly "out of body" (ektos tou somatos), into Paradise in "third heaven", which also relates to 1 Thessalonians 4:17 which foresees the faithful as being "caught up (harpagesometha) together ... in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air (eis aera)." Paul's statement about being caught up to heaven "out of body" is strikingly similar to the Ascension of Isaiah, wherein Isaiah's soul leaves his body and visits the various levels of heaven. As for the belief that Jesus ascended right at his death, Irenaeus (A. H. 5.31.1) refers to those who believed that Jesus "did not rise again on the third day but immediately upon his expiring on the cross, undoubtedly departed on high, leaving his body to the earth," and Justin Martyr alludes to the same belief (Dial. 80.4).
I was also thinking more about the Empty Tomb story. One other detail I just found is that the Christian interpolation in Ascension of Isaiah names Gabriel and Michael as the two angels that open Jesus' tomb (3:16). Now consider that these same two angels are mentioned in the Testament of Jacob where is says that the angels Michael and Gabriel came down "to bear Jacob's soul to heaven" while "Joseph orders his father's body to be embalmed in the Egyptian manner" (5:13-14). Is this a coincidence? The Testament of Abraham 20:11 names "Michael the archangel" as the one who led the angels in taking Abraham to heaven after his body, which had been tended "with divine ointments and perfumes until the third day of his death," was buried by the oak of Mamre. Michael the Archangel also pops up in the Epistle of Jude as having responsibility of Moses' corpse, a story borrowed from the Assumption of Moses. The links between these assumption stories and the conception of Jesus' burial and ascension are quite interesting. The material in the gospels about the Transfiguration and the Rich Man and Lazarus parable, the promise made on the cross to the robber, the claim of Jesus' spirit being entrusted to the Father at death, and Luke's explicit and elaborate argument against this position in Acts, convinces me that there is a deep layer of tradition that conceived Jesus' rescue from death as quite similar to that of ascensions and assumptions of the other "ancient worthies".
What do you think of what I wrote about the Eucharist?
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Narkissos
Leolaia,
I?m sorry for what happened... it?s so frustrating! I noticed, when it happens to me, I have a short span of time in which I can write a common text again pretty easily. But 5 hours, with fresh research and references... it just sucks.
However, I hope you don?t cut down your contribution too drastically, because it is highly appreciated by a wide variety of people and from a number of standpoints.
As for the use of paradidômi in John 19:30, it?s noteworthy that the verb occurs everywhere in GJohn for the ?handing over? of Jesus (by Judas, the Jews, Pilatus... 6:64,71; 12:4; 13:2,11,21; 18:2,5,30,35,36; 19:11,16; 21:20). But it can also recall the use of pneuma as the object of didômi in 3:34, or lambanô in 7:39; 14:17 ? and especially the so-called Johannine Pentecost of 20:22: Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.? So 19:30 IMO may also be understood along the line of Johannine tradition (paradôsis), according to the various stages of Paraclete theology.
About the empty tomb, I?m pretty convinced by your analysis of Luke. My guess is that a revelation story before Jesus? body may also have merged with an ?empty tomb? story implying a real ?spiriting away? of Jesus? body (resulting from an action of the disciples or Joseph, or still someone else, as the slanderous [which way?] tradition in Matthew about the tomb guards suggests); let?s also remember the very strange question appearing both in Mark 15:44ff and John 19:33 whether Jesus was already dead...).
About the Eucharist, I fully agree with one root of this tradition being sapiential. I suspect it may be traced as least as far back as Dame Wisdom?s banquet in Proverbs 9, and this would agree very well with the Q tradition. But every river has a lot of sources...
Thanks again for everything,
Narkissos
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gumby
Do you ever notice that THESE TYPES of thread subjects.......NEVER get commented on by other posters? I wonder WHY that is? It's ALWAYS 2-4 people discussing it.......usually never more than that .Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Gumby
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Leolaia
Narkissos.....Roman custom was to leave the body on the cross for an extended period of time, letting it rot away. I'm not sure how widely this was practiced in Judea, even in the execution of criminals since it is clear from Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Acts, and Galatians that Jews and early Christians understood crucifixion in terms of the law in Deuteronomy 21:22-23. If Jesus' body was left on the cross, Jewish tradition would view him as cursed and his body as a defilement. The claim that Jesus has arisen and saved from death by God would presumably not be very compatible with him being cursed in the minds of would-be Jewish neophytes. Let's say for the sake of argument that the Romans did respect this native law and hastily buried Jesus in a mass grave for execution victims. But this meant that his followers would not have a chance to annoint and properly treat the body for burial. The next day, after the sun had set on the crucified Jesus in a grave (thereby respecting the law in Deuteronomy), his followers then dug up the body and brought it to a sepulchre to annoint the body and treat it with oils and perfumes. That would seem to be a perfectly natural thing for the followers to do, and this would neatly account for the "rumor" mentioned in the gospels that Jesus' followers stole his body because the rumor was in fact true. The Joseph of Arimathea story was then invented to refute the rumor by indicating that the followers had official Roman authority to take the body. The act of taking the body also had to have been moved from Saturday to the very day Jesus died because if the followers took the body on Saturday, they would be breaking the sabbath (Luke 23:54; Gospel of Peter 2:5). This later version of the story would then have the disciples taking the body very shortly after death, which motivates Pilate's question in Mark 15:46 on "whether he was already dead." That there is something fishy with this question is suggested by the fact that Western manuscripts add the following words "for some time". Something with this verse did not sit right with scribes of the textual tradition; I'm not sure what. But this fascinating possibility has just occurred to me: What if the original "tomb" story was that Jesus was hastily buried by the Romans the same day as his death (whether this is historical is another matter), then a day passes, the Sabbath which is symbolic of Jesus being at rest. Because of the sabbath, the disciples decided to wait until Sunday to take the body. The tradition was that Mary and Salome were at the cross and so they would have known where Jesus was buried. The disciples took Jesus' body to the tomb, while Mary and Salome brought spices and oils to annoint the body. But then when they got to the tomb, they were encountered by an angel who told them that Jesus has risen and no longer was among the dead. After perfuming the body and sealing it in the tomb for burial, they go their own ways and then have visions of the risen Jesus -- which proves to them that what the angel said was true. Pure speculation, but it seems to account for a number of things. If such a stage in the story existed, it would have been long before the burial and epiphany stories were written down.
About the Eucharist, there were a number of different strands, but I'm pretty convinced from the evidence that I cited that the transubstantiationary theme came later than the sapiental theme. I think the Eucharistic motif of the bread and wine was independently motivated by several paralleled motifs in the OT. Jews who saw in Jesus the figure of the ancient priest Melchizedek (cf. Epistle of Hebrews), would have taken note of the statement in Genesis 14:18 which says that "Melchizedek brought out bread and wine. He was priest of the God the Most High, and he blessed Abram." Then there was the application of the anointing story of Saul in 1 Samuel 10:1-8 which furnished several other plot elements to the Jerusalem narrative in Mark. Thus Samuel takes a phial of oil and pours it on Saul's head, thereby anointing him (1 Samuel 10:1; cf. Mark 14:3). Then Samuel tells him: "When you leave me now, you will meet two men near the tomb of Rachel, on the frontiers of Benjamin ..." (1 Samuel 10:2). This direction dovetails Jesus' instructions in Mark 14:13: "Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water, follow him." When there, Saul acquires the donkeys that his father had lost interest in, which recalls the story of Jesus taking the donkey for his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem (1 Samuel 10:2; Mark 11:1-7). Then Samuel's instructions continue: "Going further from there you will come to the Oak of Tabor where three men will meet you, going up to the God at Bethel; one will be carrying three kids, one three loaves of bread and the third a skin of wine" (1 Samuel 10:3). This directly resembles Jesus' instructions for the preparations for the Passover supper, involving both bread and wine.
As for the wine originally having a non-transubstantiationary meaning, this is also apparent from the evidence. In the Parable of the Vineyard Laborers, the laborers who tend the vineyard are paid not according to the amount of work they do but by the generosity of the landowner; this is likened to the Kingdom of God so that those who later come into the Kingdom (i.e. the vineyard) to work have just as much right to life as those who toiled in it for a long time (Matthew 20:1-16). The Kingdom of God is again likened to a vineyard in Matthew 21:28-32 in which those who "go and work in the vineyard" are compared to the "tax collectors and harlots who go into the Kingdom of God." A third parable is even more explicit, the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12; Matthew 21:33-46; Luke 20:9-19; Gospel of Thomas 65). This parable refers to Jesus' followers as being the "heir to the vineyard". The parable very explicitly quotes the similitude in Isaiah 5:1-7 which designates "Israel" as the vineyard. The implication, then, is that Jesus' followers, the new "church," have inherited the blessing that formerly lay with the nation of Israel. Psalm 80:8-18 refers to Israel as "the vine he brought out from Egypt," Jeremiah 2:21 refers to Israel as "the true vine that he planted," and John 15:1-5 likens Jesus with the "true vine," the Father as the gardener, and the disciples as the branches. The original Eucharistic metaphor of the wine could have then referred to making disciples as the same as tending the vineyard of the Kingdom. Didache 9:2 refers to the Eucharistic wine as "the holy vine of David" (hagias ampelou David), a phrase that like John 15:1-5 seems influenced by the Jeremiah 2:21's reference to Israel as a "vine of ... true and reliable stock" (ampelon karpophoron pasan alethinon...). The original interpretation of the wine as the life that Kingdom brings has a direct antecedent in Psalm 116:8-17:
"For you, Yahweh, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from my tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before Yahweh in the land of the living.... How can I repay Yahweh for all his goodness to me? I will lift up my cup of salvation and call on the name of Yahweh.... Oh Yahweh, I am truly your servant, I am your servant, the son of your maidservant, you have freed me from my chains. I will sacrifice a thank offering to you, and call on your name." (Psalm 116:8-17)
The scene of the Last Supper could have thus been one that converted the traditional Jewish benedictions of the bread and wine (i.e. "Blessed be you who has created the fruit of the vine") into one that thanked God for the bread of the wisdom and life that he is entrusting with his followers, and the vine of the Kingdom which (as in the parable) is given to his disciples as their inheritance. That seems to make a lot of sense. One other thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post was the prayer in the Didache that was said over the whole meal, which repeated these notions:
"We give you thanks, Holy Father, for your holy name which you have caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you have made known to us through Jesus your servant; to you be the glory forever. You, Almighty Master, created all things for your name's sake, and gave good and drink to men to enjoy, that they might give you thanks; but to us you have graciously given spiritual food and drink, and eternal life through your servant.....Remember your church, Lord, to deliver it from evil and to make it perfect in your love; and gather it, the one that has been sanctified, from the four winds into your Kingdom, which you have prepared for it." (Didache 10:2-5)
The likening of the bread and the wine, the "spiritual food and drink," with the salvation that knowledge and faith brings, as through "your servant," seems connected with the thought in Psalm 116. In any case, any transubstantiationary motif is absent here.
Leolaia
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Leolaia
Gumby....you are sooo right. And where is peacefulpete anyway? I wrote that huge humongous long post days ago in response to his question on Jesus being drawn entirely from mystery religions.
On edit: Of course, I too sometimes need to do other things than post on internet boards too. ;)
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peacefulpete
Excellent stuff. I have been trying in vain to set up our new comuter for the last week. ARG!!! Don't go Gateway! their technical support knows less than I do and I know nothing.
anyway i'm back to the webtv for today.
Leolaia..such dedication. I'm presently limited to what research sites I can access, and my response will likly be incomplete. it seems to me that the jewish precdents are all valid. The question is whether they were perceived as the source for the jesus stories (like the Raising, ascension and eucharist) or they simply provided the grist for the xtian myth mill. Behind every new theological developement is a number of interpretive coincedences 'recognized' as providence.
The 3day motif for example is present in jewish lit as you (and I in other threads) pointed out. The soul was understood as lingering for 3 days until the body was disfigured so that the soul no longer recognized itself and leaves. This unquestionably was derived from nonjewish sources. The solar motif most outstandingly. The fact that the sun gods (most popular) died and raised after 3 days was returned to life and vitality was no doubt transferred to everyman who had commuion with that god. So then the 3 day motif MAY have arisen from jewish thought OR it may have arisen as a perennial element of the solar diety motif and retained by Jewish xtians who saw precedents in their lit. The same for the Eucharist. The Jewish passages you have identified may in fact have been instrumental in the developement of Poto-orthodox interpretation of the story. The Eucharist itself however is more easily seen as lifted from the mystery solar savior cults. No where in Jewish lit do we see the saviors body being ingested for a sharing in the fate of the fallen one. The body of Jesus myths must be consulted to choose which was the origin for this particular. I am continually impressed with the completeness or the correlation of the Jesus legend with the Solar motif. Also the solar elements are inseparable fromt he stories. If for instance we remove the solar motifs that include the birth, youth, miracle work of a relligious reformer,the ride on a donkey the unjust substitutional death, the raising the ascension the subsequent deification. and we remove the obvious impossiblities like his single handedly storming the temple. what are we left with? Some anachronistic sayings that reflect later theological developement and antiJewish diatribe. If in fact ALL these are secondary the original legend has been lost completely and what we recognize as developements are those attatched to the mystery cult legends that spawed the movement.
Further we have to assume that paul's take on the Eucharist at 1 Cor 11(if in fact it is original to him, minus the reference to a new covenent, The Synoptic pericope may be seconadry and based upon 1 Cor, as the maunscript evidence suggest of Luke 22) is that he received the story from Jesus (vs 23 implies in vision)not from some tradition. This in my mind is consistent with the Mystery origin for the cult that soon thereafter robed itself with Jewish veneer.
Paul's "resurrection" is completed with the innitiated alive. jesus only appears as physical in interpolated passages. Some see a historical jesus whenever the character is described as doing action or being quoted. This seems unjustified. Yhwh (or any other deity) is quoted and said to be actively involved with human afairs with out any suggestion of physical presence. What are missing are temporal makers or detailed narrative in historical setting.
Your reconstructions about the developement of the resurrection scene are impressive however, and may account for the discepency in timing and length of time in death found in the cannonical Gospels.