Tag: Intertextuality

2011-01-01

Where Did John the Baptist’s Parents Come From? Reading the Gospels “with Jewish Eyes”

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Annunciation to Zechariah. Fragment of russian...
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The names of the parents of both Jesus and John the Baptist were arguably created from the imaginations of the Gospel authors working on Old Testament passages for inspiration. The names were fabricated because of the theological messages they conveyed. There is no evidence to indicate that they were handed down from historical memory.

This is not a “mythicist” or “atheist” argument. It is the result of scholarly research by an Anglican vicar and an Episcopal bishop.

Both have published scholarly reasons for believing that the names Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus, and Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, were carefully selected by early Christians on the basis of their ability to convey particular theological meanings. Goulder and Spong describe this process as “midrash”. Spong explains what he means by this:

How to read the Gospels as Jewish books

[T]here are stories in the Gospels that are so deeply reminiscent of stories in the Old Testament that one might inquire as to the reason for their similarity. Was that accidental or coincidental? Or does it point to something we might have missed? . . .

In a deep and significant way, we are now able to see that all of the Gospels are Jewish books, profoundly Jewish books. Recognizing this, we begin to face the realization that we will never understand the Gospels until we learn how to read them as Jewish books. They are written, to a greater or lesser degree, in the midrashic sytle of the Jewish sacred storyteller, a style that most of us do not begin even now to comprehend. This style is not concerned with historical accuracy. It is concerned with meaning and understanding. Continue reading “Where Did John the Baptist’s Parents Come From? Reading the Gospels “with Jewish Eyes””

2010-09-15

The baptism, the dove and the transfiguration . . . continued

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Ancient Religious Cultures, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Continuing from the previous post . . . .

Two of three ways Greek gods visited earthlings

Jean-Pierre Vernant in Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays (1991) notes three forms in which gods appeared when they visited earth. But dammit, Dixon cites only two of these:

  1. They simply come “to” the mortal to give that mortal strength. In my previous post I quoted some examples of this sort of visitation. The gods appear all of a sudden, as gods, to the mortal in order to give that moral strength and encouragement after dropping down from the heavens like a bird.
  2. They take on the form of humans in order to keep their divine identity hidden while they walk the earth and converse with mortals. Again several examples are cited in my previous post.

Readers familiar with the first instance might have imagined Jesus receiving strength and encouragement to perform his ministry.

Those of the second, that Jesus had a concealed identity. In support of this view we read of the spirit at baptism descending εις αυτον (“into”? him), the proclamation, heard only by Jesus and the readers, at the baptism by God the Father that “this is my beloved Son”, and the revelation of Jesus’ identity at the transfiguration halfway through the gospel.

In browsing the Iliad to find selections cited by Dixon I came across one that I think he failed to mention — but he does say the examples are very numerous. In book 13 of the Iliad Poseidon is described as visiting the mortals on the battlefield — not openly, but to keep his identity secret — but as a man:

Poseidon on the other hand went about among the Argives to incite them, having come up from the gray sea in secret, for he was grieved at seeing them vanquished by the Trojans, and was furiously angry with Zeus. Both were of the same race and country, but Zeus was elder born and knew more, therefore Poseidon feared to defend the Argives openly, but in the likeness of man, he kept on encouraging them throughout their host. (Iliad 13)

Did the spirit descend To, Into or Upon Jesus? Continue reading “The baptism, the dove and the transfiguration . . . continued”

2010-09-14

Comparing the baptism of Jesus with Greek gods descending like birds and appearing as humans

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Ancient Religious Cultures, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Descending Spirit and Descending Gods: A “Greek” Interpretation of the Spirit’s “Descent as a Dove” in Mark 1:10 by Edward P. Dixon was published last year (2009) in the Journal of Biblical Literature (128, no. 4). It is a welcome breeze of fresh sanity into the so many contorted attempts to explain Gospel themes and images exclusively in terms of very non-Christian and even sometimes anti-Christian Jewish motifs. Of course the Gospel narratives draw much from the Old Testament. But there is no need to insist upon an either-or scenario. The evidence is surely overwhelming that they also drew on Hellenistic motifs. There is surely nothing controversial about this. Intertestamental Jewish literature, fictional, philosophical and historical, did the same. It would surely be an anomaly if the Gospels indeed were composed entirely from a heritage that was alien to non-Jews and yet came to be embraced by non-Jews.

In the following I add a little to Dixon’s citations by quoting certain passages in full with links to their online contexts. (I also omit quite a few details of Dixon’s discussion.)

Continue reading “Comparing the baptism of Jesus with Greek gods descending like birds and appearing as humans”

2010-08-31

The Elijah-Elisha narrative as a model for the Gospel of Mark

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by Neil Godfrey

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The Crucial BridgeThomas L. Brodie presents an argument that the Gospel of Mark was in its basic outline, plot and structure based on the Elijah-Elisha narrative in the Old Testament. I am not quite sure what to make of his case at times, but cannot deny its interest. I have no problem accepting that Mark used some of the miracle stories from Elijah and Elisha as templates for his Jesus miracles, but Brodie goes much further than this. His book is The Crucial Bridge: The Elijah-Elisha Narrative as an Interpretative Synthesis of Genesis-Kings and a Literary Model for the Gospels. It is published by the Order of St Benedict, Minnesota, 2000.

His discussion of the Elijah-Elisha narrative’s link with the Gospel of Mark consists only of ten of the last dozen pages of a 114-page book. The earlier section explains the reasons to see the Elijah-Elisha section of 1 and 2 Kings as a cohesive single narrative unit within the Primary History of Israel (Genesis-2 Kings), and also to argue that this section is a synthesis of the entire Primary History itself. I have a few questions about his overall thesis but need time to explore these. There are good reasons to opt for other models for Mark, too, and Brodie does not seem to deny this. There appear to have been a range of sources available to Mark and that potentially influenced the final mix that became his Gospel. Continue reading “The Elijah-Elisha narrative as a model for the Gospel of Mark”

2010-08-28

Christianity won over paganism by epitomizing pagan ideals

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Ancient Religious Cultures, Biblical Studies, New Testament, Religion and Atheism
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Rubens – Achilles Slays Hector

This continues my previous post, which was slightly misleadingly titled Why Christianity Spread So Rapidly . . .. It is for most part a distillation of Gregory J. Riley’s chapter, “Mimesis of Classical Ideals in the Second Christian Century”, found in Mimesis and Intertextuality edited by Dennis MacDonald. A related post is my discussion of Paul’s Christ crucified message and its relationship to Stoic philosophy, Why Paul did not need “the historical Jesus”. (Riley himself, however, is certainly not a Jesus-mythicist as far as I am aware.)

Riley is attempting to redress what he sees as an imbalance in the scholarship of early Christianity by pointing out that key Christian themes and messages originated in the Greco-Roman world, and were tacked on to Jewish heroes. Christianity’s attraction to many in the Roman Empire lay in the way it epitomized the best and noblest of Classical ideals as it narrated these through very “paganized” Jewish characters.

Anyone familiar with the New Testament who reads the classical literature of Greece and Rome cannot help but notice the many coincidences of thought and expressions. This was certainly my own experience. Questions inevitably begin to arise as one sees this so often the more one reads. It is refreshing and enlightening to see Riley address this question head on.

This part 2 post looks at “what made the Christian Gospel something familiar and alluring, even captivating, for the masses of people of the Roman world.” (p.99) I flesh out some of Riley’s notes with quotations from the classical sources themselves. Continue reading “Christianity won over paganism by epitomizing pagan ideals”

2010-06-30

Old Testament Messiahs as the Raw Material for the New Testament Christ

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Messiahs and messianism, Old Testament
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Priest, High Priest, and Levite, illustration ...
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The idea of a holy anointed one, a messiah that is, who liberated those captive to sin through his death, who represented the pious before God, who was subject even to the wrath of God for the sin of the people, such an idea was arguably a pre-packaged concept among some Jews long before Jesus was ever thought of.

Evolution of an idea or historical reinterpretation of a crucified criminal?

Indeed, the very concept of Jesus Christ as found in Paul’s epistles could quite conceivably have evolved out of the contemplation of passages describing the roles and functions of the priests in their role as “anointed ones” (“messiahs”) in the Jewish scriptures and Sirach.

Levenson has demonstrated the similarity of the Second Temple Jewish view of the atoning death and resurrection of Isaac with the subsequent Christian a figure who atones for the sins of his people by his shed blood.

Thomas L. Thompson looks at several other passages in Jewish Scriptures that foreshadow the explicit Christian concepts of Messiah. He rejects the common (yet unargued) belief that “messiah” was a term that was applied to contemporary historical kings of Israel, noting that in every occurrence of the word in connection with an Israelite king, whether in “story or song”, it is always applied to Israel’s past. And as for “the developing transference of an historical [Messiah] — the king — to a unique and future-oriented, super-terrestrial savior, [S. Talmon] attributes to a ‘second temple period’, which culminates in an idealized figure after 70 AD.”

So what of the concept of messianism around the time Paul and other NT authors are thought to have been writing? What does an exploration of the meaning of “messiah” or “anointed one” in texts known to these authors suggest?

In this post I am focusing on just one cluster of texts out of all the ones Thompson discusses. The following from Thompson’s 2001 Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament article “The Messiah Epithet in the Hebrew Bible“. Much of it is repeated in his later book, The Messiah Myth. Continue reading “Old Testament Messiahs as the Raw Material for the New Testament Christ”

2010-04-01

The Myth and History of Masada and Jesus’ Passion

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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מצדה מהאוויר, תמונה שצולמה על ידי אסף.צ. התמונ...
Masada. (Image via Wikipedia)

I was recently reading a historian’s discussion of the events of Masada that attempted to unravel the myth from the historical fact. The similarities and differences with the way biblical historians attempt to unravel the myth and history of the Passion of Jesus were unavoidable.

Masada

Josephus created the myth of Masada — 960 Jewish defenders mass-suicided when faced with defeat at the hands of the Romans. The historical facts can be uncovered by

  1. archaeological evidence, and
  2. adding a dash of common sense to literary criticism of the narrative of Josephus.

Not that we “need” archaeological evidence for every detail Josephus ever pens. Many details are not all that critical to our understanding of the basic outline of events associated with the Jewish war. But we do have external controls for enough of the narrative of Josephus to give us confidence that when he writes about the Jewish rebellion against Rome from around the mid 60s to early 70s ce, he is indeed tackling a real event — unlike when he paraphrases some of the early mythical biblical “history” such as the creation of Adam, Noah’s Flood and the Exodus. It may be that when Josephus is discussing externally verifiable events, his narrative is not always pristine accurate. But the historian of such ancient sources can attempt to weave her way through the narrative details with a mix of common sense and literary criticism and arrive at a “probability range” statement about what might or might not have occurred, (and still never be absolutely sure).

Historian Shayne Cohen‘s discussion of the Masada myth and event illustrates this perfectly.

External and primary evidence

Archaeological evidence confirms that there was indeed a historical conflict between Jews and Romans at Masada. We have remains of a Roman military camp, Jewish defensive structures, and evidence of violence. Unfortunately for the Josephan account, however, not all this evidence is so supportive. Josephus says the food reserves were not burned, that there was but one grand bonfire to consume all property chosen for destruction, that all agreed to suicide, and to do so in a palace area. The archaeological evidence tells us that:

  • food reserves were burnt
  • many disparate areas were burnt
  • remains of bodies have been uncovered in different locations, including in a hazardous-to-access-cave outside the defended area
  • the area where the 960 were said to have suicided was too small for such a number

Common sense

Common sense delivers its contribution to reality. Josephus informs us that at the moment the Romans finally breached the defensive wall, they decided to have a break and go and have a nap for the night. That defies common sense. The Romans were quite used to attacking at night. To retire after the breach only meant they would have to maintain a careful watch to ensure the Jewish rebels did not attack the Roman fortifications or camp.

Meanwhile, Romans were able to continue monitoring the situation within Masada from the heights of their siege engines. Despite all the goings-on with the rebel encampment that Josephus relates, when the Romans did enter through the breach the next morning they were supposedly completely unprepared for what they discovered. Somehow the Roman observation posts had failed to detect anything unusual at all during the night, such as the inhabitants all retreating to a single Tardis-like building (too small for all those Josephus says entered it) and suiciding.

Besides, how could Josephus have had any idea of what transpired in Masada on that final night?

Common sense does not support the historicity of Josephus’s narrative.

Literary analysis

Now bring in literary criticism. Meanwhile, the Jewish rebel leader, Eleazar, delivers a long speech in which he lays the total blame for the failure of the Jewish rebellion on his own party, the Sicarii, and  in which he declares that the imminent fate of both himself and all his colleagues at the hands of the Romans was justly deserved. He once again delivers another lengthy discourse on the rationale for suicide and the nature of the soul. When we think of these two speeches alongside what we know of Josephus’s negative view of the Sicarii, and alongside Josephus’s own earlier reasonings for avoiding suicide (when it involved his own life), we begin to see authorial motives for the creation of these eloquent speeches.

Literary analysis further enables us to see how Josephus used the delay of a whole night to enhance the dramatic effect of the Roman entry the following morning. The Romans are depicted as entering cautiously and being mystified by the silence and emptiness of what they did encounter. It is all a most dramatic build-up to the discovery of the “facts” that did eventually confront them. Continue reading “The Myth and History of Masada and Jesus’ Passion”

2010-01-23

Scholars will explode the myth of The New Testament

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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University of Copenhagen
 From the University of Copenhagen News

Scholars will explode the myth of The New Testament

Bible scholars across the world have for many years believed that two of the Gospels of the New Testament – The Gospel of St. Matthew and St. Luke respectively were partly based on the content of a supposedly lost scripture referred to as “Q”. In a new research project, researchers from the Faculty of Theology will attempt to establish that this lost scripture never existed.

The Gospels as re-written Bible

The Research Project at the University of Copenhagen, which has just been granted 4.7 million kroner by the Velux Foundation, has been titled “The Gospels as re-written Bible”. During the next tree years a group of scholars will map the development of the four gospels in order to establish that the Gospel of Luke is not, as believed so far, a contemporary of the Gospel of Matthew, and that the shared content of the two is not to be explained by the existence of a lost scripture, but by the fact that the author of St. Luke’s Gospel used St. Matthew’s Gospel as well as that of St. Mark as basis for his own scripture.

Contact for this story is Professor Morgens Müller, Faculty of Theology.

See the full article here.


2009-09-07

A silly argument encountered so often in biblical studies

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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A silly argument I encounter surprisingly often in biblical studies literature and discussion groups goes like this:

Perhaps the most fundamental methodological problem with MacDonald’s approach is that he has set things up so that not only do supposedly positive parallels and allusions support his theory, but so also do contrasts between Homer and Mark. These contrasts are counted as evidence of Mark’s conscious “transvaluation” of Homer. Thus both similarities and differences are taken as evidence of Mark’s use of Homer, which means, of course, that his thesis is rendered virtually unfalsifiable. (The Jesus Legend, p. 340)

Eddy and Boyd point to the widespread propensity to use this sort of reasoning by adding M. M. Mitchell and S. Dowd to those who have argued the same point in relation to MacDonald’s thesis. The same sophistic reasoning is encountered often enough in other contexts, too.

Comparisons can only exist where there are both similarities and differences. That’s a basic concept of nature one learns on Sesame Street or Play School. Without differences or contrasts we are left with nothing but “same, same”, reproduction, identity.

Eddy’s, Boyd’s, Mitchell’s and Dowd’s sophism would lead them to conclude that George Orwell’s Animal Farm has nothing to say about Soviet Russia, there are no spoofs of Cinderella or Red Riding Hood, the apostle Peter could never be compared with a contemporary well-meaning backslider, and there is no basis for comparing Jesus with Moses or Elisha or Superman.

No one doubts that Aeneas, the heroic refugee who sailed from Troy to establish a new home in Italy for those who became the progenitors of the Romans, was modelled in epic literature after Homer’s Odysseus. The similarities draw attention to the differences. Romans can take pride in their ancestor being more favoured by the gods than his Greek counterpart. The differences are at least half the point of the comparisons.

To be able to point to differences presupposes that there is a common type being compared. No common type, no differences can be observed. By taking both similarities and differences as evidence of a relationship between texts does not render a thesis unfalsifiable at all. It would only be unfalsifiable if one attempted to argue for contrasts in the absence of common types. But in that case (as in my illustration below) the whole idea of comparison simply does not exist in any meaningful way.

It is sheer sophistry, and illogical nonsense, to suggest that valid comparisons mean that only similarities ought be in evidence.

.

Spot the difference:

Homer Simpson
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No common type, no basis for either similarities or comparative contrasts.

2009-02-18

Re a common error made when critiquing “parallelomania”

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by Neil Godfrey

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One thing bugs me when I read an article by a scholar or student who is attempting to demonstrate that an author like Dennis MacDonald (The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark) has lost his marbles and supposedly proclaims even the “absence of parallels” is evidence of parallels. And that one thing is ignorance (or forgetting) how parallels are known to work in non-biblical literature.

The sort of false or erroneous critique I am thinking of goes like this: Since Odysseus loses all hope in a storm at sea while Jesus rises to command the storm to cease, the reactions of the characters are arguably polar opposites so it is ludicrous to imagine there is any sort of parallel here at all. The reason I am not quick to agree with this sort of argument is twofold: (1) the context of other direct parallels is ignored; while at the same time (2) “polar opposites” are indeed by definition connected conceptually, and are known very well in other literatures to be a form of direct “transvaluation” of one character by the simple fact of the new character surpassing the feats or attitudes of an earlier one in the literary tradition.

G. N. Knauer demonstrated the rich complexity of the techniques used by Virgil in his imitation of Homer as far back as 1964 (Vergils’ Aeneid and Homer, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 5, pp. 61-84 — published again with revisions elsewhere in 1984 and 1990). What Knauer discerned in the ways Virgil studied and imitated Homer deserve to be considered in any discussion of possible indebtedness of biblical narrators to non-biblical works.

. . . Aeneas is represented throughout as a hero surpassing his Greek counterpart, Odysseus, who had passed through the same or similar situations shortly before him (in epic time). Odysseus, the victor, destroys Ismaros in Thrace; Aeneas, the exile, . . . founds Ainos in the same region. On his way home to . . . [western] Ithaca, Odysseus is shipwrecked by a storm at Cape Malaia; Aeneas, in spite of a storm, successfully passes this cape on his way west, where in the end he will find . . . home, Hesperia. Here, for the first time, one begins to sense Vergil’s purpose in following Homer. . . .

It seems clear that Aeneas, who excelled Odysseus in the first part of the Aeneid, now surpasses the Greeks who had been victorious at Troy. . . . The way in which he completes the divine mission to found a new Troy, that is Rome, elevates him morally far above the Greek heroes.

This sort of transvaluation cannot be effected apart from differences in action and character that nonetheless are connected by polar opposition. Aeneas, the exile, builds; Odysseus, the victor, destroys. Odysseus, sailing towards X is shipwrecked at Z; Aeneas, sailing towars his own X, pointedly has smooth sailing.

There is much more to the way Virgil “deconstructed” and used Homer. It was far more than just reflecting a few lines of verse here and there. At least as noteworthy as the above transvaluation goal, Virgil had clearly studied the very structure of Homer’s epics and reshaped those structures in his own work. The battles of the Iliad that preceded the wanderings of Odysseus are mirrored at the dramatic conclusion of Virgil’s epic. Odysseus is only released from his captivity to the charms of the divine queen Calypso just prior to the moment he is to fulfil his destiny; Aeneas is released from his long captivity to the queen Dido long before he can fulfil his destiny.

The differences found between the Aeneid and Homer’s epics do not all indicate absence of contact.

Some differences are as distinctly related as strong echoes off opposing walls.

2008-08-30

Jewish Scriptures in Mark’s Passion and Resurrection Narratives

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament, Religion and Atheism
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For the sake of completeness I have to tag these notes (Gospel of Mark 14:1 -16:8) alongside the previous two looking at chapters 11-12 (entry into Jerusalem) and chapter 13 (Olivet prophecy).

Once again:

Red are the quotations

Purple are the allusions

Blue are the influences

Black  italics represent material from sources other than Kee

Mark.14

[1] After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death.

Hosea 6:2 After two days he will heal us

2 Chronicles 35:17 And the children of Israel that were present kept the passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread seven days. Continue reading “Jewish Scriptures in Mark’s Passion and Resurrection Narratives”

Gospel of Mark’s use of Jewish scriptures for Jesus’ Jerusalem entry narrative

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by Neil Godfrey

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Still continuing the Margaret Barker series, but interrupting to toss in a couple of posts on another aspect of the Gospel of Mark in the meantime. This continues from the previous post on Mark 13.

Everyone knows how indebted the Passion Narrative is to allusions to the “Old Testament” scriptures (e.g.  Psalm 22), and few deny the Elijah, Elisha and other Jewish scripture templates for miracles of Jesus in the early part of the gospel (e.g. raising a dead child in an upper room of a house; feeding large numbers with little), so this post is a draft attempt to fill in an often missing middle bit. And I think it has significant implications in many discussions about how the gospel was constructed and what it can tell us about the origins of the orthodox Christian narrative, and when.

There is an argument that attempts to explain the heavy reliance of the gospel Passion Narrative on Old Testament passages by proposing that these events had to be constructed out of “old cloth” since there was no-one there to witness them. But as demonstrated in my previous post, the same in depth weaving of OT quotations, allusions and influences began in the prophetic discourse of Mark 13, a chapter that is often seen as originally being a separate apocalyptic composition borrowed and adapted by the author of the gospel. In this context, it is interesting that the Passion Narrative itself has sometimes been thought to have been composed separately from the rest of the gospel, and that the earlier chapters were a subsequent afterthought.

Howard Clark Kee sees the thick mixture of OT references beginning in chapter 11, and continuing through the entire section from chapters 11 to 16, as evidence that this entire section, the narrative from the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem up to the time of the empty tomb, as a cohesive literary unit. The author of this gospel chose to create this entire section with the tints and echoes and materials of the Jewish scriptures and other closely related texts such as 1 Enoch.

Red are the quotations

Purple are the allusions

Blue are the influences

Black italics — from sources other than Kee

Mark.11

[1] And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two of his disciples,
[2] And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him.

Zechariah 14:4-5 And in that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east  . . . Thus the LORD my God will come, and all the saints with him.

Zechariah 2:10 “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion! For behold, I am coming and I will dwell in your midst,” says the LORD.

Zechariah 9:9 “Rejoiced greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you, He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey.

Zechariah 3:14; Sing, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem

Genesis 49:11 Binding his donkey to the vine, and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine . . .

Deuteronomy 21:3 And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which has not pulled with a yoke

Numbers 19:2 This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying: ‘Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come.

1 Samuel 10:2 And when you have departed from me today, you will find two men by Rachel’s tomb in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah; and they will say to you, “The donkeys which you went to look for have been found . . .” Continue reading “Gospel of Mark’s use of Jewish scriptures for Jesus’ Jerusalem entry narrative”

2008-04-05

The post 70 construction of Jesus’ tomb

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by Neil Godfrey

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The earliest narrative involving the tomb of Jesus constructs that tomb from images and scenarios that suggest the author was looking back on the 70 c.e. destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.

Firstly, in none of the writings of Paul, generally dated well before 70 c.e., is there any mention of a tomb of Jesus. Even when Paul is attempting to advance his most persuasive arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, he does not even hint at any knowledge of a tomb, empty or otherwise.

Secondly, Crossan et al have pointed out that the hard realities of ancient crucifixions make the most likely historical scenario one where Jesus’ body was left to scavenging animals once (if) removed from the cross. (The character Joseph of Arimathea is a literary invention to ease the pain of this reality and/or develop another prophetic fulfilment scene.) This historical fact about crucifixions and the crude methods of Roman “justice” in relation to perceived troublemakers in Palestine make sense of Paul’s silence over a tomb.

The image of the destroyed Temple

The first narrative of the tomb burial of Jesus is in Mark’s gospel. The metaphor that comes to the author’s mind as he writes is one that reminds him of the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. Isaiah, when speaking of an earlier destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, compared the Temple to a tomb hewn out of a rock:

Go . . . to Shebna who is over the house and say, . . . You have hewn a sepulchre here, as he who hews a sepulchre on high, who carves a tomb for himself in a rock . . . (Isaiah 22:15-16)

So Mark wrote:

And he [Joseph of Arimathea] laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock . . . (Mark 15:46)

The words for “hewn” in both the Greek Old Testament passage of Isaiah and Mark’s Gospel are variants of “latomenw”, and the same words for rock and tomb are also used. Given that the author of Mark’s gospel liberally constructs his entire Passion Narrative from allusions to OT passages, so the correspondence between Isaiah and Mark here is not likely to be coincidence.

The gospel author, it should further be noted, had this tomb scene in mind when he wrote his earlier narrative of the paralytic being lowered by 4 friends through the roof of the house to be healed by Jesus (Mark 2:1-12). There the place where Jesus was staying could not be accessed through the normal entrance because of the enormous crowd, and entry had to be gained by digging out the roof. Similarly with Jesus’ burial, the normal entrance to this place that had been dug out of the rock was blocked by a massive bolder. In both cases the one placed in this place rose up and miraculously walked through the main doorway.

So the gospel’s reference to the tomb being “hewn out of rock” is not an incidental aside, but an integral part of the image in the author’s mind.

And the origin of this image is its metaphorical use to describe the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem.

This was the origin of the earliest narrative image of the tomb of Jesus.

The image of Joshua’s captives in the cave

A few commentators have also suspected that the idea of the rock tomb for Jesus derived from the account in Joshua of the king of Jerusalem (with others) being “buried” in a cave, or at least sealed in the cave by rocks at its mouth, and then subsequently emerging alive from that cave, and being hung to die on a tree until sunset (Joshua 10:16-27).

Farrer raised the possibility that the author of Mark may have been drawing on the theology of Paul in order to make the link between these scenes in the Book of Joshua and the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

Before explaining that possible connection, it is worth recalling the tropes of dramatic reversals found throughout Mark’s gospel. One of these is the way the author portrays the crucifixion of Jesus in terms of a reverse Roman Triumphal march. Schmidt’s detailed argument for this can be read here. (One little detail not included by Schmidt is the description of Simon of Cyrene coming in out of the country. A third century c.e. Roman novel by Heliodorus speaks of those carrying the weapons used to make the sacrifice typically being brought in from and wearing the dress typical of the countryside.)

With the author’s penchant for ironic reversal with the way he plays on the Roman triumph to depict Jesus’ ironic victory on the cross, the possibility of a Pauline theological interpretation of the Joshua narrative comes more sharply into focus.

Colossians 2:14-15 (Colossians being one of the debated letters as to Pauline provenance) proclaims Jesus as making a public humiliating spectacle of spiritual enemies, of himself nailing them to the cross. Jesus’ crucifixion is seen as not a passive event but as an ironic action by Jesus crucifying all that stands against the people of God.

Given this theological understanding of the death of Jesus, it is less difficult to imagine an author reading a book of the namesake of Jesus (Joshua being the Hebrew, Jesus the Greek) conquering resoundingly the land of Canaan, tearing down city walls, enslaving or slaughtering the native population.

In Joshua 10 when Joshua/Jesus takes on the King of Jerusalem and his allies, there is a great sign in heaven (the sun stands still for a whole day). Similarly when Jesus is on the cross, there is a great sign in the heavens when darkness descends over the land for 3 hours at midday. (It is a miracle, not an eclipse, because it happens at the time of the full moon — the Passover.) Joshua/Jesus then orders the “burial” of his enemy king in the cave which is sealed with boulders, and then releases him, but only to hang him till sunset on a tree. Paul wrote in Galatians 3:13 that Jesus was hanged on the tree. And in Colossians we read that in doing so Jesus was hanging the things that were against the godly on that tree.

But why would an author even think of a book about a military conqueror of Canaan in the first place, if that is indeed what he did, when constructing his story of the death and resurrection of Jesus?

The Book of Joshua follows the death of Moses. The Moses cult had suddenly ended with the invasion of Palestine by the Romans and their destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e. Mark 13 looks towards Jesus (Joshua) coming in clouds to usher in a new Kingdom in place of the old. The apocalyptic imagery used there is the same as we read in the Old Testament when it speaks of God descending and destroying cities and armies. Was the Roman invasion seen by some as an act of God or Jesus, coming on clouds with thunder etc, to destroy his old kingdom and declare its replacement with a new spiritual kingdom?

Destroy this temple . . .

Mark declares that those who accused Jesus were false witnesses when they charged Jesus with challenging others to destroy the temple to see if he would rebuild it in 3 days. But the gospel of John holds that Jesus said just that. The reason Mark claimed that this charge was false needs to be seen in the context of the other sayings of Jesus in his gospel and in the way they were falsely interpreted by the disciples. Mark’s gospel mocks the understanding of those hearers of Jesus who could not distinguish the spiritual meaning from the physical images. The disciples are criticized for not understanding the miracle of the loaves was not about bread supplies. Similarly, the reason that the witnesses were making false testimony in regards to Jesus’ saying about the temple, was that they wrongly took his image literally, and not figuratively about his body.

But what is significant about this “false testimony” is that it appears to be yet one more image that can be added to the constellation of images used by the author to relate Jesus’ death and burial to war, conquest, Roman Triumphal marches and the destruction of the Temple.

Finally, it should be further noted that Mark’s gospel is clear that Jesus will be seen again by those in his generation when he comes in his power to judge Jerusalem (Mark 13:26; 14:62). The imagery, as commented above, is the same as that found in the Prophets and Psalms for God’s coming down to destroy kingdoms and cities and peoples. He is seen in the bloody judgment of his rod, his axe, his spear, . . . . that is, the armies he uses to do his work (c.f. Isaiah 10:15).

Post 70 c.e. construction of the tomb narrative

None of the above of course “proves” that the tomb story originated after the fall of Jerusalem. But the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple does undeniably provide a most plausible backdrop for the development of the story. Indeed, the whole gospel story itself fits such a time. The era of Moses as traditionally known was ended, or at least under severe challenge and questioning in the wake of the 70 c.e. destruction. How natural to turn to images that spoke of a resurrection, a transformation, a new start with a new Israel, from the ruins of the old! Out of the invasions of Rome could be fantasized transforming and hopeful images of another invasion by Joshua; after the end of Moses hope could be found in Joshua; and out of the ruins of the old Temple could rise a new Israel, a new people of God, led by Joshua/Jesus rising out of that metaphoric tomb.

2008-02-18

“They pierced my hands and my feet”: Psalm 22 as a non-prophecy of the crucifixion

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament, Old Testament
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It is an axiom among fundamentalists and even many mainstream conservative Christians that Psalm 22 contains an incontrovertible prophecy of the crucifixion of Jesus, and that the key verse establishing this “fact” is the one that reads: “They pierced my hands and my feet” — Psalm 22:16

There is no doubt that two of the gospel authors took the first verse of this Psalm — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — and placed it in the mouth of Jesus on the cross. All four gospels used the 18th verse too, which says, “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” And one drew on the mocking: “All those who see me laugh me to scorn . . . saying, He trusted in the Lord, let him rescue him, let him deliver him, since he delights in him!” (22:7-8 )

All of these verses are found in the gospels as part of the crucifixion scene:

And when they crucified him, they divided his garments, casting lots for them . . . . (Mark 15:24; Matt 27:35; Luke 23:34; John 19:24)

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “. . . . My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46)

Likewise the chief priests, also mocking with the scribes and elders, said . . . . “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he will have him, . . . .” (Matt. 27:41-43)

Is it not strange that the verse in that same Psalm that says “they pierced my hands and my feet” should not be used at all in any of the gospels? This verse, after all, is the one singular verse that would establish that it is speaking, at the very least metaphorically, of a crucifixion. Yet it is totally absent from the gospels. There is not even any narrative detail that makes special mention of nails going through the hands and feet of Jesus at the time he is being crucified. (The closest any gospel comes to this is at the time of the resurrection when Thomas refers to nail-prints in Jesus’ hands. But there is no whiff of allusion to the Psalm.)

The rest of Psalm 22

But one might as well ask, Is it not strange that the Psalm spoke of hands and feet being pierced (presumably a crucifixion image) at all? Such a verse does not sit well at all with the rest of the Psalm. The psalmist begins with a cry to God and a complaint that he has been uttering that cry for days and nights without an answer:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? . . . . I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear; And in the night season, and am not silent. (22:1-2)

Jesus was not on the cross for days and nights, and the Gospel of Luke informs us that God certainly heard the prayer Jesus uttered the previous night. He sent an angel to help bolster his courage. Yet this Psalm opens with a cry that is the desperation felt from having no answer for, at the very least, a whole day and night.

This cannot be reconciled with the crucifixion scene of the gospels.

Then there is the verse that says the Psalmist was attached to God from the time of his birth.

From my mother’s womb you have been my God (22:10)

That surely must raise some eyebrows among those who believe that Jesus was, and knew he was, part of the Godhead from eternity. But it gets worse for those who assume this Psalm is depicting a man on a cross:

Be not far from me, for trouble is near . . . (22:11)

Um, yes. A person nailed to a wooden stake to die a slow agonizing death cries out, “I see trouble up ahead”?? Now that is an optimist. Always thinking that no matter how bad the present situation it could always be worse. “Please God, I can handle you deserting me at this moment, but I do hope you hurry up and come to help me when I’m in real trouble!”

Then there is that strange plea to be saved from the sword!

Deliver me from the sword . . . (22:20)

Always worth remembering to ask God to deliver you from a sword when he lets you experience the niggling inconvenience of being crucified.

So the broader context of the Psalm speaks against it being a foretelling of a crucifixion.

But there is metaphoric imagery throughout that also needs to be appreciated to understand it fully. Wild animal imagery dominates.

Many bulls have surrounded me;

Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.

They gape at me with their mouths,

As a raging and roaring lion.

For dogs have surrounded me

Deliver . . . my precious life from the power of the dog.

Save me from the lion’s mouth

And from the horns of the wild oxen!

It is not surprising therefore to find that the Hebrew Bible contains a passage with the same wild lion imagery that happens to be missing from a Greek text of this Psalm that was preserved and copied by a later generation of Christians:

Like a lion they are at my hands and my feet

In place of this Hebrew verse the Greek translation of this Psalm (which has been the work of Christian, not Hebrew, scribes) reads: “They pierced my hands and my feet”. “Pierce” has replaced “Like a lion”.

“like a lion” or “pierced”?

How could that have happened? A Rabbi Singer on the Outreach Judaism site writes:

The word kaari, however, does not mean “pierced,” it means “like a lion.” The end of Psalm 22:17, therefore, properly reads “like a lion they are at my hands and my feet.” Had King David wished to write the word “pierced,” he would never use the Hebrew word kaari. Instead, he would have written either daqar or ratza, which are common Hebrew words in the Jewish scriptures. . . .

Bear in mind, this stunning mistranslation in the 22nd Psalm did not occur because Christian translators were unaware of the correct meaning of this Hebrew word. Clearly, this was not the case. The word kaari can be found in a number of other places in the Jewish scriptures. Yet predictably, the same Christian translators who rendered kaari as “pierced” in Psalm 22 correctly translated it “like a lion” in all other places in the Hebrew Bible where this word appears.

For example, the word kaari is also found in Isaiah 38:13. In the immediate context of this verse Hezekiah, the king of Judah, is singing a song for deliverance from his grave illness. In the midst of his supplication he exclaims in Hebrew. . . . . [Hebrew text missing here]

Notice that the last word in this phrase (moving from right to left) is the same Hebrew word kaari that appears in Psalm 22:17. In this Isaiah text, the King James Version correctly translates these words “I reckoned till morning that, as a lion . . . .” As I mentioned above, Psalm 22:17 is the only place in all of the Jewish scriptures that any Christian Bible translates kaari as “pierced.”

Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures

Among those who know a little of the Greek Old Testament known as the Septuagint such an explanation seems problematic. Did not the Jews themselves translate their Hebrew scriptures into Greek long before the Christian era? Yes they did, but according to legend gleaned from the letter of Aristeas and the preface of Josephus to his Antiquities, only the Torah, the Pentateuch, that is, the first five books of Moses. Singer in the same article referenced above also cites the Talmud, Jerome and the 12th book of Antiquities.

The broader context of the setting of the Psalm as discussed above is strong evidence in support of this. A verse speaking of a literally crucified Psalmist simply would not make any sense in the context of the other verses.

The first appearance of “they pierced my hands and feet”

Christians first began to use this Greek translation after our gospels were written. Justin Martyr refers to this passage (they pierced my hands and feet) in his Dialogue of Trypho, paras 97 and 104. The Gospel of Peter likewise appears to know of it. At least it says explicitly narrates a scene where nails are being pulled from Jesus’ hands. (It is possible, of course, that this is taken from the allusion to the nail prints in the hands of Jesus in the Gospel of John — which also may have been written much later than the other gospels.) Whatever the case with this gospel, it is clear that the earliest indisputable knowledge of this Greek text of Psalm 22:16 is from the mid-second century with Justin Martyr.

It appears that some time between the time the canonical gospels were written and the time of Justin Martyr, this famous “prophetic” verse was introduced in a Greek translation of the Psalms by Christian scribes.