[Dialogue] Spong in Lent

[KroegerD@aol.com]

February 16, 2005
The Influence of The Jewish Festival of Sukkoth on the Passion Narrative: 
Part III 

Western Christians find it hard to understand that the gospel writers were 
not writing objective history. Yet nothing we know about the formation of the 
New Testament supports that conclusion. Jesus lived between 4 BCE and 30 CE. He 
spoke and taught in Aramaic. The gospels came 40 to 70 years after his death 
and they were written in Greek. This means that almost everything that we know 
about Jesus lived in oral transmission and underwent one translation before we 
get to the earliest documents that we possess. During that time his followers 
had continued to worship in the synagogues of their ancestral Jewish faith 
before the movement that he had begun separated itself from Judaism in 88 CE and 
came to be called Christianity. They were originally called "The Followers of 
the Way."
Realizing these facts, our claim to possess objective history in the gospels 
begins to wobble. Next, we have become aware that after the writing of Mark's 
gospel in the early 70's, the written record of Jesus expanded about every 
decade with Matthew writing in the early 80s, Luke in the late 80s or early 90s 
and John in the late 90s. By reading these accounts in the order in which they 
are written, we can actually watch the story grow and the miraculous 
heightened.
The obvious question that these data raise is one that has been generally 
ignored by Christian interpreters. So let me pose it in several forms. Where did 
the sayings of Jesus, the parables of Jesus and the stories about Jesus reside 
in that oral period between the end of his life and the first writing of the 
gospels? In what context was the oral tradition maintained? In what ways did 
that context shape, change and transform the message? The reason these 
questions are seldom raised is directly related to the residual effect of the 
idolatrous worship of the Bible that we call bibliolatry. Bibliolatry gripped the 
early church and still resides in traditional parts of Christianity today. The 
gospels have for far too long been treated as if they are history and therefore 
are presumed to be accounts of what Jesus actually said and did. They have been 
invested with the literal claim that they are the dictated words of God. When 
people begin with that definition of the Bible, they are not disposed to 
study the origins of their sacred story. It is easier to make excessive claims for 
its inerrancy and to seek to maintain the now thoroughly discredited fiction 
that the Bible was received by divine revelation. Incredible though it may 
seem, after some 200 years of critical biblical scholarship, its impact, for the 
most part, still has not escaped the hallowed halls of academia. The insights 
gleaned from that study, and their impact on how the Bible can be competently 
and accurately read, are still largely ignored in both Catholic and Protestant 
circles. It is actually worse than that. Scholarly study of the scriptures is 
still being attacked in these circles as "godless heresy." 
A preliminary study of the gospels will, however, reveal the obvious fact 
that the story of Jesus was repeated primarily in the synagogues during the years 
after the death of Jesus and before the gospels were written. The clue here 
is discovered in the wide use of Old Testament references that are both overt 
and covert in the gospel narrative. Paul wrote that Jesus died and was raised 
"in accordance with the scriptures." When Paul wrote the only scriptures he 
knew were the Hebrew Scriptures. In the gospels the prophets are quoted to show 
how Jesus fulfilled them. Micah is quoted to undergird the Bethlehem birth 
story. Isaiah is quoted to develop the story of the Wise Men. Isaiah had written 
that kings would come to the brightness of God's rising. They would come on 
camels, they would come from Sheba and they would bring gold and frankincense. In 
a book called the Wisdom of Solomon, Israel's most opulent king is quoted as 
having said, "When I was born I was carefully swaddled for that is the only 
way a king can come to his people." This line clearly shaped Luke's birth story 
of how the infant Jesus was wrapped in 'swaddling clothes.' We could 
illustrate this connection between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jesus story quite 
literally thousands of times. What we need to realize is that the only place the 
people heard the Jewish Scriptures read was in the synagogues. In those days, 
books were on scrolls, handwritten and very expensive. People did not own 
copies of the Hebrew Bible to read at their leisure. The Gideon Society did not 
place them in local hotels. If the Jesus story was interpreted by and understood 
through references to the Hebrew Bible, the only place that could have 
happened was in the synagogue where the reading of the Law and the Prophets and 
expounding on their meaning constituted the major part of their liturgy.
In this series of columns on the relationship between the Passover and the 
telling of the story of the crucifixion, I have suggested that even the sacred 
accounts, which propose to describe the final events in Jesus' life, are not 
the recordings of historical memory. Rather they are the later developed, 
synagogue-inspired liturgical interpretation of what his disciples had come to 
believe, that in and through the life of Jesus, they had experienced the eternal 
God. In the first of this series, I pointed out hints in the text itself that 
suggest that the original dating of the crucifixion narrative appears to have 
been changed. Passover came in mid to late March. There were no leafy branches 
that could have been waved in a Palm Sunday procession at that time in 
Palestine, even though the literal text suggests that Jesus' triumphal entry into 
Jerusalem came just before the crucifixion. There was no fig tree whose failure to 
produce figs in late March could have elicited the killing curse from Jesus 
that both Mark and Matthew describe. The connection between Passover and 
crucifixion seems to be rather forced in the gospels.
Then we looked at the earliest version of the Passion of Christ narrative 
found in Mark (14:17-15:47) that appears to be a liturgical form based on the 
Passover but stretched into a twenty-four-hour vigil with the content of the 
story drawn not from eye witness memory but from Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53.
The next step in this consciousness raising enterprise is to look at whether 
the holy days of the Jewish liturgical year were also used to shape the story 
of Jesus. I now want to bring one of those holy days, about which Christians 
tend to know nothing, into our awareness.
In the fall of the year, the Jews celebrated an eight day Harvest Festival 
called Sukkoth (pronounced sue-coat), sometimes called the Feast of the 
Tabernacles or Booths which drew Jewish pilgrims from all over the known world to 
Jerusalem. Despite its enormous popularity Sukkoth is mentioned only once in the 
Bible in John 7 so most Christians have no idea of how this festival was 
observed. If they did they would recognize that the symbols of Sukkoth have been 
subsumed in the details of the Christian story of Palm Sunday. Listen to the 
similarities.
The worshipers at Sukkoth marched in procession round the Temple waving in 
their right hands something called a "lulab," which was a bundle of leafy 
branches bound together, made up of myrtle, willow and palm. As they marched they 
recited Psalm 118, the psalm of Sukkoth. Among the words of this psalm are 
these: "Save us," which is an English translation of the Jewish word, "Hosanna," 
and "Blessed is he who enters (comes) in the Name of the Lord." This psalm goes 
on to say, "Bind the festal procession with branches," and it contains other 
words later interpreted as referring to Jesus, "The stone which the builders 
rejected has become the head of the corner." There is little question that the 
Palm Sunday story was dependent on the details of this harvest festival holiday 
of the Jews. Since Sukkoth shares common content with Palm Sunday, we have 
another piece of evidence suggesting that crucifixion and Passover were linked 
together for interpretive not historical reasons.
There are other symbols of Sukkoth that seem to have entered the 
crucifixion/resurrection narrative of the early church. While worshipers carried a lulab 
to wave in their right hand in the Sukkoth procession, in their left hand they 
carried an "ethrog" (pronounced e-trog), a box of sweet-smelling spices, 
usually the blossom, leaves or fruit of the citron tree, once again possibilities 
only in the fall of the year. I wonder if the sweet smelling spices, that the 
women were said to have carried to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning, are a 
reflection of this.
Also as part of this celebration, Jewish families were instructed to build a 
temporary booth outside their homes to remind them of the time their ancestors 
spent wandering in the wilderness after their escape from Egypt when they had 
no permanent home. This booth was to be a place in which they ate a 
ceremonial meal during the eight-day celebration. I cannot help but wonder whether this 
temporary and ceremonial dwelling place got transformed into a temporary tomb 
in Joseph's garden. I also wonder whether the shelter to which Cleopas and 
his friend turned aside to enter in Luke's Emmaus Road resurrection story, and 
in which they ate a ceremonial meal with the Risen Christ, was yet another echo 
in which the Sukkoth liturgy shaped the basic Christian story.
Once we begin to dig beneath the surface of the gospels we discover 
interpretive clues to which the literalism of the past has blinded us. This exercise 
may destabilize yesterday's literalism but it also open for us the real question 
that we ought to ask today: What was there about this Jesus that caused them 
to see him as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets; as the human life 
through which the holy God was experienced? How was it that they came to see 
his death as similar to the death of the paschal lamb of Passover and thus 
allowed the Passover to frame their telling of the Passion of Jesus?
To the issues raised by these questions I will turn next week as our journey 
towards Easter continues.
-- John Shelby Spong
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
The Rev. Finley Schaef from Woodstock, N.Y., asks: 
Why did you defend the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S.? Is revenge a 
justifiable motive for war? A million or so innocents were killed or driven from 
their homes. What, pray tell, was accomplished to advance the spirit of Christ? 
Dear Finley, 
If the purpose of the Afghanistan invasion was to break up the terrorist 
training centers that were responsible for the 9/11 attacks then I regard that as 
an appropriate response. I do not see it as revenge. I see it as trying to 
defend yourself against a further attack. I'm not sure that it advanced the 
"Spirit of Christ" at all but neither did being the recipient of the 9/11 attacks.
Of course innocents were killed and driven from their homes but not anything 
approaching your figure of "a million or so." Critics must stick to the facts 
even if their criticism arises from religious passion and sources. However, 
whether it was "a million or so" or just a single victim is relatively 
unimportant for it is wrong in either case.
We do not live in a perfect world. Injustice abounds. The strong violate the 
weak every day. The voice of Christ needs to raise consciousness on issues 
like this constantly. I see the human race ever fighting the battle for survival. 
We have been hard wired to do this since emerging out of the tooth and claw 
struggle of our evolutionary history. The only way this will cease is for us to 
evolve into something we are not yet. I believe that is what Christianity at 
its deepest core is all about. This means that some day we will learn that one 
does not fight terrorism by fighting or killing terrorists but by addressing 
the human despair that breeds terrorism. Ultimately, that means evolving 
beyond tribal thinking, beyond prejudices and beyond the religious systems that 
encourage both tribalism and prejudice. That is how we advance the Spirit of 
Christ. It is not easy being human. Unless we evolve to a new understanding of our 
common humanity, I do not believe that human life will continue. It is a 
scary time. I urge you not to fight the tribal battle but to concentrate on 
building the new humanity.
-- John Shelby Spong

Dick Kroeger
65 Stubbs Bay Road
Maple Plain, MN 55359
952-476-6126