[Dialogue] Spong and the Xifiction part 2

[KroegerD@aol.com]

February 9, 2005


The Connection Between the Crucifixion and the Passover, Part II 


Last week I began the analysis of the crucifixion of Jesus as it appears in all four gospels, examining in particular the claim that this founding moment in the Christian story occurred in the context of the Passover, which celebrates the founding moment in the sacred story of the Jewish people. I raised the question as to whether that connection is literal, remembered history or is rather an interpretative liturgical adaptation. My first clue was found in an examination of the narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark, the earliest gospel, which scholars generally date in the early 70's C.E. In that story of the Passion, (14:17-15:47), I pointed out that we have a format of a 24-hour vigil divided into eight clearly marked three-hour segments. The material that provides the content of this account has been lifted not from remembered history, but from Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. That was my first clue. Christians need to embrace that even the treasured description of Jesus' crucifixion is not literal history, it is later interpretative material. Jesus died alone with no one standing by to record what happened. Mark has made that clear by his assertion that when Jesus was arrested all of his disciples forsook him and fled (Mark 14:50).

It is the setting of the crucifixion story against the observance of the Passover that first started my questioning process. Passover is observed in the Jewish world on the 14th and 15th days of the month of Nisan, which would place it in late March or early April on our calendars. The biblical narrative in Mark, Matthew and Luke (to put them in the order in which they were written) suggests that the Palm Sunday triumphal entry into Jerusalem took place just five days before the Passover. It indeed was the Passover celebration that drew Jesus and his disciples to Jerusalem in the first place. If this entry came a week before Passover it would move the date to somewhere between mid-March and the first of April.

Yet the Palm Sunday procession, according to the earliest narration in Mark (11:1-10) was accompanied by the spreading of leafy branches that they cut from the fields (Mark 11:8). The only trouble with that little detail is that at that time of year, there are no leafy branches in the Holy Land. The leaves have not yet come out! Is that a hint that the Palm Sunday procession was either not history at all or was not originally in the spring of the year? It is at the very least a provocative clue that we might want to probe further.

The next step in our analysis comes when we examine the passion narrative in Matthew, which was the second gospel to be written, coming some 10-12 years after Mark. However, we know that Matthew had Mark in front of him when he wrote, so any time we see that Matthew has overtly and clearly changed the text of Mark, we need to ask why. What was his reason? Can we discover his agenda? Looking at Matthew's version of Mark's Palm Sunday procession story (Matt. 21:1-9) we discover a fascinating note. Whereas Mark refers to the cutting of "leafy" branches, Matthew, perhaps aware that there were no leaves on the branches of the trees in late March or early April, simply omits the reference to the leaves. This means that in Matthew's gospel the crowd only cut branches (v. 8). A branch without leaves might better be called a stick and sticks without leaves are not thought of as instruments that can be spread or waved. It is the leaves that provide the cover on the ground on which the procession can move. It is the leaves that flutter when the branches are waved. So I become slightly more suspicious when Matthew omits the leaves from these branches.

Turning next to Luke who wrote some 5 to 10 years after Matthew, and who also had Mark before him when he composed his gospel, we discover another interesting clue. Luke's Palm Sunday story (19:28-44) has omitted any reference to the waving of the branches at all.

There are no leafy branches in Luke because there are no branches at all. Luke has replaced that gesture with another. In Luke's Palm Story the people only lay down their clothes before him (v. 36). Was Luke also suggesting that Mark's story did not add up and he wanted to make it consistent? There were no leafy branches to be waved in the Holy Land in March.

When we come to John's gospel, that is generally dated somewhere between 95-100, we believe that we are dealing with a different and independent source. He is not dependent on the rest of the synoptic tradition.The data we find here is thus even more fascinating. John does not appear to identify Jesus' entry into Jerusalem with the Passover. He has been there in the region for some time. Jesus however stages a procession into Jerusalem just a few days before the Passover. When we recall that John is the only gospel that claims to be based on the work of an eyewitness, his placement needs to be looked at carefully. I know of no scholar who thinks this gospel was actually written by the disciple of Jesus named John Zebedee. However, there is a strong scholarly tradition that suggests that the Fourth Gospel John might be the work of a disciple of the apostle John and thus might reflect more remembered history than the others.

The Johanine note that I wish to add to the growing data, however, is that John is the first gospel to suggest that the branches they waved were made out of palm and thus were evergreen. Palms however would not be characterized as "leafy branches." By naming the Sunday before Easter, Palm Sunday, we have stamped the day with its particular identification with palm branches so it is of interest to note that only in a book written 65-70 years after the crucifixion does the narrative suggest that palms were used in the triumphal entry. One wonders why that note would have escaped the memory of the authors of Mark, Matthew and Luke. None of this is yet a persuasive argument. It is only a series of hints that are becoming cumulative — so on we move.

We come next to the story of a fig tree that Mark relates as coming on the day after the Palm Sunday procession (Mark 11:12-14, 20, 21). Mark's account says that when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, he went to the Temple and looked around. Presumably he saw the commerce and the moneychangers at work but he did nothing more than to take in this scene before withdrawing for the night to Bethany where the group was headquartered, probably at the home of Mary and Martha.

The next day on their way up to Jerusalem from Bethany for the activity that came to be called the cleansing of the Temple, Mark tells us that Jesus was hungry. Seeing a fig tree in the distance, he went to it seeking figs. However, no fig tree bears fruit in late March in the northern hemisphere. Jesus, apparently unaware of that bit of reality, is irate and curses the fig tree to eternal barrenness. It is a strange portrait of Jesus, generally ignored by sermon writers. To curse a fig tree for not bearing fruit in March is not unlike blaming a man for not getting pregnant. It is to be judged for the inability to do the impossible. After this episode, Mark relates the dramatic story of Jesus driving those buying and selling as well as those changing money from the Temple. Then on the way home, Mark concludes the fig tree story by observing that Jesus' curse took. The fig tree had withered to its roots.

Is this again hidden evidence of a different dating process? Had this story been in the fall it would not be so jarring, so difficult to understand the actions of Jesus. Is this a hint that it was originally a fall narrative and that when it was moved into the orbit of the Passover in early spring all of its now inappropriate time references were not smoothed away?

Once more we turn to see what Matthew and Luke do with this strange story as they work from Mark's text to create their own. Matthew relates the fig tree story almost identically. He simply makes it wither at once and does not have to revisit this uncomfortable narrative as Mark does. Luke however omits it altogether in this context, but earlier in his gospel (Lk 13:6-9) he uses much of this material in a parable about a fig tree that it does not produce fruit, creating in the owner of that land the desire to cut the unproductive tree down. His foreman saves the tree for at least a year with the promise of digging around it and fertilizing it.

The leafy branches reference in the first Palm Sunday triumphal entry story and the fig tree story were both told as part of the preamble to the crucifixion at the time of the Passover. They both seem out of place in that early spring setting. Is there a hint in these narratives that the original context of both was the fall of the year? They look like they have been moved and rather clumsily at that. When these things are examined one cannot help but wonder if these accounts were not originally connected with the fall of the year and, sometime between the death of Jesus and the writing of the gospels, were moved because the crucifixion had been attached liturgically to the Passover, and the death of the Paschal Lamb at Passover had become the way the death of Jesus was interpreted. I invite you to hold that possibility open until we can examine another clue that seems to suggest that the details of the Palm Sunday story have been borrowed from another Jewish tradition that occurs in the fall of the year.

To that story I will turn next week as this series on the relationship of the Passion Story of Jesus and the Passover of the Jews continues.

-- John Shelby Spong


Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong

Chris from Nigeria writes: 

I want you to clarify for me certain issues that seem to me to impact our common existence. Are you in support of gay marriages and abortions? Do you think we have the antichrist and the Dragon in our midst today? 

Dear Chris, 

Your reference to "antichrist and the Dragon in our midst today" is language so closely identified with evangelical religion that it is almost incomprehensible to discuss it outside that frame of reference, so I assume that must be your tradition. To call one's opponent "antichrist and the Dragon" is to assume that anyone disagreeing with your fundamentalist view of Christianity is evil and it serves well to keep your assertions from ever being engaged in any sort of debate. I am neither impressed by nor attracted to that mentality. The fact that you link those concepts to homosexuality and abortion is a further indication of the same mentality.

The issue of homosexuality is not a 'moral' issue so much as it is a 'being' issue. That is because all contemporary and scientific data today suggest that homosexuality is not something people choose to do; it is something that a minority of the world's population simply is. It is abnormal only in the sense that it is minority. Prejudice against a gay or lesbian person is thus in the same category as prejudice against those whose skin color is different, or against women or left-handed people. To denigrate a person simply because of who that person is, is evil and yes, I would also call it sinful. The homophobia that I have encountered in many parts of the Third World is a combination of religious zeal and human ignorance. I am grateful that there are African voices like that of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Khotso Mkullu and Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane who have become champions of homosexual people that might counter the impression that homophobia is an African or third world illness. I do believe that gay and lesbian people have a right not to be excluded from any activity or benefit that the heterosexual majority enjoys.

In regard to abortion, the issue is quite complicated. It pits the life of the unborn child against the life and well being of the mother. Once abortion was illegal which meant that women, desperate not to have a baby for a variety of reasons, some good and some bad, resorted to back alley abortionists and in far too many circumstances lost their lives in the process. I am quite sure that the abortion laws are misused. I am also sure that without them, great harm will be done to women. I believe very deeply that abortion ought to be legal. I believe that it ought to be safe. Finally, I believe it ought to be rare. I do not believe, however, that a male-dominated society, even when it claims to speak in the name of a God called 'Father,' has the right to tell a woman what she must do with her own body.

If abortion is going to be rare, competent and effective sex education must be carried out in the public arena with standards set by health authorities. I find it interesting that the same religious voices that are opposed to both birth control and abortion are also opposed to rigorous sex education in public schools. Religious schools have far too often proved themselves to be incompetent to handle sex education so wherever churches run religious schools, I think the government ought to require that sex education, run by the state or qualified health officials be done outside the auspices and control of religious officials.

Above all I think it is time evangelical Christians stop quoting the Bible to perpetrate their prejudices against both homosexuals and women. The Bible is not a medical and health textbook and the level of knowledge available to the ancient people who wrote it compromises its authority. Jesus is even portrayed, you might recall as thinking epilepsy is caused by demon possession. The Bible came into written form roughly between 1000 B.C.E. and 135 C.E. The world has learned much since then. To suggest that the Bible somehow has the answer to complex modern issues like homosexuality and abortion is to be uninformed at best; it is to be malevolent and destructive at worst.

I hope you will find these comments helpful and enlightening.

-- John Shelby Spong


-- 
Dick Kroeger