[Dialogue] Spong Xifixion Part 5

[KroegerD@aol.com]

March 2, 2005
The Connection between the Crucifixion and the Passover, Part V:
The Third Day 

Once the literal prison in which we have confined the Bible has been 
shattered then, far from being destroyed as traditional Christians seem to fear, our 
faith is rather opened to new meanings. These columns leading up to Easter are 
designed to introduce my readers to the kind of biblical debates that are 
commonplace in the world of academia but which institutional Christian 
spokespersons are loathe to discuss publicly. This week I examine one more detail in the 
passion story that we have mistakenly literalized, the unit of time that we 
call "three days."
"On the third day" is a phrase that has even been enshrined in our creeds. In 
the earliest reference we have to Easter (I Cor. 15:1-6), Paul says that 
Jesus was raised "on the third day in accordance with the scriptures." All of the 
gospels locate Easter on the first day of the week, which would make it the 
third day after the crucifixion, but only if you count in a very literalistic 
manner. This time frame appears on the surface to be set and consistent. 
However, that is not the case when one begins to probe the scriptures.
Going to Mark, the earliest written gospel (ca.70-72 CE), we note that on 
three separate occasions Jesus is said to have predicted his resurrection. They 
are found in Mark 8:31, 9:31, and 10:34. In each instance the literal wording 
Jesus uses is "after three days." Both Matthew and Luke had Mark in front of 
them when they wrote. When Matthew, writing a decade or so before Luke, came to 
these three time demarcations in Mark, he changed every one of them. Where 
Mark had Jesus say "after three days," Matthew had him say "on the third day" 
(see Matthew 16:21, 17:23, and 20:19). It was a slight change, often overlooked, 
but the fact is that they could not be referring to the same day. After three 
days will give you Monday at the earliest and perhaps even Tuesday, depending 
on how you count the day of the crucifixion, which was all but over before the 
narrative says that the death of Jesus occurred.
Matthew in other parts of his gospel, however, appears to have forgotten that 
he had made these changes. When he tells the story of the Jewish leaders 
seeking guards from Pilate to be placed around the tomb of Jesus, Matthew reverts 
to Mark's original phrase by having the chief priests assert that the guards 
were necessary because "that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, 'after 
three days' I will rise again (Matthew 27:63)." On yet another occasion (see 
Matthew 12:40), Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, "As Jonah was in the belly of the 
whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the midst of 
the earth." Three days and three nights would surely put Easter on Tuesday. So 
the three-day symbol wobbles significantly.
Luke also had Mark in front of him when he wrote his gospel, so he too had to 
deal with Mark's three predictions of resurrection containing the line 'after 
three days'. Luke changes two of them to 'on the third day' and omits the 
third one (see Luke 9:22 and 18:31-33, the omitted one is left out of Luke 
9:43-45). Something is surely going on in the early church that causes the three-day 
symbol to appear caught in some kind of tug-of-war. It is being pulled in 
different directions in order to fit a different time agenda. Though three days 
seems to be an important symbol, its literal meaning as a measure of time 
appears to be under some pressure to shift.
What was the actual time between crucifixion and resurrection according to 
all four gospels? It was not three days at all. Count the time. Jesus was buried 
before sundown on Friday or by 6 p.m. From 6 p.m. to midnight is six hours. 
Saturday midnight to midnight on Sunday is 24 hours. Midnight on Sunday to dawn 
or 6 a.m. on that first day of the week is another six hours. Add them up and 
the result is 36 hours, a long way from a literal three days.
Next return to Mark and look at another seldom noticed fact. This first g
ospel portrays the women coming to the tomb at dawn, bearing spices with which to 
anoint the deceased body. They confront, however, not a quiet burial place but 
an empty tomb and a messenger who announces the resurrection. This messenger 
is described as a young man wearing a white robe, who urges them to go and 
tell Peter and the disciples that a raised Jesus will go before them to Galilee 
where they will see him. The presumption in this narrative is that the 
disciples are still in Jerusalem. The women, we are told, flee in fear and say nothing 
to anyone. That is where the authentic text of Mark's gospel ends. Everything 
after the 8th verse of the 16th chapter is a later, second century addition 
to Mark that scholars unanimously dismiss as an authentic part of his original 
work. That being so, then we must note that though a Galilean meeting with 
Jesus is promised, no appearance of the Risen Christ ever occurs or is ever 
described in Mark's gospel at all. Galilee was a 7-10 day, 94-mile journey from 
Jerusalem. Even if they made this journey in the minimum time of seven days, it 
would still put the promised appearance to these disciples well outside the 
three-day time frame that seems so important to the writers. So the plot thickens.
It is also interesting to note that when Matthew who is the first to do so, 
actually relates the story of that first appearance of the resurrected Jesus to 
the disciples in Galilee, it was primarily to commission them to go into "all 
the world," not to convince them of his living reality. For many reasons that 
narrative gives the sense of being something that occurred considerably later 
in time.
The first time the original band of disciples is mentioned in connection with 
the tomb in Jerusalem or with any part of the Jerusalem resurrection 
tradition does not occur until the writing of Luke's gospel in the late 9th or early 
10th decade. Luke quite specifically denies any resurrection appearance in 
Galilee. John's gospel agrees with Luke in making Jerusalem the setting of the 
first appearance of the risen Christ to the disciples, but in John's final 
chapter he relates a Galilean appearance that seems to be separated from the first 
Easter by a considerable amount of time. The disciples have not only returned 
to their Galilean homes but they have now taken up their pre-Jesus lifestyles 
as fishermen.
To confuse things a bit more, Luke suggests that resurrection appearances 
continued for forty days, concluding with the ascension of Jesus. John, however, 
says that the ascension of Jesus took place on Easter Sunday and it was the 
already glorified Jesus who appeared to the disciples over a period of time. The 
biblical dating of the resurrection moment is clearly inconsistent. 
Literalism thus becomes a poor lens through which to read the Easter stories.
Three days is an interesting symbol. It is used frequently in the Bible as a 
symbolic measure of time, not unlike the symbol of 40 days, which appears 
again and again. It is also said to be the time span in the apocalyptic writings 
between the end of the world and the dawning of the Kingdom of God. I suspect 
that the symbol of three days as the time between death and life comes 
originally, however, from the "death and resurrection" of the moon that all ancient 
people could observe. The moon disappears into darkness on one day, remains in 
darkness during the second day and then emerges anew as a glimmering sign of 
new life on the third day.
When one searches the gospels closely, however, what does become obvious is 
that whatever the first Easter experience was, it occurred in Galilee. That 
would be the conclusion of the earliest written materials from Paul, Mark and 
Matthew, while hints that support such a reconstruction can also be found in both 
Luke and John. Luke gives clear evidence that he has suppressed the Galilean 
origin of the resurrection story, while John has Jesus say "The hour is 
coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each man to his own home, 
and will leave me alone." Home for each of the disciples was Galilee.
The idea that Peter stood in the center of the resurrection experience is 
also deeply written into both the pre- and post-resurrection narratives in the 
New Testament. Paul says, "he appeared first to Cephas." Mark has the messenger 
instruct the women to "go tell the disciples, and Peter, " that he will meet 
them in Galilee. Luke has the disciples say to the pair who had met Jesus in 
the breaking of bread in the village of Emmaus, that he had first appeared to 
Peter. Finally John gives a long and detailed account of Jesus appearing to 
Peter by the lake in Galilee.
Whatever the resurrection experience was it involved a total transformation 
of the expectations of these Jewish disciples. It did not come without a 
struggle, part of which involved a search of the scriptures and traditions of the 
Jews. It was that search which led them to see Jesus ultimately as analogous to 
the Passover lamb. Later they stretched the connection of Jesus with synagogue 
worship by suggesting that he was also analogous to the lamb that was 
sacrificed to God on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) for the sins of the people. 
The perfection of this lamb could be transferred to the people when the blood of 
this lamb of God was sprinkled on the people so that they could say that they 
had been "washed in the blood of the Lamb." That in turn led them to see 
Jesus presaged in the portrait of the Suffering Servant drawn from the unknown 
prophet we call Second Isaiah (40-55). Finally he was understood to be both the 
instrument and the first fruits of the in-breaking Kingdom of God, which 
implied to their Jewish minds that he was both the new Adam and the mythological 
figure called 'The Son of Man,' portrayed in the seventh chapter of Daniel. This 
divine figure was to come at the end of time riding on the clouds to judge the 
world and to announce the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Only when these 
disciples of Jesus were able to break out of their self-imposed religious limits 
did they begin to recognize the meaning of the Christ experience, and only then 
were their eyes opened to see Jesus raised, triumphant and part of who God 
is. That took time, far more time than three days. The symbolic phrase 'after 
three days' stood first for the amount of time that was required for them to 
process the Christ experience through the trauma of his death. Then that time 
frame was shrunk to 'on the third day' to enable the first day of the week to 
become the liturgical moment when Christians could celebrate the resurrection as 
the ultimate meaning of the cross by observing it liturgically. Only then was 
it inserted into creeds and assumed to be 72 hours.
I suspect that a substantial amount of time separated the fact of crucifixion 
from the experience of resurrection: six months at a minimum, probably a year 
at a maximum. When resurrection dawned it was originally the life changing 
experience of perceiving that what the disciples had met in Jesus was one with 
God and that Jesus, as part of who God is, was eternally available to them. It 
had nothing to do, I now believe, with the physical resuscitation of a 
deceased body.
Next week I will take one further detour into the resurrection texts of the 
Bible itself to reveal their many discrepancies as we press toward experiencing 
the wonder of Easter.
-- John Shelby Spong
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
John from Tucson, Arizona, writes: 
First let me tell you I am an atheist. Prior to this I was raised in the 
Roman Catholic tradition and was a member in good standing for approximately the 
first thirty years of my life at which time I left. The journey I am on has led 
me in many directions and I have been comfortable lately with where I find 
myself. That is until I read your recent column. What brings this uncomfortable 
feeling is your sentence that reads, "As optimism has died, human beings 
increasingly turned either to fundamentalist religion or to secular materialism in 
the constant search for meaning." Because I value your understanding of the 
human condition, I took the latter part of the above sentence as an indictment. 
I know that my search for meaning has often turned to secular materialism. I 
must tell you this disturbs me. I'm not sure where to go with this. I cannot 
return to religion, as it holds nothing for me. Yet I do not want to continue to 
define myself by what I buy and own. Any insights? 
Dear John, 
I do not regard the claim that one is an atheist as anything different from a 
religious claim. An atheist seems to me to be saying, "The God I meet in 
organized religion is simply not big enough to be God in the world I now inhabit. 
Since no one offers a different understanding of God, I will reject the only 
God who has been presented to me." I believe it is the Church's responsibility 
to hear that criticism and not to reject it as faithless but faithful.
No one knows who God is or what God is. All any of us know is how we believe 
we have experienced God. Even then we must face the possibility that our 
experience is delusional. When the Church says, "This is God and we have this God 
defined in our creeds and spelled out in our doctrines and dogmas," what you 
really have is an absolute expression of idolatry. Some Christians believe the 
Bible has defined God. Other Christians believe the sacred teaching of their 
church has defined God. Both have inevitably been forced to distort the reality 
and the mystery of God to come to those conclusions.
As I understand human life, the nature of self-consciousness is to search for 
meaning and to accept radical insecurity as that part of life that makes us 
searching creatures. To search is to admit a sense of incompleteness. Religion 
is one prong of that search but that human sense of insecurity plagues us 
until we are driven to assert that in our particular religious pathway certainty 
has been achieved. The witness of history is that when religion claims 
certainty it turns demonic. That is when you get persecution, excommunication, burning 
heretics at the stake, religious wars and finally religious acts of 
terrorism. When religion dies, people turn to material comfort hiding from life's 
meaninglessness in extensive possessions. I have never met a person, however, who 
feels that he or she finally has enough things not to seek more.
A third possibility that I commend to you is to see the search for meaning as 
a journey without end, a walk into the mystery of God. On that walk there are 
no road maps or directional signs. It is a walk that needs to be taken in the 
company of fellow seekers. On that journey questions are shared and all 
answers are challenged. That I believe is what the future of the Church will look 
like.
For you and those like you, I hope you will find this kind of community 
somewhere and in it learn that the gift you have to offer the church is the 
criticism that arises from your atheist perspective. The church should welcome that 
gift for its own sake and should honor it as a worthy gift that the church 
needs to receive.
I wish you well on your journey.
-- John Shelby Spong

Dick Kroeger
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Maple Plain, MN 55359
952-476-6126