[Dialogue] 12/17/09, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part IX: Paul on the Final Events in Jesus' Life

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Thursday December 17, 2009 

The Origins of the New Testament
Part IX: Paul on the Final Events in Jesus' Life

"I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received." With those words Paul set out in writing to the Corinthians the earliest account we have of the final events in the life of Jesus. Paul was not an eyewitness to these final events, since as far as we know he never met or confronted the Jesus of history. Nevertheless, he presents himself in this epistle as the protector of and the conduit through which the critical events in Jesus' life are passed on to another generation. This is, he was asserting, the core and the crux of our faith story. It is therefore of "first importance." Where did Paul receive this tradition? The best guess is informed by his words in the epistle to the Galatians written two to four years earlier. There Paul gives us the only firsthand account that we have of his conversion. It is not, however, the conversion story with which most people are familiar. It does not feature a journey to Damascus with orders from the Chief Priest to bring back in bondage any "followers of the Way," which was the title first used to designate the disciples of Jesus. Paul never mentions a bright light from heaven, or a voice, assumed to belong to Jesus, asking him why he was persecuting Jesus. Paul makes no mention of ever having been temporarily blind and shares no account of his baptism at the house at which time he recovered his sight. That "Damascus Road" story of which these familiar details are a part was the product of Luke's pen when he authored the book of Acts, a work that was not written until the middle years of the 9th decade, or some thirty years after Paul's death. Paul was not around to defend himself against the mythmakers. There is no mention in the authentic works of Paul that he might ever have had a dramatic experience on the Road to Damascus or that a man named Ananias might hav e played a significant role in that conversion. The book of Acts alone suggests that Ananias actually served as Paul's "midwife" in his birth as a Christian.
Most biblical scholars simply dismiss the historicity of this Acts account, yet they do not dismiss the historicity of Paul's conversion. The reason for that is that Paul tells us himself: "I persecuted the Church of God violently and tried to destroy it." He claims to have advanced dramatically in "the tradition of my Fathers, until God called me through his grace and was pleased to reveal his Son to me in order that I might preach among the Gentiles." Paul himself gives us no other details of his conversion. He does, however, and in a rather full way, relate his activities following this life-altering moment. "I did not confer with flesh and blood," he says, "I did not go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me." Instead, he says, "I went away into Arabia and again I returned to Damascus."
Continuing his chronicle of that time, he says, "After three years, I went up to Jerusalem. His purpose, he said, was to visit Cephas, which was Simon's nickname. Simon was called "the rock." In Greek the word for rock was "petros," while in Aramaic the word for rock was "kepha." So Simon is best known in the Bible for his nicknames, Peter in Greek and Cephas in Aramaic. Both meant something close to our word "Rocky" today. In those 15 days with Cephas Paul must have heard for the first time the details of the life of Jesus in their earliest and most primitive form. This meeting with Peter would have come no earlier than four and no later than nine years after the crucifixion. So in these words of Paul we have gotten back to the first decade of Christian memory and have touched primitive Christianity. Jesus is clearly a person of history not a mythological creation.
It is fascinating to note what Paul actually says and perhaps even more to note what he does not say about the death of Jesus. He covers the cross in just ten literal words: "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures." Elsewhere in Paul's writing he refers to the cross and to Jesus as the crucified one, so I think it is fair to say that Paul knew that Jesus had died at the hands of the Romans by means of crucifixion. Paul has also begun to interpret the meaning of that death. It was "for our sins," he asserted. That phrase, which was destined to form a major building block in the much later theologies of the atonement, appears to have been lifted by Paul out of the Synagogue's liturgy of Yom Kippur, in which the "innocent lamb of God" was slain as an atonement offering for the sins of the people.
Paul adds further that this death of Jesus was "in accordance with the scriptures." The two places in the scriptures to which Paul might have been alluding were the "servant" passages of Isaiah 40-55, in which the servant absorbed the pain and hostility of the world and returned it as love; or perhaps to II Zechariah (9-14), in which the shepherd king of the Jews was betrayed into the hands of those who bought and sold animals in the Temple for thirty pieces of silver. Within the first decade of Christian history, we can safely assume that these two passages in the Hebrew Bible had become incorporated into the disciples' understanding of Jesus. Please note also that Paul seems to know nothing of the later developing narratives that purport to tell the details of the crucifixion. There is for Paul no betrayal by Judas, no prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, no arrest, no trial, no Pilate, no Barabbas, no denial by Peter, no torture by the Romans, no purple robe or crown of thorns, no Simon of Cyrene to carry his cross, no one crucified with him, no words spoken from the cross, no expression of separation from God, no cry of thirst and no darkness at noon. All of those things appear to be later developing details that simply are not part of what was handed to Paul as being of "first importance."
Then Paul moves on to look at the rest of the final events in the life of Jesus. After he died, says Paul, "he was buried." Again no details are given. Paul appears not to know anything about the tomb in which Jesus was laid or the spices that were used in the burial. He certainly appears to know nothing of a man named Joseph of Arimathea, who comes into the tradition much later as the architect of the burial. Again most scholars today regard the familiar burial stories of the gospels as late developing traditions. Paul probably does not include any reference to these things because these traditions had not yet been developed or even born.
Paul then moves to the crux of the Christian claim: Jesus, he says, "was raised." Paul always employs a passive verb to describe what came to be called Easter. Jesus never "rises" in Paul. God always "raises" him. Into what? That should be the question we ask. Did God raise him from death back into the life of this world? Was the body of Jesus physically resuscitated and thus enabled to walk out of the tomb? That has been the way many have incorrectly read Paul. That is, however, clearly not what Paul understood Easter to be. If resurrection was a resuscitation of a dead person back into the life of this physical world, then the raised person would inevitably have to die again at a later point in time. There is no other way to get out of this life. Paul will, however, write in another place these words: "Christ being raised from the dead dies no more. Death has no more dominion over him." That does not sound like physical resuscitation back to the life of this world to me.
Paul adds to the resurrection account only two details. Whatever this raising was it occurred, he said, "on the third day" and it was, he repeats, "in accordance with the scriptures." Was this reference to the "third day" a reference to physical time? Or had these words already become a symbol developed before Paul, but then adopted by Paul? When the early gospels were written, their authors were not sure whether this traditional and thus proper time measure was "after three days," which is what Mark quotes Jesus as having said on three occasions, or "on the third day," as both Matthew and Luke changed Mark to read. That would not be the same day. Either way, "on" or "after" the third day is hard to fix chronologically with the way the gospels tell the story. If the timeline of the gospels is followed literally Jesus dies at 3 p.m. in the afternoon and is buried by sundown or by 6 p.m. From sundown to midnight is six hours. From midnight on Friday to midnight on Saturday is twenty-four hours. From midnight to dawn or 6 a.m. on Sunday morning is six more hours. Put those time markers together and the best one can get is not three days, but thirty-six hours, which is only a day and a half. So how did we get to the concept of three days? That is some of the data that suggests that three days is a symbol and not a literal measure of time. If that is so then we need to wonder where it came from. Was it adapted from the three days it takes the moon to move into total darkness and then back to light as "the new moon?" "Three days" could possibly be a time measure like "forty days," which the Jews used to mark revelatory moments in history. I think it is obvious that three days was for Paul a symbol and not a measure of "clock" or "calendar" time.
Then Paul gets to what he calls those to whom the raised Jesus was "made manifest," or those to whom Jesus appeared. The Greek word that is translated "appeared" in this Corinthian text is the same word used by the translators of the Septuagint (a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek between the third and second centuries BCE) to describe how God "appeared" to Moses at the Burning Bush (see Exodus 3). Did Moses "see" God in a physical way? Could Moses have caught the likeness of God on his camera if he had had the ability to take pictures? Or was this a poetic description of a defining insight? Was it an example of what we would later call "insight" or "second sight?" The story is far more complex than most people think. Next week we will look at the list of names of those to whom Paul says the raised Christ appeared. The story then gets more intriguing, so stay tuned. 

– John Shelby Spong
 



Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong


Tom Weller of Panama City, Florida, writes:
In your recent response about Darwin (in which you suggested the atonement theology will no longer be an adequate way to interpret the Jesus story) you said, "The traditional meaning of the Eucharist will have to be revised." Looking at the Eucharistic prayers of various denominations, including the United Church of Christ, I find them all focused on sacrificial death and atonement, all including the "words of institution." Is there a Eucharistic prayer that is not so focused that you are aware of or that you like? Or, perhaps, have you drafted a proposal of your own that we could see?
Tom Weller of Panama City, Florida, writes:
In your recent response about Darwin (in which you suggested the atonement theology will no longer be an adequate way to interpret the Jesus story) you said, "The traditional meaning of the Eucharist will have to be revised." Looking at the Eucharistic prayers of various denominations, including the United Church of Christ, I find them all focused on sacrificial death and atonement, all including the "words of institution." Is there a Eucharistic prayer that is not so focused that you are aware of or that you like? Or, perhaps, have you drafted a proposal of your own that we could see?



Dear Tom,
I have run into many Eucharistic prayers that are almost a denial of sacrificial thinking; the Church is certainly moving in that direction. I have never tried to write one, since liturgy has never been my talent. I do believe that Darwin's thinking will finally force the Christian Church to alter the way it talks about God, Jesus, salvation and human life. When that insight finally dawns on the Christian consciousness, the result will be a reformation so total that it will put the Reformation of the 16th century into the category of an afternoon tea party.
We will have to recognize first that we cannot define God; we can only experience the sense of transcendence, wonder and awe. When we talk about God, we are not talking about an external being, we are talking about a human perception and, as such, God is ever changing. When we talk about human life, we are not talking about a fallen sinner, but about an incompletely evolved creature that cracked the boundary into self-consciousness and needs to be empowered to become whole, something more than a survival-oriented creature. When we talk about Jesus, we are not talking about an external savior who came to rescue us, but a life in whom and through whom transcendence has broken into history. Jesus does not save us from a fall that never happened or restore us to a status that we have never had. He empowers us to be more deeply and fully human and to enter higher and higher levels of consciousness where we finally discover that we live in God and God lives in us. The Eucharist then becomes a celebration of who we are and a call to walk more deeply into the meaning of humanity.
It was my work trying to understand life after death that drew me in this direction. I think we are headed for the most exciting century in Christian history. I anticipate that most of what we call religion today will die in the next century. Rigor mortis has already set in. Out of that death, however, will come a new beginning. I am glad that I have lived to see the birth pangs. Hard labor is ahead but a new creation is being born and in that new creation God will be newly experienced and newly discovered — not as a Being who lives above the sky, but as the presence that is revealed in the heart of the human.
Take these thoughts to your next Eucharist.

– John Shelby Spong






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