[Dialogue] 3/03/11, Spong: Examining the Story of the Cross; Part I Analyzing the Details of the Crucifixion

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Examining the Story of the Cross; Part I Analyzing the Details of the Crucifixion
In a few weeks the Christian world will enter the season of Lent that culminates with Holy Week and the liturgical reading of the Passion narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion.  The story of the cross is clearly the focal point of the New Testament with the last week of Jesus’ life taking up about a third of the content in each of the four gospels.  Next to the birth narratives, which are contained only in Matthew and Luke, the account of the Passion of Jesus is the most familiar part of the New Testament to Christian people. That familiarity is, however, not very well informed.  To put new understanding into this well-known narrative is the thing I will seek to do in a series of columns that will carry us up until Easter.
The final week in Jesus’ life begins with what we now call the Palm Sunday procession. It then moves toward the Maundy Thursday “Last Supper,” the betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, the trial before the Sanhedrin, the trial before Pilate, the introduction of the character we call Barabbas, the purple robe, the crown of thorns and finally the story of the crucifixion itself.  The first observation we need to make when we look at this material, is that what most people think they know is far more a blending and a smoothing over of real differences that mark the original separate biblical accounts.  This means that most readers have not yet embraced the fact that the story of Jesus’ passion is not literal history at all, but a pious interpretation in which even the familiar story of the end of Jesus’ life shows evidence of growth and development over the years as each successive writer began to fill in the blanks in imaginative ways and with the judicious use of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Today, in the first in this series of columns, I will seek to pull this seemingly foundational story apart and show how it was actually constructed over a period of about half a century in the writings of the New Testament.
Let me begin by stating clearly that, while I am convinced that there is literal historical memory at the core of this story, the details are not history at all, but legendary and interpretive accretions.  I will seek in this and subsequent columns to demonstrate both of these observations.
The central historical fact, which I find indisputable, is that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified during the reign and by the action of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, who served in this office by appointment of the Caesar from 26-36 CE.  Beyond that central fact, however, all eye witness details seem to disappear to be replaced by the strategy of forcing the story of the crucifixion into the mold of messianic expectations through a study of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Let me now lay out the various details found in the story of the Passion of Jesus in the order that each was developed from the Jewish biblical sources available to the followers of Jesus.
Paul is the first writer of any part of the New Testament.  He wrote all of his authentic epistles within a span of years between 51 CE at the earliest and 64 CE at the latest.  The initial fact that we need to embrace in this study is that the work of Paul is as close to the events of Holy Week as we can get in written materials.  If Jesus was crucified around 30 CE, as most New Testament scholars now agree, then it was twenty-one years, or a full generation, before any words about the crucifixion that we still possess were written down.  Twenty-one years is a long time to pass down any recollection by word of mouth and have it be rendered accurately.
Paul refers to the cross of Jesus on seven occasions in his epistles and he uses the word “crucified” in reference to Jesus on ten other occasions.  In none of these accounts, however, does he give any narrative details.  In I Corinthians: 11, for the first time Paul makes a reference to the institution of the last supper and to Jesus being “handed over,” a word that later was translated “betrayed.”  That is the entire origin of the traitor story.  He does not, however, suggest either that the last supper was identical or even associated with the Passover or that the betrayal was at the hands of one of the twelve.  The name Judas, for example, never appears in the Pauline corpus.
About the crucifixion Paul says only that “he died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.”  No other details are mentioned: no Garden of Gethsemane, no apostolic desertion, no arrest; no Pilate, no trial, no torture, no denial by Peter, no thieves, no words from the Cross and no darkness.  About the burial Paul says only, “He was buried.”  There is no mention in the writings of Paul of a tomb, no Joseph of Arimathea and no preparation of the body for burial.  About the Easter event, Paul says only this: “On the third day he was raised in accordance with the scriptures.”  There is no account in Paul of angels, no stone to roll back, no women carrying spices and no story of a dawn visit.  Paul does go on then to list those to whom Jesus was said to have “appeared.”  Cephas (Peter) was first, next the Twelve (note Judas is still included) and then he mentions an appearance to 500 brethren at once, about which we know nothing.  Paul continues this list by saying that Jesus next appeared to James, but he does not say which James and there are three in the New Testament story: James, the son of Zebedee, James, the son of Alphaeus and James, the brother of the Lord.  The consensus among scholars today is that it is the last mentioned James to whom Paul is making reference.  Then, continues Paul, Jesus appeared to the Apostles.  Who are they?  He has already mentioned the Twelve.  This seems like another group.  Paul ends his list by saying that “last of all he appeared to me,” that is, to Paul, and this appearance, he argues, was in no way different from the others except that he was last.   Paul’s conversion is set between one year after the crucifixion at the earliest and six years at the latest, so this appearance could hardly have been that of a physically-resuscitated body that walked out of the grave, making it a safe assumption that however Paul had conceived of the resurrection, it was not the resuscitation of a physically-deceased body.  Finally, we need to embrace the fact that these scant details are all the Christian community possessed about this climactic story of the end of Jesus’ life until the 8th decade of the Christian era.
Mark, writing somewhere between 70-73, is the creator of most of what has become the familiar story that surround the crucifixion. Judas Iscariot, for example, makes his first appearance in Mark.  Mark is also the first New Testament source to identify the Last Supper with the Passover, the first to introduce the Garden of Gethsemane, to give us details of the trial, to relate the account of Peter’s denial, to mention Barabbas and the first to record the story of the torture.  He is the first to put words into the mouth of the dying Jesus, suggesting that he said only one thing from the cross and that was what we now call the cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Mark was also the first to suggest that on the day of the crucifixion darkness covered the land from noon to three p.m., and the first to give content to the burial story, including the introduction of Joseph of Arimathea.
Matthew writing in the 9th decade, somewhere between 83-85, essentially copied Mark’s story, but then added some other fascinating details.  It is from Matthew alone that we are told that the price Judas received for his act of betrayal was thirty pieces of silver, or that Judas repented, hurled the silver back into the Temple and went and hanged himself.  Matthew is also the first to suggest that an earthquake accompanied the death of Jesus or to tell us that a Temple guard was placed around the tomb of Jesus by the high priest.
Luke, writing near the end of the 9th decade or perhaps even in the first years of the 10th decade (89-93), expands the story in a still further direction.  For example, only in Luke is Jesus portrayed as praying for his tormentors, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Only in Luke does one of the thieves become penitent and asks Jesus to remember him.  Only in Luke does Jesus tell Peter that he will pray for him since Satan has desired him.  Only in Luke is Jesus tried separately before Herod.  In Luke Pilate becomes more and more a sympathetic figure and Judas a more sinister one.  Finally, Luke dismisses the cry from the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me” and has Jesus say at the moment of his death, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”  That is, I submit, a very different “final word.” Despair has been vanquished in victory.
When we come to John, written in the final years of the 10th decade (95-100), new details are added.  Only in John does the mother of Jesus appear at the foot of the cross.  That fact should surprise both Mel Gibson and the creators of what are called “the Stations of the Cross.”  John’s Jesus says three things from the cross, none of which have we ever heard of before in the earlier gospels.  They are, “I thirst,”  “Woman behold your son, son behold your mother” and, as Jesus’ final word, John has him say: “It is finished.”  John alone tells the story of the breaking of the legs of the thieves to hasten their deaths, a procedure which, he says, Jesus was spared since he was already dead.  John alone then adds the story of the spear being hurled into Jesus’ side, which makes this detail a 10th decade addition. Its details are drawn from II Zechariah.  John concludes this episode by noting that from that wound flowed both water and blood.  Finally, John mentions a character called Nicodemus, who appears in no other gospel.  In John Nicodemus is first introduced in chapter three and then re-introduced in the burial story, joining Joseph of Arimathea and together, we are told, they used 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes to prepare Jesus’ body for burial.
That is, in the briefest possible form, the way the story of the cross grew in detail from Paul in the 50’s to John in the late 90’s.  In future columns I will seek to put these changing and sometimes conflicting details into an interpretive framework.  I trust it will be a worthy and provocative study as the season of Lent unfolds.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.





Question & Answer
John F. West via the Internet, writes from the UK:
Question:
I am a Reader in the Anglican Church, but have been unable to believe in a God “up there” or indeed a personal God for some years. I have tried to understand Tillich’s idea of God not being a “Being,” but “Being itself” and the concept of the “Ground of all Being” without that much success I should say. More recently I have read Borg’s “The God we never knew” and the concept of “Panentheism” both transcendent and imminent. I have also read all of your own books which have brought me often out of the slough of despond, but sometimes I am still feeling very alone in my particular churchmanship to which I still wish to contribute. The question is: If I do not believe in a theistic God, does that now make me an Atheist or an a-theist, at least in comparison to the modern atheists like Richard Dawkins et al? I hope not, as I still wish to serve God, whoever or whatever that means through ministry to other people and have no wish to leave the church, but I must be true to myself and to other people.
Answer:
Dear John, 

Theism is a human definition of God. As such it is as inadequate as any other definition of God since it should be obvious that the human mind cannot escape the limits of humanity and define anything that is beyond those limits. An insect cannot define a bird. A horse cannot define a human being. A human being cannot define God. Yet we human beings are driven to try to make sense out of the source and experience of life itself. Defining God theistically is the typical result. Then people make the strange assumption that theism, a human construct, actually defines God and so we proceed to literalize our own definition. Then when that definition proves inadequate, as all human definitions ultimately do, we say, I must therefore be an atheist. That is, if my definition of God no longer defines my understanding of the source of my life, there must not be a God! 

Atheism literally means, however, that I reject the theistic definition of God. It does not mean that there is no God. That is the mistake Richard Dawkins makes. His critique of theism is, as the English would say, “spot on.” I share in most of it. His conclusion that since theism makes no rational sense, there must be no such thing as God simply does not follow. Buddhism does not define God theistically but no one who studies Buddhism could assert that Buddhism denies the reality of God. The problem we have in all God Talk is the limits of both language and human consciousness. 

Can human beings sense or experience that which is beyond human limits, which we think of as transcendent and perceive it to be real? I think we can. Can one define himself or herself as a non-theist and still be a Christian? I think one can. Can we know intuitively, even if we cannot know it intellectually that which is beyond human perception? I think we can. 

I hope you will continue to serve as a Reader in the Anglican Church and that in that deep and broad community of believers I trust you will find a community of fellow seekers who will admire both your commitment and your integrity while not judging your journey into the mystery of God. 

~John Shelby Spong





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