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(201) Contradictions in the Easter Stories - YouTube

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(00:02) our topic this evening uh is contradictions in the Easter stories This is a followup on last week's lecture where we were talking about contradictions in the passion stories So we looked at that uh all leading up to essentially the uh the stories of the trial by pilot and we're going to continue that tonight So we looked at how um the gospels really are not they're not histories or biographies They are theological portraits and they don't for example talk about the entire lifetime of Jesus Um the Gospel of Mark begins with Jesus as an adult being baptized and there's

(00:48) only very brief nativity stories in Matthew and Luke relatively uh and there's a theological uh uh origin story in the gospel of John where God's logos God's word becomes flesh and dwells among us Uh and then in of the time frame of the three years or so that Jesus is active in his ministry um a great proportion of the um text of each gospel is devoted to just the last week of his life leading up to the crucifixion and the resurrection So as we always do when we're looking at the Gospels we're aware that three of

(01:32) them Mark Matthew and Luke tend to read like each other and that's why they're called synoptic They have a lot of details in common And then the Gospel of John which represents a different tradition often tells the story very differently indeed And that's because of course the authors of Matthew and Luke are using Mark as a source So this was a all three are an all four are anonymous gospels Um and Mark is the earliest Uh the authors of Matthew and Luke are not satisfied with Mark and so they are editing Mark and also adding material

(02:12) from other sources that they have in order to produce their gospels By contrast the fourth gospel has a literary tradition that is literarily independent of the other three However when it comes to the passion narratives uh John actually shares an unusual amount of specific details with the synoptics And so it does suggest there's some kind of relationship between the tradition for the passion story the passion and Easter story And so one possibility that people suggested is that the authors of John were aware of Mark or one of the authors was aware of Mark or at least the

(02:56) passion section of Mark but maybe didn't have a copy of it and so had read it or had heard it read had come back and as they were working on their own they have used some of that Um there's other ways that their traditions that might have been passed down Of course the gospels are non- eyewitness accounts Each one is produced within an early Christian community that they have their own traditions and some of these include memories that go back to the historical Jesus But a more direct source that all

(03:28) the evangelists are using is the Old Testament the Septuagent Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible And so Christians all believe that Jesus lived in accordance with scripture And so they believe that they can open the scriptures up They can look in the book of Psalms and they can see psalms that are uh having verses that relate um and they would say that well we don't know what happened in Jesus' life but he must have had something that happened according to this messianic verse in the Psalms because we know that Jesus's life was lived according to scriptures So the evangelists all felt that they could

(04:06) fill in details uh otherwise unknown to them from uh Jesus's life as they're creating the gospel narrative by uh using or adapting verses from the Old Testament So one of the possibilities that some scholars John Dominic Cross and his one have suggested is that there might have been some kind of a a lost passion gospel source that is very very bare bones um that underlies maybe Mark and John which is why um there are these overlaps So if so um you know that passion source is lost like the sayings gospel um that

(04:54) we talk about Q which according to the documentary hypothesis the authors of Matthew and Luke have access to in addition to Mark Um so it's not clear for sure that there's a lost passion gospel There's no consensus on it but it's an argument that has been made um crossen in making it suggests that an additional gospel that we have a fragment of the gospel of Peter one of the non-cononical gospels also independently uses and draws from this lost passion source and he thinks that's an additional argument um favoring the

(05:32) the potential existence of a lost passion gospel Other uh scholars think that Peter maybe is later and that the author of Peter is aware of all four of the other gospels and that's one of the reasons and that's why there are similarities So uh there's again no consensus on that So unlike the four canonal canonical gospels which are anonymous so Mark Matthew Luke and John are names that Christian tradition later attached to those texts the texts do not claim to be written by those people Um the author of the gospel of Peter does actually claim to be Peter So towards the end of the fragment that we

(06:17) have we read now it was the last day of the unleavened bread festival and many began to return to their homes since the feast was over But we you know writing here in the first person we the 12 disciples of the Lord continued to weep and mourn And each one still grieving on account of what had happened left for his own home But I Simon Peter and Andrew my brother took our fishing nets and went away to the sea And with us was Levi the son of Alas whom the Lord dot dot dot Okay that's when our fragment of

(06:55) this uh lost gospel breaks off We don't have anymore or we don't know what's going to happen We can assume actually that what's happening here is that they are going to um that they're going to have an experience where they they encounter the risen Christ Um sort of similar to the um the experience with the risen Christ that Peter and some of the apostles have at the uh end of the gospel of John as we now have it where they uh the risen Christ appears to them and they have a great catch of fish So presumably

(07:27) something like that is going to happen here in the gospel of Peter but uh it breaks off at that point So that part though where it says and I Simon Peter we did this So you know I just want to underline this that does not happen in the canonical gospels So this is another you know way to underline again that these are anonymous So in the Gospel of Matthew what we now call Matthew we read "As Jesus went on from there he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his at the tax collector's booth.

(08:03) " "Follow me," he told him and Matthew got up and followed him So Matthew here is always in the third person The text does not read "Now while I Matthew was sitting at the tax collector's booth Jesus came to me and said "Follow me." and immediately I got up and followed him In other words there's no indication in the Gospel of Matthew um that the text is written by the character Matthew who appears a few times in the gospel And the same is true for uh Luke and Mark And uh in John what we have is a statement um that the gospel's message is a

(08:46) witness uh as a testimony of the beloved disciple But the beloved disciple is very um uh deliberately anonymous Uh and it's only again tradition that makes the beloved disciple equates the beloved disciple with John And it doesn't actually mean that John or the beloved disciple wrote the text but rather um there's the testimony of the beloved disciple is the testimony that underlies the text He's not the author So nevertheless um even though the gospel of Peter claims to be written by Peter Peter is is supposedly the author the actual author who is saying I

(09:28) Peter did this or that is definitely not Peter you know So so this is a not an anonymous gospel It is a a pseudopigraphic gospel It's a a gospel where the uh author is pretending to be somebody that they're not Uh and likewise the text is not an eyewitness account Again it's a passion story largely constructed from the Septuagent um in sharing a lot of details with the canonical gospels In terms of the passion story the gospel's original language is Greek The present manuscript that we have of it the fragment dates

(10:05) from the 8th or 9th century The date of the original is closely contested And so um scholars who think that Peter is derivative of the other four gospels put it as late as the mid2 century Whereas um some of the other scholars like crossen people who think that it's early and is relying on a um on a lost passion source may think that it's written around the same time as the other four gospels that is you know Mark is in the 70 is in 70 uh Matthew and Luke in the 80s and 90s uh for John So same same time period as that So

(10:51) um you know did people have access did people know about it So origin writing in the 3rd century Ucius writing in the fourth century theoderate writing in the fifth century they all had access to a book they call the gospel of Peter but it's not certain from what they say that they all were talking about the same gospel of Peter or that the gospel of Peter's that they are talking about is the same as the one we have um you know why wouldn't our gospel why was it unpopular if it was written if if it was purported to be written by Peter

(11:25) um you know why did it not make it into the canon uh especially if it's early and one possibility uh is that early protoodox Christian bishops might have read it and thought that it contained elements that are dosetic and so dosicism is an early christoologgical ical um alternative way of understanding Christ where uh people essentially believe that Christ is not really ever human that he was a fully divine He was a completely spiritual being who only seemed to be human And so there are a couple passages in the fragment of the

(12:08) gospel of Peter as we have it that could they may not they could point to dosetism anyway And so for example we read they uh they brought two criminals and crucified the Lord between them So again this same picture that we have in the other gospels of Jesus uh and two other pe two other men being crucified alongside him but he himself remained silent as if in no pain So he seems to be in no pain It isn't saying that he is in no pain because he's not really suffering But that could be um used by a dosatist to argue that it's not really um Jesus is not really human and in real

(12:48) pain Um and when the Lord cried out saying my power my the last words of Jesus in the gospel of Peter are my power my power you have abandoned me and when he said this he was taken up So again this may or may not have been authored by Adosetus but the portrayal of Jesus acting as if he was in no pain along with describing his death as the Lord being taken up and then and then his power changing it to his power abandoning him as opposed to my God my God thou has for you have forsaken me It could be interpreted again like that there's a fully spiritual messiah here who only seems to be in the flesh who's

(13:31) leaving kind of this false physical shell as occurs in fully dosetic um uh gospels So it's not necessarily doetic but it might have had other elements and parts that are lost that um caused it to be kept out of the canon by uh early church fathers who are protoorthodox So let's um now uh that we're inter bringing the um gospel of Peter into the mix of this I want to look at um contradictions in again in the canonical stories picking up where we left off uh in the first part with Jesus's trial before Pontius Pilate the Roman prefect

(14:12) of Judea Um and we're only going to bring in um the Gospel of Peter to just show this is another early um iteration that has variations again that are interesting So um here we are So all of the four canonical gospels have Jesus interrogated first by temple authorities and then they have him brought before Pontius Pilate Uh in Luke alone though Pilate attempts to push the problem of Jesus He doesn't want to try Jesus and he tries to push it off on one of Herod the Great's sons Herod Antipus Um Pilate reasons that Herod Antipus is the tetrarch of Galilee And

(15:01) so if we see in the map here the kind of pink purple area uh of Galilee just to the um west of the Sea of Galilee and also the Perea that's the territory that um Herod is ruling as a client ruler of the um Roman uh empire His father Herod the Great had ruled the whole territory as a king but he is the ruler of a tetrarch a ruler of a fourth And so just a little parts of it He has a brother who's ruling that orange area And um the green area is the part that is under the administration of Pontius Pilate So um since Jesus is from Galilee

(15:45) in the Gospel of Luke when uh Pilate hears that he's like "Oh I don't have to try this guy I can uh send him off to Herod And so that only happens in the Gospel of Luke In the Gospel of Luke uh Herod is actually kind of excited to meet Jesus He'd wanted he'd heard about him and he wanted to Um and in Luke alone uh this is where Herod's the one that dresses Jesus up in an elegant robe And then Herod and his men uh mock Jesus that for his claim or the purported claim that he is uh the Messiah the king of the Jews So all through as we're talking

(16:24) about pilot now all through um uh early Christian period there is a um trajectory of increasing absolution of Pilate So the historical Jesus was crucified and that indicates that he was executed by the Romans and Pilate is in charge So it's ultimately by his authority So crucifixion was the common form of exemplary execution that the Romans had for rebels and briggins Nevertheless um you know as the decades went on there was a marketked trend in early Christianity to kind of shift the blame of Jesus' death from Pontius Pilate and the Romans and on to Jewish

(17:09) authorities And we can kind of see why they would want to do this after um you know this originally Jesus was leading a sect of Judaism Christianity really only um only emerges within that sect after um Jesus's death when uh some of his disciples start having visions of a risen Christ and that develops then into Christianity Um so when that happens ultimately uh other sects of second temple Judaism the authorities the Jewish authorities who control the synagogue um kick uh the Christians out of the synagogues for their continual

(17:53) preaching about Jesus which they they've gotten really tired of And so when that happens uh in the towards the end of the first century Christianity becomes a separate world religion and is antagonistic to its former co-religionists uh who they feel estranged from Meanwhile they are also growing and especially growing among um non-Jewish converts So people who are converting especially from uh Grecoman paganism to uh Christianity and they are also trying to live within an empire that they don't want to be seen as in rebellion from And so the Romans are

(18:37) always Roman authorities are always very um you know they have a they're they think of all these new a new religion as being sort of a a cult and a superstition and they would prefer to suppress it if they can and so Christians are trying to say well look we're not we're not in continual rebellion from you and so um and so rehabilitating pilot who executes Christ is is a good you know would be positive if they could achieve it and so this is why a motivation for having the story kind of go this way So eventually you know it gets pilot gets more and more exonerated as the gospels go on and then

(19:16) uh Christian writing continues and there is a whole cycle of Pilate writing uh the acts of pilot the gospel of Nicodemus There are letters that Herod writes to Pilate and Pilate writes to Herod that Herod writes to I'm sorry that Pilate writes to Tiberius and Claudius and Tiberius writes to Pilate and so on These are all written in the 3rd fourth fifth centuries So it's a late antique um pseudopigraphic writing and eventually in this you know these traditions that keep uh evolving um Christians decide that pilot afterwards

(19:53) converted to Christianity and so forth So so he is um you know fully abs absolved by the end So um he's already getting a little out in Mark our earliest narrative gospel but there's really only kind of one attempted out in Mark So um Pilate uh you know in Mark has the least absolution So as Roman prefect he makes one attempt to get out of executing Jesus by offering the crowd uh gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover festival to release uh Jesus as part of a Passover festival pardon We read in Mark chapter 15 it was the custom at the

(20:36) festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested A man called Barabus was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did So crowd wants to have somebody be pardoned as part of this tradition So Barabbus here Bar Abba is Aramaic for son of the father So it's an interestingly similar u name to Jesus Some sources call him actually Jesus Barabus But uh in any event um we're not doing a historicity lecture We're talking about the gospel accounts But most scholars agree that this what's

(21:22) called the privilegium pascal this idea that there's a tradition that um the Romans will release one captive This is generally understood to be an invention of the Christian tradition but it's already present you know by the time the first gospel is written down So um Pilate's conversation with the crowd in Mark continues So Pilate asks them "Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" Knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him But the chief priest stirred the crowd up stirred the crowd up to have um Pilate release

(22:02) Barabus instead "What shall I do then with the one you call the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked "Crucify him," they shouted "Why What crime has he committed asked Pilate But they all shouted louder crucify him So wanting to satisfy the crowd Pilate released Barabus to them He had Jesus foggged and handed him over to be crucified So in Mark anyway the earliest gospel Pilate's motivation is satisfying the crowd he um is doubtful of the uh the motives of the Jewish leaders that he's kind of working with underneath him and uh and it was

(22:45) wouldn't necessarily see that there's any particular crime here So that's where he's being made to be innocent of the crime So the prolific prol I can saying it wrong anyway the release watcher I'm having I'm tongue tied right as as uh pious piler Yeah Privilelegium Pascali But anyway uh this is obviously very hilariously portrayed in the uh life of Brian So uh Luke uses Mark as a source and follows Mark here but adds that second out for Pilate of trying to push Jesus off on Herod Antipus so that Herod will solve his problem for him Um Matthew makes no

(23:28) mention of Herod but he adds two I'm sorry he adds a critical scene to Pilate's interaction with the crowd So in Matthew we read after the after um he decid after the crowd insists on getting Barabus released when Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere with the crowd but that instead an uproar was starting he took water and he washed his hands in front of the crowd I am innocent of this man's blood he said it is your responsibility And then now worse in the Gospel of Matthew uh the author has the crowd take responsibility for Jesus' execution Uh this is the so-called blood

(24:08) curse All the people answered "His blood is on us and on our children." Um and so unfortunately this um passage this verse has uh led or has been used by Christians um in Middle Ages in the modern times to um as a source for anti-semitism Christian anti-semitism It almost certainly isn't meant that way because the author of Matthew is a Jewish Christian So he is probably the most um most Jewish of the gospel writers He's part of a Christian community that was continuing to adhere to Jewish law to some degree or other

(24:51) unlike um uh the communities that Paul has planted where the um the pagan converts to Christianity are not made to um adhere to Jewish law in any way Um that's the Mthan community is continuing to do that Um and so what almost certainly the author is is having the the people here say is not about Jews It's about the people of Jerusalem And so what the author of Matthew is probably intending to do is have what they're saying be a prediction that the people of Jerusalem are going to be punished um in the future as far as what

(25:31) is going on in the when this gospel is set when the Romans come and destroy Jerusalem and everybody's killed and uh and thousands more are sold into slavery and so forth um that's the that's what's meant uh almost certainly because the author of Matthew again is writing in hindsight that has already happened So that's in all in the past for him But unfortunately like I say this has been misinterpreted and used to mean some Christians have interpreted this to mean uh on Jew it refers to all Jews or something like

(26:04) that All right So um when we go to the Gospel of Peter Pilate gets fully vindicated So although our fragment picks up kind of mid-sentence just after Pilate has washed his hands we can see that there was a handwashing scene right before that in in in this part of the gospel of Peter narrative So uh we read when the story you know when our fragment starts mid-sentence but of the Jewish authorities no one washed his hands neither Herod nor any one of the judges and since they were unwilling to wash Pilate stood up and then Herod the

(26:40) king orders the Lord to be taken away saying to them do what I commanded you to do to him So um so this is you know we we like I mentioned that Herod is in the in the Luke narrative but Herod in the Luke narrative only sends dresses Jesus up and sends him back to Pilate In this case um they're obviously been meeting together with the other judges Pilate washes his hands and it's actually Herod now in the Gospel of Peter who is said to give the order to execute Jesus So again one more um uh one more step in terms of this vindicating of Pilate or taking the

(27:21) person who's actually in charge and trying to absolve him So the gospel of John is similarly far along in the tradition of shifting blame from Pilate to Jewish authorities So in John the authorities are unwilling to enter Pilate's palace because uh they say anyway according to this that during the Passover they would um it would make them become ceremonially impure And so that leads to a long scene of Pilate moving inside and outside and inside again So he questions Jesus inside his palace Then he goes back out to speak to the Jewish authorities and the crowds

(28:00) who are outside And so multiple times in this whole sequence in the Gospel of John Pilate will go out and say something like you know I find no basis for a charge against him Um and then when he goes back in to ask him questions that the authorities have asked Jesus refuses inside to answer Pilot's questions And so we read in John chapter 19 "Do you refuse to speak to me?" Pilate said "Don't you realize I have the power either to free you or to crucify you?" Jesus answered "You would have no power over me if it were not given to

(28:39) you from above Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin." From then on Pilate tried to set Jesus free but the Jewish leaders kept shouting "If you let this man go you are no friend of Caesar Anyone who claims to be a king like Jesus apparently does here opposes Caesar So in John then Pilate's long conversation with the Jewish authorities finally leads to the conclusion you know finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified And although you know it's actually now in the next verse the soldiers the Romans under Pilot's

(29:15) command who take charge of Jesus the gospel kind of ambiguous here and make it sound like maybe the Jewish authorities are in charge of the execution And so again it's this trajectory of absolving Pilate in the four canonical gospels as well as Peter the Christian tradition then attempts to absolve Pilate Um and it does those though in a bunch of different ways So none of these details uh in the trial here are the same except for the shared Barabus story So let's look at some of the other details So part of it is the idea of

(29:53) dressing Jesus up in a mock royal robes and a crown And so as we've seen in Luke alone it's Herod Antipus who dresses Jesus in an elegant robe And there's no mention of having a crown of thorns here So we read in Luke 23 then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked Jesus dressing him in an elegant robe and they sent him back to Pilate So in Luke's source Mark it was the Roman soldiers who provide a purple robe and a crown to mock Jesus So the soldiers led Jesus away into the palace that is the ptorium and called

(30:38) together the whole company of soldiers They put a purple robe on him and then they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him and they began to call out to him hail king of the Jews So that same narrative we have in Mark that serves as a source for Matthew and Matthew follows it just adds a staff to serve as the image you know to complete the image So Jesus has a staff as a royal scepter in this Um the gospel of Peter includes the same scene as does John Although in John the soldiers dress Jesus up prior to Pilate's final judgment rather than after it So the sequence is

(31:19) changed Um there's also differences in the story of Jesus carrying the cross or having the cross carried The synoptic gospels Mark Matthew and Luke state that the Roman soldiers force an otherwise unknown figure called Simon ofSirene to carry Jesus' cross behind him Um and this is something that Roman authorities are able to do They're able to impress civilians to do work for a certain amount of um uh a certain amount of forced labor And this is where the um saying that Jesus has of of go the extra mile is So if the Romans have forced you to carry something for a mile go an

(32:04) extra mile So this is an example of that By contrast the gospel of John um pretty states unequivocally that Jesus was carrying his own cross And so this probably fits better the theological picture of the authors of John and they always are trying to portray Jesus as fully in control and that occurs all the way up to the crucifixion itself He's much more in control as he's arguing with Pilate as we already read in those quotes Um the gospel of Peter is actually silent on the question of cross carrying and so the action goes straight from uh the soldiers mocking Jesus to

(32:44) them crucifying Jesus in the Gospel of Peter So as we saw in part one of the series last week evangelists painted together narrative details of the passion story by assuming that verses in the Psalms um would have related to Jesus life So they didn't have the details because nobody was there as an actual eyewitness No Christian was there as an actual eyewitness of of the crucifixion um they could tell what had happened by reading passages in the Old Testament that Christians understood to be messianic So it must have been fulfilled

(33:24) in Jesus And so for example there are psalms that relate to this figure that people call that scholars call the in innocent sufferer And since Christians read the innocent sufferer as a prefiguring Jesus then that must have been fulfilled in Jesus' life and death So for example in Psalm 22 the innocent sufferer says "They divide my clothes among themselves and for my clothing they cast lots.

(33:58) " And so that same detail then uh as a messianic prophecy is found in all four canonical gospels in the gospel of Peter So in Mark we read and they crucified him and they divided his clothes among them casting lots to decide what each should take Matthew and Luke have Mark as a source and follow that narrative John adds a detail of a seamless garment that could not easily be divided in order to explain why they had to cast lots So we read in John chapter 19 when the soldiers crucified Jesus they took his clothes dividing them into four shares one for each of them with

(34:40) the undergarment remaining the garment this garment was seamless woven in one piece from top to bottom let's not tear it they said to one another let's decide by lot who will get it and then the author of John here says this happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said "They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.

(35:07) " So in other words that detail um in all of the gospels is taken from Psalm 22:18 But in the Gospel of John the author of John actually identifies that as the source and says that's the fulfillment of that scripture Similarly in Psalm 69 the in innocent sufferer laments they gave me poison for food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink So giving Jesus vinegar to drink on the cross is included in all four gospels but each locate differently So in Mark it takes place right as Jesus dies at noon We read in Mark 15 darkness came over the whole land until 3:00 in the afternoon And at 3:00 in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud

(35:56) voice "Eloy Eloy Lema Sabakthani," which means "My God my God why have you forsaken me?" And when some of those standing near heard this they said "Listen he's calling Elijah." So he'd said "Eloy Eloy." That's why um this is why Mark actually has to use the um Hebrew or America there the Semitic there so that he can see why they make that mistake Then someone ran and filled a sponge with wine vinegar and put it on a staff and offered it for Jesus to drink Now leave him alone and see if Elijah comes to take him down Uh

(36:33) he said with the loud cry then Jesus breathed his last breath So in Mark in other words the vinegar is offered in response to one of the soldiers here misharing Jesus' last words Eloy as Elijah So Matthew repeats Mark's story but Luke changes Jesus' last words and so does not include this idea of misharing Eloy and Elijah So instead the author of Luke makes the offer of vinegar part of an earlier episode where the soldiers are simply mocking Jesus on the cross So the soldiers came up and mocked him They offered him wine vinegar

(37:14) He said "If you're the king of the Jews save yourself." In John very interesting take on this The authors have added the detail that the vinegar was soaked in a sponge that was attached to the stock of a hissup plant And this is a reference to the Passover story in Exodus And so during the story of the very first Passover as described in Exodus we read "Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them," go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb Then take a bunch of hissip dip it into the blood in the

(37:57) basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe So this is the tradition um of the Passover uh the story that describes the tradition of the Passover and it involves you know a sacrificial lamb and the dabbing of blood over the lentils and the lentil posts in order to have the angel of death bypass uh the house um during the last plague on Egypt when the destroying angel comes and kills the firstborn of all the Egyptian So we've talked before about how um you know this Passover ritual is ultimately one of the um

(38:39) stories that is was a religious reform in the first beginning of the second temple period where um as uh Yahwehism is displacing Canaanite paganism Canaanite paganism uh the Lord says the firstborn of every womb is mine sayeth the Lord that there would have been uh among Syria uh the Carthaginians and so forth um uh child sacrifice but um now that you have a substitute now you can substitute the lamb u the destroying angel that wants that child is not going to take it So it's a it's a way of having that substitution The Abraham story the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac but then being able to

(39:25) um replace at the last minute the angel replacing at the last minute with a substitution of a ram This is the same same um way of eliminating that earlier um Canaanite pagan tradition So this fits the theology of the gospel of John The gospel of John identifies Jesus as the lamb of God So when Jesus first appears in the gospel John the Baptist um points him out and says "Behold the lamb of God And so uh the gospel the authors of John here are connecting the crucifixion with the sacrifice of the Passover lambs Jesus is uh is the sacrifice the

(40:09) sacrificed Passover lamb And his uh death is not going to just prevent the destroying angel from taking our firstborn It's going to conquer uh death conquer the destroying angel So let's look at the detail of the sign that's affixed to the cross All of the gospels indicate that there's a sign that's been posted but the details and the wording varies So Mark uh says the written notice of the charge against him read the king of the Jews Whereas in Matthew it says above his head they placed the written charge against him this is Jesus the king of

(40:54) the Jews and in Luke it says uh this is the king of the Jews So little variations there between them Um the gospel of Peter says that when they set the cross set him up on the cross they put the inscription on it saying this is the king of Israel Uh but the version in John is by far the most elaborate And so Pilate had a notice prepared we read in John and fastened it to the cross It read Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews The King of the Jews And many of the Jews we read the sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city And the sign

(41:36) was written in Aramaic Latin and Greek And so it's only in John that specifies that the sign was set up in the three languages And it also specifies that it's Pilate that set it up not just the soldiers And so in John this causes Jewish authorities to complain but Pilate appears to want to mock them in the same way So he's mocking Jesus as being the king of the Jews and he's been insisting it He's dressed him up uh and called him king of the Jews They've they have insisted back in the gospel of John we have no king but Caesar So the chief

(42:13) priests of the Jews protested to Pilate don't write the king of the Jews but rather write on here that this man claimed to be the king of the Jews He's not king of the Jews as far as we're concerned Pilate answered "What I have written I've written He's not going to change it.

(42:32) " So for the um you know and this again is another vindication of Pilate um really for the gospel writers because um while uh the Jewish authorities have denied you know they're representing the u the Jews who have not become Christian by the time these gospels are being writen uh and so they are denying he's king of the Jews Whereas Pilate even though he's doing this ironically or mockingly far as far as the Christians are concerned he is actually proclaiming truth So that's true also for the uh royal robes They're a double irony So and the crown So uh again Herod and

(43:09) Pilate everybody they're mocking Jesus But by doing it they're doing what Christians believe to be true that Jesus is the king of the Jews or king of Israel or the king who's whose kingdom is not of this world So all four canonical gospels and along with uh the gospel of Peter say that Jesus is crucified between two other men although the details again vary So in Mark and Matthew the men are said to be rebels and they both join with the spectators in taunting Jesus So in Mark we read "They crucified two rebels with him one on his right and one on his left Those crucified with him

(43:55) also heaped insults on him." And uh again Matthew follows that account John's account doesn't specify what the other two who were crucified next to Jesus had done and nor that they taunted him But uh Luke said that they were criminals and then has them disagree So one of the criminals who was hung there hurled insults at Jesus Aren't you the Messiah Save yourself and us But the other criminal rebuked him Don't you fear God He said "Since you under the same sentence we are punished justly for we are getting what our deeds deserve

(44:35) But this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said "Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus answered him "Truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise." Um so this is an interesting detail in the story and it has had theological implications for Christians who want to then draw from this or use this as authoritative because here is a prediction that a person who is being p just punished according to him this is he's he is a criminal uh u but nevertheless Jesus um tells him that and he's died he'll be in with Jesus in

(45:15) paradise um that day There's also um differences in the accounts of you know how many disciples are present at the crucifixion or where they are and so on So Mark says that there's a number of the women a number of the female disciples are watching from a distance So some women were watching from a distance Among them were Mary Magdalene Mary the mother of James the Younger and of Joseph and Salame in Galilee These women had followed him and cared for his needs Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there So it's

(45:55) a whole group of women some of three of whom are named Uh the ones that Matthew names in this group are Mary Magdalene Mary the mother of James and Joseph and then the mother of Zebed's sons So of uh James the greater and uh John Luke uh does not name the women present but instead Luke says all those who knew him including the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things And so it's only in the Gospel of John that Jesus disciples actually approach to the foot of the cross and are able to speak to Jesus So near the

(46:39) cross of Jesus stood his mother his mother's sister Mary the wife of Clus and Mary Magdalene And so although Mary Jesus's mother is not named in the Gospel of John everywhere else you know we call her Mary um mother of Jesus And so this is a grouping called the three Marys Um in addition to the women in the description that John has there's one male disciple present So although the character is unnamed in the fourth gospel the character of the beloved disciple and is anonymous the um Greek indicates his gender is male So it's not a female disciple And so even though we've just said that Mary Magdalene is

(47:24) one of the people standing there this disciple is not Mary Magdalene as people some people would like But um when Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby he said to her "Woman here is your son." So son here is another indication that the beloved disciple is male Anyway the disciple said he says to the disciple "Here is your mother.

(47:55) " And then from that time this disciple took her into his home So as we've seen the author of Mark um has Jesus quote the innocent sufferer uh from Psalm 22 as his final words My God my God why have you forsaken me That's the psalm And so we read in Mark I already read before uh that Jesus cried out with a loud voice Eloy Eloyabakthani which means my God my God why have you forsaken me So other gospels though give different last words Matthew likes to follow his source Mark Matthew is way less likely to delete things from Mark Almost all of Mark is included in Matthew Um Luke is

(48:38) much more apt to delete Mark and material Luke seems to not like Mark as much and was willing to diverge from it more Um but Matthew follows it and as we see though the um gospel of Paul we already read had sorry the gospel of Peter already has a potentially desetic change and so he says my power my power why have you forsaken me But otherwise a similar or the same quote but just a little changed The author of Luke is maybe uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus ever felt or was forsaken by the father

(49:14) And so um the author of Luke picks a different psalm uh to quote for Jesus to quote as uh Jesus's last words And so in Luke 23 chapter 23 we read Jesus called out with a loud voice into your hands I commit my spirit And when he said this he breathed his last So like I say that source is still a psalm Um Psalm 31 which reads "Into your hands I commit my spirit Deliver me Lord my faithful God.

(49:49) " in John um where Jesus is portrayed as always being in control His last words are uh we read in John chapter 19 when he had received the drink Jesus said it is finished and with that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit So each one of these last words um you know not as much uh Matthew who is simply following Mark but uh of the other evangelists they are picking last words that are in keeping with their theological portrait uh that they are making of Jesus as Christ So we also have um different responses of the to what the events are

(50:33) of the soldiers who are uh crucifying Jesus The synoptic gospels state that cosmic signs accompany the crucifixion So darkness covers the sun and then also the veil in the Jerusalem temple that is protecting the holy of holies the most sacred place that curtain is torn and all of these cosmic events cause a reaction from the soldiers who are crucifying Jesus So as we read in the Mark's version at noon darkness came over the whole land until 3:00 in the afternoon the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom And when

(51:15) the centurion who stood there in front of Jesus saw how he died he said "Surely this man was the son of God." Uh so Luke repeats that Mark and narrative but maybe doesn't think that the centurion has enough um has enough information to say surely this man was the son of God And so Luke's quotation of the centurion is surely this was a righteous man Um the gospel of Matthew ratches ratchets up the signs So it's not just darkness Um so at the moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bot bottom the earth shook the rock

(51:59) split and the tombs broke open The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life They came out of the tombs after Jesus resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people So uh when the centurion and those who were with him were all guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened they were terrified and exclaimed "Surely he was the son of God.

(52:26) " So um they have a lot more reason to see Jesus was the son of God um after not only the darkness but and the temple curtain being torn which they're not really in a position to see from their vantage point but also there's an earthquake rocks and then obviously all of these resurrections according to the Matthew account kind of all these signs aren't are absent in John's account and the soldiers are simply tasked with making sure Jesus and the other men being crucified have all died So for the other prisoners the soldiers do this by breaking their legs which is a

(52:59) traditional Roman practice uh that causes people to u to actually crucifixion is a long painful death You don't immediately die but if you break the legs it um causes you to be unable to breathe I think And so anyway that's how they normally do it But for Jesus they don't do that They pierce his side So when the soldiers came to Jesus they found he was already dead And so they did not break his legs Instead just to be sure one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear bringing a sudden flow of blood and water So this

(53:35) is really important uh that the legs aren't broken according to the authors of John uh because again this fulfills this scripture uh this scripture that is quoted by uh in the gospel of John Exodus 12:46 Once again this is the rules for the sacrificial Passover lamb So the Lord tells Moses "It must be eaten inside the house Take none of the meat outside the house Do not break any of the bones of the Passover lamb.

(54:06) " So again this is in keeping with the central image of the Johannian community So it's absent from the synoptics that Jesus is the lamb of God It's an imagery that suffuses the um the apocalypse of John Different author but sharing themes of the same community Um and so they believe then like I say the crucifixion typologically fulfills the Passover sacrifice And so this is why um the gospel of John has changed the time frame John takes place the day before the Passover when the lambs are being sacrificed that Jesus dies at the same moment that all the other Passover lambs

(54:47) are being sacrificed as opposed to the other gospels where the Passover meal is the last supper meal and so they had already been sacrificed earlier So let's look at the um the parts of the narrative here about Jesus body and also uh the tomb So obviously by the time the gospels are written we have a tradition of the empty tomb but um we've already seen that although Paul who was the first Christian author whose works survive despite being very focused on the resurrection of Jesus as a sign that uh the end times are happening that people

(55:31) have already been resurrected Um Jesus als I'm sorry Paul also testifies about appearances of the risen Christ to various disciples including ultimately himself but he doesn't repeat or talk about um this idea that people have seen the empty tomb or or as one of the proofs of the resurrection And so it's negative evidence So just because he doesn't talk about it doesn't mean that it wasn't something that people knew right away But it may indicate that the tradition arose within Christianity after Paul What we can say is that as written

(56:11) in the gospels um it already has kind of an apologetic flavor And so what I mean by that is um you may have m you make a u an argument like that Jesus uh uh the disciples came and saw an empty tomb and that then gets push pushed back and causes an apologetic uh to to develop So let's just have a little cartoon hypothetical of how this kind of thing could develop So if there is a hypothetical early Christian missionary who is trying to convert a hypothetical and skeptical uh second temple Jewish potential convert and he says as one of his proofs that um that Jesus is the

(56:58) Christ that Jesus is the expected Messiah is that um he says look he was executed on the cross he rose again on the third day that's in accordance with uh what the scriptures predicted So the skeptic might though respond "Okay well you Christians have seen visions of the risen Christ but how do you know his body isn't lying in the grave somewhere?" And so the Christian says "Well some of the women who were his disciples went to his tomb His tomb was empty." And so the skeptic says "Well that doesn't prove anything Maybe one of the other Christians has already moved

(57:36) his body." And the apologetic response to that is "No that wouldn't be possible because the tomb had a big rock in front of it that was very very hard to move." And so maybe it took a whole bunch of Christians weren't there 12 apostles You know something like that But anyway it doesn't matter how many disciples there were the Christian then adds there were Roman the Romans had posted guards at the tomb so nobody could have been getting in there to steal the body And so the skeptic then says,"I thought

(58:05) you said Jesus gave all his money to the poor How is he going to get a tomb Tombs are for the very rich Only the richest people in town have uh stonehed tombs with rocks that can be rolled in front of them and so forth." And so the apologetic response to that is the tomb belonged to a rich guy Jesus had a rich disciple named Joseph of Arythea who gave him the tomb Um okay And so then the skeptic can respond again well how okay if there's a guy who owns the tomb how did the women who saw the tomb was empty get past the guards roll away the

(58:38) tomb in in the first place and all that kind of thing And so again our Christians answer to that is the best part Angels scared away the guards rolled the rock away and so forth So so this is how I would suggest this not how it immediately developed but this is how when you're hitting this um getting these arguments and and skeptics kind of going back and forth over the course of decades uh an apologetic can um uh develop and we'll see that an apologetic argument is circulating uh that is known to the author of Matthew So who is this guy Joseph of Arythea So all four

(59:15) canonical gospels and the gospel of Peter introduce this character We read in Mark's version as evening approached Joseph of Arythea a prominent member of the Jewish council who was calling so who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God So like Mark he's an apocalypticist He went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body after Jesus was crucified Pilate was surprised to hear that Jesus was already dead Summoning the centurion he asked him if Jesus had already died When he learned from the centurion that it was so he gave the body to Joseph of Arythea So Joseph bought some linen

(1:00:01) cloth and he took down the body wrapped it in the linen and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid So um this is something that Joseph of Arythea does And the other disciples the disciples actually watch him do it so they know where he's at So Matthew and Luke follow that account in Mark Matthew indicates that Joseph of Arythea was himself a disciple of Jesus and also adds that it was um a new tomb that Joseph of Arythea had had made for himself Uh Luke states

(1:00:45) that the tomb had never yet been used So they're both adding details there In John uh the character of Joseph of Arythea is accompanied by uh another character a character that is unique to John Nicodemus So earlier in the gospel this is a Pharisee who was um already starting to believe in Jesus and he got got out went out in secret in one night to have a discussion with Jesus where Jesus tells him that if he's going to ever enter the kingdom of God he will need to be born again Um and Nicodemus bulks at this because he takes the idea of being born again very literally He's reading scripture literally Um but the

(1:01:28) authors of John give you all kinds of ways to caution We're not supposed to uh read scripture literally We need to read it meaningfully And so being born again uh it has a spiritual meaning not a literal meaning Anyway so Nicodemus is uh goes with Joseph of Arythea to get the body in John Finally um in the gospel of Peter we read that Joseph of Arythea is a friend of both Pilate and the Lord So he's friend of both Pilate and Jesus and he asked Pilate to ask Herod Antipus for the body before Jesus is even executed which Pilate does So

(1:02:05) once Joseph of Arythea provides the tomb and makes certain that Jesus' body is safely intombed behind a heavy rock portal he then disappears from the narrative of all of the gospels And so it's another reason why you know it may have been uh useful for that uh apologetic Um so he's also mentioned he his legends continue And so in the uh money python the holy grail they they um talk about uh they find a text written in the cave written in Aramaic and they all say oh Aramaic of course Joseph of Arythea but Arythea the name

(1:02:45) is not related to Aramaic Aramaic is the smitic language that was the lingua franca in the middle east at the time of Jesus life It's named for Aram and the Aramaans the ancient Semitic word for Syria and the Syrians Um Arythea is a place name So it would have been a unrelated to the word Aramaic a name of a town Um and there's a couple categories of what or a couple options of what it might be So we're not sure precisely which town Um once medieval legends got going um people genealologically attached Joseph of

(1:03:23) Arythea to either Mary or Joseph he becomes one of their uncles and in legends ultimately of the Holy Grail He gets charged with uh custody of the Holy Grail um and takes it to Britain after Jesus' death you know but again this is a much much later uh legends The Holy Grail is not uh biblical Uh it's a it's a later idea Mark's gospel doesn't indicate u that the tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers and neither does Luke who follows Mark and also it's not in John's independent account However Matthew reports a contemporary

(1:04:05) argument against the empty tomb tradition So in Matthew chapter 28 we read when the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan they gave the soldiers a large sum of money telling them you were to say his disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep If this report gets to the governor we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day So we can even hear here here the the author of Matthew

(1:04:42) says here is a um a counterargument against the empty tomb claim that was current when the gospel is being written And so um non-Christian Jews are saying no uh uh the soldiers said you know there weren't any soldiers or whatever they the soldiers said that u you know people have people have said that uh Christians came and took the body away you know so this is a uh in response to an argument that the empty tomb is a tomb is a sign of Jesus resurrection so in response to this uh Matthew says that the tomb was guarded and very seriously

(1:05:20) guarded started So in Matthew 27 we read the chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate Sir they said "We remember that Jesus said while he's still alive I'm sorry when he was still alive that deceiver Jesus said "After 3 days I will rise again.

(1:05:42) " So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day Otherwise his disciples may come and steal the body and tell people that he's been raised from the dead This last deception will be worse than the first Take a guard Pilate answered Go make the tomb as secure as you know how So they went and they made the tomb secure by putting a seal on it and a stone and posting the guard So this is a very secure tomb in Matthew to counteract this um uh antagonistic argument that is circulating in his time Having put the guards on the tomb Matthew though now needs to dispense with them in order to Jesus disciples to actually get to enter

(1:06:14) the empty tomb Otherwise how are they getting past these guards So after the Sabbath at the dawn of the first day of the week on Easter Sunday in other words Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb There was a violent earthquake for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb rolled back the stone and sat on it His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men So um so Peter introduces guards and then gets rid of them Uh the gospel of

(1:06:52) Peter also uh it was Matthew I mean the gospel of Peter also includes the story of the Roman guards at the tomb uh led by a centurion and we actually even get the centurion's name Petronius And this one gets really wild So it's they they share a unique and pretty incredible vision Um in the Gospel of Peter we read in the night in which the Lord's day dawned when the soldiers were safeguarding the tomb two by two in every watch there was a loud voice from heaven and they saw the heavens were opened and that two males who had much radiance had come down from

(1:07:34) there and come near the seeler But that stone which had been thrust against the door having rolled by itself went a distance off the side and the sephilic was opened and both young men entered And those soldiers having seen awake the certion and the elders for they too were present gu safeguarding And while they were relating what they had seen again the three males who uh have come from the supplr with two supporting the other and a cross following them So the two angels have come down and now three have come out of the tomb and a cross is following

(1:08:12) them and the head of the two was reaching up to heaven but that of the one being led out by hand was going up beyond the heavens So these are fantastically tall beings as they're spiritually you're as they're appearing in this vision for them and they were hearing a voice from the heavens saying have you made proclamation to the fallen asleep and an obeyance was heard from the cross Yes So the vision you know shared by the soldiers and the elders of the risen risen Christ so tall he reaches beyond heaven and a cross that speaks and says that um uh that Jesus has descended and

(1:08:58) spoken to the dead you know during this time period um uh you know anyway this sets this apocryphal fragment apart from the other gospels This is a really remarkable and different um unique vision that we have here in Peter So as the soldiers and elders report what they've seen to Pilate he then again once again declares himself innocent of of uh the the blood of the son of God This is obviously the son of God And he agrees though that everybody needs to shut up about it And he orders everybody not to talk about this because uh nobody

(1:09:32) it's not going to redown good on anybody if if anybody um uh in his administration or the the elders speak of it Okay So when we talk about Easter Sunday itself let's look um at all of the details and I'm going to kind of line them all up here So um if we ask okay well who's who is it that goes to the tomb on Easter morning So in the Gospel of Mark it's Mary Magdalene Mary the mother of James and Salame In Matthew it is Mary Magdalene and the other Mary Um the Roman guards as we saw we read this one were already present Um but they get aruck and

(1:10:15) they're essentially comeomaos like like dead In the gospel of Luke it's Mary Magdalene Joanna Mary the mother of James and other women In the Gospel of John Mary Magdalene alone goes to the tomb And later when she goes back to find Peter and the beloved disciple they race to the tomb to confirm that it's empty In the Gospel of Peter Mary Magdalene and a bunch of unnamed women friends come to the tomb The soldiers have all had that vision and left because of um seeing this incredible vision um of uh Christ whose head goes

(1:10:56) into the heavens Okay So what did the women see when they went to the tomb So in Mark uh inside the tomb there's one young man with a white robe Um in Matthew one angel descends from heaven which we saw rolled the stone uh sits on the stone In Luke the women look inside They see two men in dazzling clothes inside the tomb And that is also in John where two angels are sitting inside the tomb And in Peter one young man in a splendid robe is there inside the tomb Two had already previously come to get Jesus uh from the

(1:11:35) tomb Okay What do the women do when they see this thing So in Mark they run away in fear and they don't tell anybody In Matthew they run in fear and joy and they go and tell the disciples In Luke they go and told tell the disciples But in Luke uh none of the male disciples believe the women uh what they've seen In John Mary runs and tells Peter and the beloved disciple who then race each other to the tomb The beloved disciple uh gets there first but doesn't enter Peter enters first then and finds uh the the the cloths that were used to

(1:12:15) wrap Jesus Um in the gospel of Peter just like in Mark the women flee in fear and are not we don't see that they t tell anybody about it Um but again the the gospel breaks off so we don't know what would happen in later portions of it So after after the experience of the empty tomb when we get to the risen Christ to whom does the risen Christ first appear and so in the original ending of the gospel of Mark as the author himself wrote it Christ does not appear There is no um there are no appearances as arisen

(1:12:53) Christ in the Gospel of Mark um two different endings a long and a short ending have been added to different manuscripts different ancient manuscripts of Mark And in the long ending Mary Magdalene is uh the person to whom the risen Christ first appears Uh in Matthew the appearance of Christ is really early as the women have just been at the tomb and seen the um angels at seen the angel they come back on the road and Mary Magdalene and the other Mary uh Christ appears to them Uh in the gospel of Luke we have this really um unique and interesting

(1:13:31) pretty wonderful story of two unnamed disciples who are journeying on the road to Emmas who um travel with Jesus and don't immediately recognize him Um so the risen Christ appears to them in the gospel of John Um the risen Christ appears to Mary Magdalene alone in the garden She initially mistakes him for the gardener but later realizes it's him Um in the Gospel of Peter we're not really sure because it breaks off here but there's one last scene that is being set up where Peter and Andrew and Levi are going out to fish in the Sea of Galilee And that is almost certainly setting up a a story like the one we

(1:14:12) have in John where where the disciples um encounter the rhythms in Christ and have this great catch So let's let's sum up and try to look at what the different pictures that then emerge So from each of the evangelists what they're trying to paint So Mark is an apocalypticist Mark is actually writing while the first Roman Jewish war is ongoing Um uh the temple has been destroyed and there could be hard hardly for an apocalypticist any um greater sign that the end of the world is coming that that prophecy so long uh or that had failed back at the um time period of the Mcabes

(1:15:00) in the book of Daniel where uh where is predicted that you will see one like a son of man coming in glory in the heavens that now Um the author of Mark has redone the calculation and now realizes within maybe just a couple months maybe as much as a couple years but no more than a year or two really maybe three uh will the world end and we will see Jesus coming in clouds And so it suits him to simply end his text with the women running away in fear and to avoid telling any stories about the risen Christ appearing to people because his it's the author of Mark's testimony

(1:15:38) really that the second coming is happening right now And so this is when the when Christ is going to return and that's the that's the risen Christ appearances that he's interested in Um but there's a couple problems with that One Mark's prediction fails So the uh world doesn't get destroyed You know a decade or two goes on and people who access his text they like the idea of having a narrative of Jesus's life but they are very unsatisfied with the endings Like I say two um alternate endings are actually added um and those

(1:16:14) exist in different manuscripts And then Matthew and Luke both rework Mark's text entirely and have very different endings that that they append to the gospels Um Matthew's ends with um uh the risen Christ tells the women tell all the 11 disciples to go to Galilee and wait for him there Uh Jesus then appears on a mountain which is always important an important location for things to happen in Matthew the sermon on the mount the mount of transfigurations and now a mountain where he gives them a great commission go and make disciples in all lands And so this is the

(1:16:54) um the point and the purpose you know that the author of Matthew and the Mthan Christian community has uh for the gospel Luke's ending the risen Christ um actually tells the disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait and uh a few after a few days they go to Bethany where Jesus ascends uh into heaven And so all the way up through that time including on that road to Emmas and when Jesus appears uh to disciples at the ending of Luke one of the things that um Jesus does is open their understanding to the scriptures and they all now realize that the scriptures all that is to say the

(1:17:37) Old Testament the Hebrew Bible all typologically prefigure Christ And so every time you're reading a passage in Isaiah you can rework that and understand that that's something that speaks to Christ And so um this is how the understanding of that and is able to be brought in to even craft the gospel as Luke is doing using Old Testament texts in order to create narrative in u uh narrative stories within the gospel Um this doesn't have to be the end for Luke because there's a whole second half of uh Luke's work the book of Acts And

(1:18:18) so um Luke is going to tell the story of the the spread of the church in that second text John of course as we saw Jesus is the lamb of God whose sacrifice takes away the sin of the world and is not simply uh uh defeating the destroying angel on the Passover but defeating uh death entirely There are two endings uh in the gospel of John The first ending in the first ending Jesus appears to many of the disciples in a locked room and they all have this experience of the risen Christ and they testify it to people who weren't there One of the disciples that was not there is Thomas uh the twin uh

(1:19:05) one of the disciples and he then says he won't believe it until he actually sees the risen Christ uh himself and he fortunately is able to have that happen Um but Jesus says "It's wonderful that you now believe because you've seen me but blessed are those who believe who have not had a a personal uh experience with the risen Christ like this.

(1:19:28) " Um then the uh the gospel ends and says "There are many other things that could be written about all of the signs and wonders that Jesus did but it would fill the whole world if we said it So it's good enough to end here." And then you turn the next page and another chapter has then been added by another author of John And so that one includes um an appearance uh to the disciple of the risen Christ as they're fishing They've been unsuccessful in their fishing And so Jesus directs them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and they get a great catch Um so this again is

(1:20:05) like ma matthew in terms of that prefiguring uh the uh the great commission going and growing the church like Luke in that same way uh the book of acts that is talking about the growing of the church Uh the risen Christ sees breakfast with them and then uh kind of famously instructs Peter as the standin for the disciples feed my sheep um that's their job going forward now that uh Christ is not with them in person in the flesh So uh what we've seen then is each of these gospels paints a unique theological portrait They contradict each other in terms of

(1:20:44) um details because it's not about um individual historicity We should not be should not be looking at these as if um these are events as they happened Um in indeed in a lot of cases there's nobody no way anybody you the disciples scatter Um the details largely wouldn't be known but they are all included because they are painting each evangelist is painting their own theological picture of Jesus as the Christ and that's um what underpins each one of these And so when we do this thing where we um mix it all up together and make it one story we

(1:21:22) actually um distort or destroy the individual portraits that each evangelist is trying to make And so that is my survey of contradictions in the Easter stories First all I want to thank people for support Thanks to JM and Fire ever living So questions Todd Radmaker says "Uh do you think it might be possible that Marcian's Evangelian was a first century gospel that Luke and Matthew used?" Um so the so there there is a um so there's an argument that that there is a uh it's a new argument So so Marcian is

(1:22:09) thought to have been using an edited version of Luke So it's um that's certainly what the protoorthodox uh have argued and I have I'm also think that that seems very likely Um but that and so we don't know but there is a new um there is a new uh uh study that's done by taking all of the um protoorthodox descriptions of what Marcian's gospel uh would have looked like and are are suggesting that maybe what we actually have in Luke is an edited version of Marcian's gospel to make it protoorthodox Um so that's an argu that's a new argument That is not by any way an academic consensus I need to you

(1:22:57) know study that more But my my my first thought is that no it would not be a um a gospel that Luke and Matthew both use but rather um there is an argument that is being looked into that is it possible that Marcian's gospel um is the original and that Luke that we have is an edited version of that Um more likely though Marcian has edited what most scholars still think right now is that Marcian has simply edited a version of the Gospel of Luke Uh Winston Barkz why does uh only Matthew have dead saints rising And is this a fulfillment of Ezekiel

(1:23:37) uh uh 37:12 which is about God raising his people from the grave Um so so it may well be um what so one of the reasons why when a Matthew has something that's all by uh himself it's showing that the traditions are different right and so so it's easy to have um uh the synoptics have a shared tradition If something is in Mark then we can see why it immediately can be in Matthew and Luke since they're using Mark as a source If if it's in Mark and Matthew only and not in Luke it's because Luke has gone through and deleted what what Mark has said because Luke doesn't like

(1:24:14) it But if something is not in Mark and not in Luke and it's only in Matthew this is coming from like a special tradition within the Man community And so they Matthew has a bunch of things that are only Matthew only and um and the author of Matthew is uh has the same exact um understanding of uh of Jesus that Christ lived according to scriptures And so when there are prophecies that the author of Matthew considers um uh uh messianic then then that can be brought in that detail can be added into the gospel and there may well be an inherited tradition of people in the Mathean community speaking from the

(1:25:03) spirit and and and having that within the tradition So it could well be Um there's also a um you know there I I think there's also statements that are early in Christianity where in the Christian tradition where Paul is talking about how um there that we it's not just Jesus who has been resurrected that there the first fruits of people who have already been resurrected And so and so the author of Matthew might be aware of that tradition and is um is assigning that a place for it to happen which is at this cosmic moment of the uh of the

(1:25:39) crucifixion Uh Ron Wagner says "What do you think about the movie The Passion of the Christ?" I I've never uh been able to watch that So I haven't actually watched a lot of the um I I have not watched a lot of these of these movies And so at some point or other maybe um maybe people will provoke me to have a uh to do kind of a film review series and I'll actually do one of those things like they do on YouTube where like uh you know John Hammer watches this for the first time How does he react to it So I have never watched it all the way through I um I was watching um I was at a conference where

(1:26:19) uh where they were somebody was putting a um clips back to back from the Passion of the Christ and from a a Latterday Saint a Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints a Mormon movie about the Passion and showing how how wildly different it was And and when I was watching the um they're both crazy in versions I thought but anyway the the one in the Passion of the Christ there's this entire time while um where Jesus is like talking back and forth to Satan And I was like well where did that come from Because that's not in the in any of the gospels and things like that But I guess

(1:26:55) it's from a um I guess it's from modern Catholic uh visions that a that a saintly woman a saint had that um that is a tradition a new tradition that that um that is a source that for that movie anyway So I haven't I don't know that much about it I thought that that that part of it was especially um odd or different It's not something that I would have included if I was making a movie I I mean I've just seen that it's it's just so you know gory That's one of the reasons why I probably haven't watched it Um Ricky Palasios what is your thought on the book of John

(1:27:34) where Pilate is trying to tell the chief priests and the scribes that Jesus is a Jewish problem and not a Roman one So yeah I think that this is the um so this is the uh always when we have a context the context of this is the Janine community and so what um the people the evangelists are writing what the community of John is writing in the '9s is they're trying to tell um you know their their Roman neighbors the administrators and everybody like that that um that Jesus is not a threat at all to Rome that it is a it's a the argument really here is between two

(1:28:16) sects the the Christian sect and the the Jewish non-Christian Jewish sect Um and so there is a that shift that has happened because of um by the time the gospel is written uh it's reflecting that sism that has already taken place uh a couple decades earlier to when the gospel is written Zorak says "Uh Mark was likely written in Rome A Roman centurion not a Jew says Jesus is the son of God Is this um Roman chauvinism by the author or is he catering to um a gentile audience and pso leafs?" Um so yeah that's one of the one of the

(1:29:02) um likelier places that people have identified as a source for the um uh you know for where you know that Mark is coming out of the Roman uh Christian community which is very early and very well established um and was established before you know Paul gets there if Paul actually does get there he gets there according to tradition but by the he hasn't been there by the time he's written to the um letter of the Romans So um there there are lots of people who are Jewish in the Gospel of Mark who become disciples Almost all the disciples are Jewish and they and

(1:29:42) several of them like Peter have already um you know made declarations that you're the Messiah you're the son of God and things like that So um so I don't think that this is a um I don't think this is chauvinism or saying that uh you know Jews weren't able to become disciples I think rather um what's happened is for the most part of the gospel Jesus's ministry has been to uh a Jew predominantly Jewish audience He's had a little bit of interaction with with centurions before but now um but now what's happening with the with the crucifixion this is signaling you know this is uh the gospel has gone to

(1:30:22) everybody And so that might be an example of that um existing even in the Gospel of Mark which doesn't focus on that aspect as much as Matthew does with the great commission or um Luke does with the book of Acts Uh Anders uh Andy Listister thanks for your support Um this is a this is a down payment for his hammer to do Christian movie reviews on YouTube So people liked that idea as I threw it out there So okay I'm going to have to watch I hate to start with the Passion of the Christ Write down in the in the comments other ones that I could watch that are less gory and to do a review to start with I

(1:30:58) don't want to start with that one Okay Um Adam Frederick um would you be willing to hypothesize any lost religious text that we may likely someday discover and what impact they might have if any Um well I I don't I don't know It wouldn't be it would be amazing if um if any of the hypothetical um lost texts if we were to find them let's say it's difficult but you know like so for example they're in Pompei they're constantly uh uh finding new texts but there's not likely to be Christian ones anyway I so in a in Egypt

(1:31:40) or in a cave or something like that we we occasionally find these things buried in a tomb or something So if we were to have one I mean it would be very exciting for us to have any of the the hypothetical texts So that you know first and foremost Q is such an important one Um the idea the hypothetical um passion narrative that we've been talking about if there was some kind of a would be very short and brief So if that was able to be found in a palops somewhere if uh if we were to have the um uh the the signs source that's a hypothetical underlying of the gospel of

(1:32:19) John So all of those what they would just do is confirm that biblical scholarship is really really good They wouldn't actually change anything if we found them Um I mean it would be something to change things if we had uh if we could ident if we found something that I mean it seems unlikely we just found a whole gnostic library you know in the last century but if we were to find any any text that would be very early that let's say let's say would be a very early uh doetic text or um you know Marcian's gospel any one of those kinds of things those would that would tell us lots about um other early

(1:33:01) Christian communities that diversity of of what they are Um we're able to reconstruct a lot of it because we have the critics what the critics say but it you know um and they tend to quote extensively but of course um they're all very biased and antagonistic but we end up finding out that some of the things they say um have some basis But so for example the u the critics of the uh of of gnostics and also u cathars are always painting them as as um let's say sexual libertines and things like that when in fact they're usually aesthetics who think that uh sex

(1:33:41) is they don't like sex at all So anyway so that's a thing when you actually find the people's own texts So that that could change things Uh K Tempest Bradford says um are you aware of a text called the crucifixion by an eyewitness It's a Masonic text that purports to be an actual letter from the Grandmaster of the Essenes in Jerusalem to his counterpart in Rome The text was probably written during the Enlightenment when some Christians were trying to make a New Testament be less supernatural In the text everything in

(1:34:13) the passion and the Eastern narratives is explained in a naturalistic way Jesus didn't die The angel at the tomb is just a guy dressed in white etc Are there other narratives that John knows like this People taking magic out of the Jesus story That's an interesting thing I'm going to have to look it up I I I'm not aware of that text That is uh um that's definitely you know of its time you know part of the enterprise in the in the enlightenment as um as everything was becoming very um materialistic and as we developed the

(1:34:50) idea of natural causation and all of these things now suddenly we understand um to either be if they actually happened they would be supernatural activities and that's not what people thought in antiquity because they didn't have the separation of categories really Um and so in order to try to um make a text be literalistic and to have historicity brand new things that people were really starting to become obsessed with in the Enlightenment people had to distort uh the text And so what we should instead be doing is jettisoning

(1:35:30) those these um idols of historicity and um literalism and read the texts the way they're meant uh as meaningful And so that's what we should be doing But that kind of thing is exactly the path that everybody uh was taking and that took it brought us to where we are now and why everybody's so obsessed with um you know literalism and historicity uh fire ever living Is the pilot trial historically realistic Do we have records of similar trials of non-citizens in the Roman Empire Um so I don't think that I I don't necess I don't think that it's necessarily realistic um to to my

(1:36:14) thinking I I I tended to lead uh lean towards um um scholars like of the historical Jesus like John Dominic Crossen who would say when we're dealing with somebody like the historical Jesus um this he's of such a low social class that um someone like Pilate doesn't actually have to have a personal trial and go through all of this rigomearroll with him He can simply just have him have him executed uh and so there doesn't have to be this kind of or a much lower functionary can have him have him executed So he's executed by the Romans Um but the what we've gone

(1:36:51) through with all of these Eastern narratives Um these are these are theological stories They're not likely to have uh a lot of historicity to any of them other than that Jesus was crucified That the disciples were scattered They didn't know what to make of it that later um different disciples started having visions of the risen Christ where they saw um Christ in glory seated at the right hand of the father and things like that and that that uh inspired um their different idea of uh Christian messianism uh pretty quickly developing a very high christologology and then

(1:37:37) it's only later decades into that religion's existence that the gospel accounts are written to provide a theological uh portrait of that understanding Um just because though a lot of the details here are are um reimagined from uh Old Testament texts um typologically introduced into the life of Jesus in scripture That does not mean that there is not a historical Jesus uh there's a complete scholarly consensus that there is a historical Jesus people when just because there's a lot of these things are not historical

(1:38:16) then people say well maybe it's all just a myth and that's becomes a very popular idea but um the it's not a it's not one that is accepted by almost any scholars there's a couple guys who are focused on that but that's um who continue to popularize it but it's generally rejected so Kerman Wingfield So the other gospels fixed Mark since his predictions did not come true as far as the return of Jesus So um so Mark says things like uh has Jesus say um truly this generation will not pass away until you see the son of man uh coming in glory in the clouds And so um you know

(1:39:04) that generation you know technically would be be Jesus's generation in the 30s Um by the time Mark is writing in the year 70 it's possible that it still applies to Jesus Mark is really meaning it for his own time because he means that this um this me this end of the world that was predicted in the book of Daniel and also didn't come true because it was predicted to happen in the 150s BC um that re Mark has now recalculated that and saying it's going to happen like in 71 72 73 right in that kind of time frame That doesn't happen That

(1:39:38) generation passes away Um and the other problem though with Mark is all of the other Christians are very aware that there have been visions of the risen Christ So you know going all the way back to Paul Paul talks about that That's the basis for Paul's ministry So the fact that um that Mark leaves off without any of these visions of the risen Christ that's not how um all of the other authors the author of Matthew Luke and so forth understand um their experience with Jesus So uh so some of them like one of

(1:40:13) the authors of the book of John um the gospel of John have uh an understanding that maybe um you know the second coming essentially is already occurred that Jesus is you know is present living living among us and that we're already in this new kind of age of the spirit So they're not and are no longer looking forward to other ones though are looking forward to a literal apocalypse but they're sending the shifting the time frame back So for example the author of the apocalypse of John thinks it's going to happen very soon after he's writing

(1:40:46) um you know a couple decades after Mark Um KPus Bradford which ending of Mark do you prefer the original or uh the tacked on stuff I like how dark the original is I I usually just use the original too because I think that that um I just think that the if you want one of the other endings you can read you know Matthew and Luke and then those will be more um reworked with their all of their uh theological um their whole portrait Whereas to keep Mark's portrait the way it is it's better to have it the way the original author had it All right Master Seda says "It is

(1:41:27) difficult to know uh what happened with Jesus resurrection How do we know it happened at all And if one doesn't believe in the resurrection can one uh still call themselves a Christian?" So so we talked about how um you know in the in the Gospel of John um uh Jesus's body is taken uh by both Joseph of Arythea and this elder this uh this Pharisee who turned Christian uh Nicodemus And so you know Jesus had told Nicodemus in order to enter the kingdom of heaven you must be born again And Nicodemus is like this how can a man can

(1:42:10) a man literally climb into his mother's womb and literally be born again And so so the gospel writer is trying to say you can't um you know understand uh that you should not be taking these ideas of meaning literally So it when um the same gospel when uh Jesus comes to uh Mary and Martha the sisters of um Lazarus who has died um says to to Martha um um your your brother your brother will live um and she says well I know that you know he'll he can be raised with everybody on the last day So she's a apocalypticist She believes that there's going to be a literal resurrection when the world literally ends But Jesus says um she he says no

(1:43:02) nobody nobody who u who believes in me you know he's I'm trying to think I got the exact quote but if it's the idea of it is that if you believe in the new covenant if you are a Christian if you've embraced Christ's word uh and become a child of God yourself you're already alive and you have eternal life even though you die So in other words eternal life and resurrection is a spiritual thing that we participate in and it doesn't have to be literal in the same way uh that being born again doesn't have to be literal in that

(1:43:37) interpretation which is early Christian and going all the way back Um and so and so can you um not believe in the resurrection and call yourself a Christian You it depends on what you be might not believe So you can believe in a fully spiritual idea of resurrection and renewal That is as we ourselves um align ourselves ever more fully with God who in the gospel of John is love uh for love's own sake when we are when we are filled with and motivated by love for um self but neighbor other enemy um and are

(1:44:16) operating that that's an eternal ideal and that lives on forever and the more we're attuned to that the more we have that kind of eternal life that kind of resurrection and renewal and so that would be a way to do it if you don't believe in let's say a literal physical resurrection I would So we have made a lot of movie suggestions These are Dogma Jesus of Montreal The Chosen Franco Zepharelli's Jesus of Nazareth Scorsese The Last Temptation of Christ old Hollywood movies like The Ten Commandments I that

(1:44:51) one I've seen a million times and I could I could actually probably quote it to you Something funny like Jesus Christ Superstar The Greatest Story Ever Told or Man the Unfathomable So we will have to figure out which one of these we're going to do But it won't be next week because next week Leandro is going to do a lecture how Christ differs from the dying and rising gods