Re: jesus in genesis?
WHO WAS JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA?
Mark 15:43 – “…a respected member of the council, who was also himself
looking for the kingdom of God…”
Matthew 27:57 – “…a rich man… who was also a disciple of Jesus…”
Luke 23:50b-51 – “He was a member of the council, a good and righteous
man, who had not consented to their purpose and deed, and he was also
looking for the kingdom of God.”
John 19:38 – “…a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the
Jews…”
Both Mark and Luke describe Joseph of Arimathea as “a member of the
council,” both “respected” (Mark) and “good and righteous” (Luke), who
was “looking for the kingdom of God.” Luke adds the critical detail
that Joseph “had not consented” to the council’s “purpose and deed.”
Matthew, who had Mark in front of him, drops Joseph’s affiliation with
the council and simply identifies him as “a rich man” (in a deliberate
attempt to fulfill Isaiah 53:9?) and as a “disciple of Jesus.” John,
the members of whose community are dealing with being ostracized from
the synagogues because of their faith in Jesus, depicts Joseph as one
of his own, a “secret” disciple “for fear of the Jews.” Both Matthew
and John ignore Joseph’s membership in the council, due in no small
part to the difficulties that Matthew’s and John’s communities were
having with their Jewish neighbors; John goes so far as to
differentiate Joseph from “the Jews” even though both Mark and Luke
identify him as a member of the council. In light of this, we should
not place too much weight on John’s description of Joseph as being a
“secret” disciple out of fear; after all, Joseph’s opposition to the
council’s actions (as reported by Luke) most certainly is not the
action of a “secret” disciple who is afraid of “the Jews.” How “rich”
he was is also subject to debate, given Matthew’s penchant for having
Jesus fulfill Hebrew prophecies, no matter how obscure.
WHAT DID JOSEPH DO?
All four Gospels say that Joseph went to Pilate to ask for Jesus’
body. The Synoptic Gospels say that Joseph wrapped Jesus’ body in a
linen shroud and placed his body in a tomb, which is variously
described as “a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock” (Mark
15:46), “his (Joseph’s) own new tomb, which had been hewn in the
rock” (Matthew 27:60), and “a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever
yet been laid.” Just as Matthew is the only Gospel to describe Joseph
as “rich,” it is also the only Gospel to say that the tomb belonged to
Joseph (although one may assume that such an understanding lies behind
Mark’s and Luke’s accounts as well, unless we imagine that Joseph
merely usurped the first open tomb he found). None of the Synoptics
says that Joseph did anything beyond wrapping Jesus’ body in the
shroud before closing the tomb, but they do say that at least two
women witnessed where and how Jesus was buried, precipitating Mark’s
and Luke’s following comments about their first preparing and then on
Sunday morning bringing spices with which to anoint Jesus’ body,
implying that Joseph had not had time to do the job properly before
the beginning of the Sabbath at sundown on Friday.
John, however, paints a somewhat different picture. As in the
Synoptics, here Joseph takes away Jesus’ body for burial, but unlike
the Synoptics John adds that Nicodemus assisted him by “bringing a
mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight” (19:39).
John goes on to say that the two of them wrapped Jesus’ body “in the
linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews” (v.
40). This presents a problem for those who would “smoosh” the four
Gospel accounts into one great big “mega-Gospel” story. If, as John
says, Joseph and Nicodemus prepared Jesus’ body with about a hundred
pounds of “spices” wrapped in a linen burial cloth and if, as the
Synoptics say, at least two women witnessed Jesus’ burial, then why do
Mark and Luke say that the women then went to prepare spices with
which to anoint Jesus’ body for burial and that they then returned
Sunday morning to do just that? According to John, the necessary
anointing for burial had already been done “as is the burial custom of
the Jews.” Significantly, John’s Gospel follows this by saying not
that “women” came to the tomb on Sunday morning but only that one
woman, Mary Magdalene, came to the tomb with no mention of her
intending to anoint Jesus’ body. So, was Jesus’ body properly
prepared for burial on Friday afternoon (as in John) or not (as in the
Synoptics)? And if (as in the Synoptics but not in John) the women
were watching where and how Jesus was buried, how would they not have
known that Joseph and Nicodemus had done for Jesus’ body what was in
accordance with “the burial custom of the Jews”? As has been
mentioned in previous weeks, we are not dealing with history here but
theology. We cannot try to “smoosh” the Gospel stories together but
then ignore the very real inconsistencies and outright contradictions
that result from such “smooshing.”
WHEN DID MARY MAGDALENE AND/OR THE OTHER WOMEN VISIT THE TOMB?
Mark 16:2 says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and
Salome went to the tomb when the sun had risen and were discussing how
they were going to get around the stone that had been rolled in front
of the tomb, which upon arriving they found already rolled back.
Matthew 28:1 says that Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” went to the
tomb “toward dawn,” implying that the sun had not yet risen, but
rather than telling us how the women debated the moving of the stone,
Matthew has an angel do it for them as they watched. Luke 24:1 says
that the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee and who had
prepared spices and ointments on Friday afternoon (apparently they
hadn’t paid attention to Joseph’s and Nicodemus’ own burial anointing
that day (wait, that’s only in John)) came to the tomb “at early
dawn,” suggesting that the sun was just rising, and found the stone
already rolled away from the tomb. John 20:1 says that Mary Magdalene
came by herself to the tomb “while it was still dark” and, as in Luke,
found the stone already removed. Again, if we try to “smoosh” the
Gospel accounts into one big story, we must ask how and when the stone
was removed, by unidentified forces before the women arrived or by an
angel as they watched? Also, if (as in John) Mary Magdalene had come
to the tomb by herself before dawn and saw the stone already removed,
why would she then return shortly afterward (as in the Synoptics) and
“play dumb” with the other women about the stone’s already having been
removed? For that matter, why (as in Matthew) would an angel have to
roll back the stone as the women watched if (as in the other Gospels)
the stone had already been removed before the women’s arrival? Again,
we are dealing with theology, not history, here. Each Gospel writer
is telling his own story; they are not each providing details that the
others have “left out” and which we are to combine together into one
great big story so as to tell “what really happened.” Such attempts
fall flat in the face of the very real logical, temporal and literary
inconsistencies that result. Read each Gospel on its own terms, not
in terms of the other Gospels, except when looking to see how Matthew
and then Luke each adapted and altered Mark’s Gospel for their own
ends and then how John adapted and altered the Synoptic tradition for
his own purposes.
WHO OR WHAT GREETED THE WOMEN AT THE TOMB?
Mark 16:5 – “…a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a
white robe…” inside the tomb.
Matthew 28:2-3 – “…an angel of the Lord… his appearance was like
lightning, and his raiment white as snow…” sitting on the stone
outside the tomb.
Luke 24:4 – “…two men… in dazzling apparel…” inside the tomb.
John 20:1 – no one at first; upon returning in 20:12, Mary Magdalene
sees “two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain,
one at the head and one at the feet.”
Mark’s “young man in white” (a literary allusion to the young man who
had run away naked at Jesus’ arrest in 15:541-52?) has morphed in
Matthew into “an angel of the Lord” and in Luke to “two men in
dazzling apparel” (significantly, Luke here doesn’t call them
“angels,” although later in 24:23 he does refer to them as such). As
mentioned above, John has Mary make two trips to the tomb, with Peter
and the “beloved disciple” making a trip in between Mary’s, with no
one else, angelic or otherwise, appearing in or around the tomb until
the third “look-see” into the tomb. We should not think that Mark’s
“young man” was really an angel (wouldn’t he have said so?) or that
Matthew’s one angel was really two as in Luke and John but that
Matthew only bothered to mention one.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD?
According to Mark 16:8, the women ran off terrified without saying
anything to anyone, The End, with no resurrection appearances of Jesus
reported at all. Please note: IGNORE anything after verse 8; these
additional verses were added later by someone who felt that Mark’s
Gospel was “incomplete” because it lacked such accounts of
resurrection appearances. That Mark’s Gospel actually did end at
verse 8 is indicated by Matthew’s and Luke’s dovetailing away from one
another at this point in their post-resurrection stories, because if
they had had a copy of Mark before them that extended beyond 16:8 then
their narratives would have continued together once the women left the
tomb. Instead, they fly off in rather different directions.
Jesus Scourged and Mocked - Mark 15:15b-20a; Matthew 27:26b-31a; Luke
23:25b; John 19:1-16
As is usual for them, Mark and Matthew present similar, almost
identical depictions of Jesus’ being scourged and mocked by the Roman
soldiers. Both Gospels affirm Jesus’ scourging without going into the
(literally) gory details and then his being delivered to the soldiers
to be crucified. In both Mark and Matthew, Jesus is then led into the
praetorium and the entire battalion is called together. Mark then
states that the soldiers clothed Jesus in a purple robe and put a
crown of thorns on his head; Matthew inserts the additional details
that the soldiers first stripped Jesus before putting a scarlet (red)
robe on him and that they put a reed in his right hand. Both Gospels
then state that the soldiers mockingly acclaimed Jesus as “King of the
Jews” and spat upon him and struck him on the head with the reed.
Mark then relates a detail that Matthew omits: the soldiers’ kneeling
down in mock homage to Jesus. Perhaps Matthew didn’t want to even
suggest that the soldiers recognized Jesus’ role or mission; whatever
the reason, Matthew left this out of his Gospel. Both Gospels then
finish this part of the story by having the soldiers remove the cloak
and dress Jesus in his own clothes.
Significantly, Luke says absolutely nothing about Jesus being scourged
or mocked by the Roman soldiers. Both Mark 15:15b and Matthew 27:26b
depict Jesus’ flogging as the first step of his sentence of
crucifixion, but Luke 23:16 and 23:22 depict Pilate as offering to
have Jesus flogged instead of crucifying him; in fact, Luke 23:25b
says that, after releasing Barabbas, Pilate then “delivered up” Jesus
“to their will,” i.e., to the will of the Jewish authorities who were
calling for Jesus’ death, without first flogging him. While it is
established that only the Romans could carry out capital punishment,
Luke does not explicitly say that it was the Romans who crucified
Jesus. Perhaps he wanted to insinuate that the Jewish authorities
themselves did. But why would he even want to hint at such a thing?
By the time Luke wrote his Gospel and the book of Acts (the late first
century), Gentile Christianity even in Judea had moved well beyond its
Jewish origins into the pagan Greco-Roman world. The main social
issue of Luke’s communities was no longer how they would relate to the
Jewish synagogue but rather to the Roman Empire. The whole point of
Luke/Acts is that Christianity was not a threat to Roman society or
rule, and so what we read in Luke and Acts is geared toward that
understanding. Therefore, Luke has a vested interest in minimizing
the Romans’ role in crucifying Jesus to the point of overstating the
role of the Jewish authorities, even at the expense of omitting
“actual history.” In light of this intent, it is not surprising that
Luke, who had Mark in front of him, completely omits all references to
Jesus being scourged at Pilate’s command and then mocked by his
soldiers. His overriding emphasis is upon Christianity’s
compatibility with Roman rule, which he hoped would lessen the
likelihood of the empire opposing the churches as a political threat.
It’s not that Luke didn’t know about Jesus’ being scourged and mocked
and thus left it out; he deliberately omitted it because it
potentially undermined his purpose. (In addition to this concern,
there is another potential reason for this omission on which we will
touch momentarily.)
When we turn to John we find the story expanded significantly. As do
Mark and Matthew, John also reports Jesus’ scourging and being mocked
by the soldiers with many of the same details (crown of thorns, purple
robe, mocking acclamation and beating), but then, rather than having
Jesus led off to crucifixion, he instead has Jesus brought back before
Pilate, who again presents Jesus before the Jews and proclaims him
innocent. Upon seeing Jesus, the Jews call for his crucifixion, after
which Pilate tells them to crucify him themselves, which sounds like
an attempt on John’s part to minimize Roman responsibility for Jesus’
death. The Jews respond that their law requires Jesus to die for
blasphemy for having claimed to be the Son of God. At this, John
inserts the unlikely detail that Pilate has become afraid and has him
ask Jesus where he is from, to which Jesus provides no answer. When
Pilate reasserts his power either to free or crucify him, Jesus
replies that Pilate’s power is only a divine bequest and that those
who delivered him to be crucified bear the greater guilt. Pilate,
apparently still afraid, tries to release Jesus, but the Jews strike
his Achilles’ heel by reminding him of Jesus’ claim to be a king and
the political ramifications of such a claim. So Pilate brings Jesus
out to the Stone Pavement, at which point John states that it is the
day of the preparation of the Passover (as opposed to the day of
Passover itself, which we touched upon during our first class) and
that the time is around noon (which we will touch upon next week).
There he presents Jesus to the Jews as their king; they, however, call
again for his crucifixion and affirm that their only king is Caesar, a
rather unlikely statement on the Jews’ part. Then Pilate hands Jesus
over to them (the Jews) to be crucified.
John’s depiction is geared to emphasize the Jews’ guilt, Pilate’s
relative blamelessness and Jesus’ utter serenity and dignity through
all of this. We must remember that we are not here dealing with
“history” but theology in the context of polemic against the Jewish
authorities who by John’s day have rejected Jesus and are kicking
Christians out of their synagogues. Hence in John the Jews claim that
they have no king but Caesar, a theologically impossible thing for any
self-respecting Jew to say. Pilate is presented as being fair-minded
regarding Jesus and even afraid of him, which is utterly unlike the
Pilate of history. And it is unlikely (although not impossible) that
the historical Jesus, having endured a Roman scourging, would have
been able to carry on any kind of conversation with Pilate or anyone
(more on this in the following section and in next week’s notes).
John’s depiction, as indeed are those of Mark, Matthew and Luke, is
based upon his theology and his understanding of what Jesus’ suffering
and death ultimately mean. Neither he nor the Synoptic authors are
concerned with “history” for history’s sake.
The Road to Golgotha – Mark 15:20b-23; Matthew 27:31b-34; Luke
23:26-33b; John 19:17
Once again, Mark and Matthew are almost in lockstep with one another
here. They both report that the Roman guards lead Jesus off to
crucifixion, but along the way they compel a certain Simon of Cyrene
(whom Mark identifies as “the father of Alexander and Rufus”) to carry
Jesus’ cross for him. (Some commentators see Simon of Cyrene as
effectively replacing Simon Peter, who has proven himself unable to
“take up his cross” by denying Jesus instead of himself.) Once they
all reach Golgotha (“place of a skull”) the guards offer Jesus wine
mixed with either myrrh (Mark) or gall (Matthew), which Jesus refuses
to drink.
Adam Hamilton suggests that the “Rufus” of Mark 15:21 is the same
“Rufus” to whom Paul refers in Romans 16:13 and that Rufus had become
“a leader in the church.” But this idea is based upon the unreliable
tradition of Papias as reported by Eusebius (two centuries after
Papias) that Mark wrote his Gospel under Peter’s instruction. This,
coupled with the tradition that Peter was the first pope of the church
at Rome, leads to the identification of Paul’s Rufus at Rome with
Mark’s Rufus. However, Eusebius is quite aware that Papias is an
unreliable source, and indeed where Papias can be checked against
known historical data he constantly drops the ball. Most scholars,
citing internal literary evidence in the Gospel itself, see Mark as
originating in a Galilean, not a Roman, environment, and so Mark’s
Rufus and Paul’s Rufus at most share a common name but are not likely
to be the same individual.
Luke follows Mark in reporting that Simon of Cyrene was pressed into
carrying Jesus’ cross and that they finally came to a place called
“The Skull,” although Luke reports nothing about Jesus being offered
any wine. Instead, between Simon’s taking up Jesus’ cross and the
group’s arrival at the place of crucifixion, Luke inserts a story that
is unique to his Gospel. Luke depicts Jesus as encountering and
engaging in conversation with women who are wailing and lamenting for
him. Addressing them as “daughters of Jerusalem,” Jesus admonishes
them not to weep for him but for themselves and their children for all
the calamity that is to come upon Jerusalem. He ends his words by
asking, “For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen
when it is dry?” a proverb perhaps suggesting that if such an
injustice is happening to the innocent Jesus, what fate must await
guilty Jerusalem? Luke ends this aside by reporting that two
criminals also accompanied Jesus to the place of crucifixion, a detail
the other Gospels reveal after Jesus is crucified.
Earlier it was mentioned regarding John’s Gospel that it was unlikely
that the historical Jesus could have engaged in conversation with
Pilate after having been scourged. How then in Luke’s Gospel can he
engage in such conversation with the women on the road? Simple: as
was pointed out above, in Luke’s Gospel Jesus is never scourged.
Aside from the beating that he receives before his trial before the
Sanhedrin, in Luke the only other physical punishment that Jesus
endures is the crucifixion itself. As we will see, the un-flogged
Jesus of Luke is in full command of his faculties and capable of
having conversations even while he is being crucified, whereas in Mark
and Matthew the scourged Jesus is utterly silent from the time of his
appearance before Pilate until just before he dies on the cross. We
must not ignore these differences between the Gospels if we wish to
understand each writer’s intent in telling his story as he does.
John’s Gospel mentions nothing of Simon of Cyrene and indeed
explicitly says, “…[C]arrying the cross by himself, [Jesus] went out
to what is called The Place of the Skull.” John is not merely
“leaving out” what the other Gospel writers have already mentioned,
nor is he implying that Jesus started out carrying his cross and then,
when he had tired, Simon was forced to carry it the rest of the way
(for that matter, neither Mark, Matthew nor Luke say that Simon was
forced to carry the cross because Jesus had become “tired”). Just as
earlier in John Jesus had known no agony in the garden, had identified
himself to the arresting mob, had confidently engaged in debate both
with the Jewish officials and with Pilate, had endured mocking and
scourging and then had still conversed with Pilate in spite of his
wounds, here John’s Jesus carries his own cross. The Word Become
Flesh is serenely and supremely in control of his own destiny. There
is no place for a Simon or for anyone else.
THE CRUCIFIXION IN THE GOSPELS
While there are four Gospels in the New Testament, the Gospels of Mark
and Matthew are so very similar in their depictions of the crucifixion
that they may be regarded as a single tradition. Therefore I will be
referring to the threefold Gospel traditions of M/M, Luke and John in
these notes.
When did the crucifixion happen?
Mark 15:25 says that Jesus was crucified at 9:00 in the morning.
Neither Matthew nor Luke specify a time, but given their mutual
dependence upon Mark for the rest of their depictions of the
crucifixion, which all three say took place on the Day of Passover,
they would have had that time of day in mind. John 19:14, by way of
contrast, depicts Jesus’ crucifixion as happening at around noon on
the day before Passover.
Who mocked Jesus while he hung on the cross?
According to M/M, everyone mocked him: the passers-by, the chief
priests, the scribes (Matthew adds the elders), and the two robbers
crucified with him. In M/M, Jesus is completely alone on the cross,
surrounded only by mockers. Luke says that the rulers, the soldiers
and only one of the robbers mocked him; while Luke mentions that
“people” were also present, he does not depict them as mocking Jesus.
John, by contrast, depicts no one as mocking Jesus on the cross.
Instead, John depicts only Jesus’ mother and other supportive women,
along with the “beloved disciple,” as being near him; by contrast, M/M
and Luke say that the women and Jesus’ acquaintances were only
watching from far off.
What happened at noon?
According to M/M and Luke, darkness came upon the land for three
hours; John, by contrast, mentions nothing about darkness at all
(remember, in John Jesus isn’t even crucified until noon). This
darkness is not to be interpreted as a solar eclipse (wherein totality
only lasts for a few minutes at most, not three hours) but rather as
an apocalyptic flourish on Mark’s part, which Matthew and Luke have
picked up. John, whose Gospel is intentionally non-apocalyptic, omits
this detail.
When did Jesus die?
M/M and Luke say that Jesus died at three o’clock; John specifies no
time of death but implies that it happened before sundown (the
beginning of the Sabbath).
When did the veil of the temple tear in two?
According to M/M, who hold to an atonement view of Jesus’ death, the
veil was torn after Jesus died, implying that Jesus’ death opened up
the way to God. Luke, who had Mark in front of him, pointedly changes
the order to have the veil rend before Jesus dies, while he is still
alive. The Gentile Luke, who doesn’t hold to a Jewish idea of
atonement, sees the way to God as being opened not by Jesus’ death but
by his complete obedience to the will of God. In Mark 10:45 and
Matthew 20:28, Jesus is depicted as saying, “The Son of Man came not
to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many,”
the defining statement of atonement theology in these two Gospels. In
the parallel passage in Luke 22:27, Jesus merely says, “I am among you
as one who serves,” without saying a word about “giving his life a
ransom for many.” Luke, who had Mark in front of him, left out this
“atonement” statement because that wasn’t his theology, which is also
why he reordered Mark’s tearing of the veil to have it happen before
Jesus died.
What else happened when Jesus died?
According to Matthew (and only according to Matthew), there was an
earthquake, the splitting of rocks and the resurrection of “many”
saints who, after Jesus’ resurrection, went into Jerusalem and
“appeared to many.” This unique Matthean touch should be seen not as
“history” but as theology, and apocalyptic theology at that. If such
an earth-shattering event as this had actually happened, one wonders
why no other Gospel or New Testament document mentions it. One also
wonders what the resurrected saints were doing between Friday
afternoon and Sunday morning… were they just “hanging around the
tombs”?
How did the centurion respond to Jesus’ death?
According to Mark, Jesus’ death led the centurion to declare, “Truly
this man was the Son of God!” According to Matthew, the earthquake,
the resurrection of the saints and (presumably) Jesus’ death led the
centurion to conclude the same thing as in Mark. For both of these
Gospels, Jesus’ (atoning) death confirms his divinity. In Luke,
however, the (pre-death) rending of the temple veil followed by Jesus’
death leads the centurion to exclaim, “Certainly this man was
innocent!” Being declared “divine” and being declared “innocent” are
two very different things. Luke’s theology is not that of Mark or
Matthew; Jesus’ death in Luke does not mean the same thing that it
means in Mark and Matthew.
The “Seven Sayings” from the Cross
It is important to understand that the individual Gospels are not
“eyewitness” accounts that are each providing different details about
Jesus’ crucifixion, details which the reader is supposed to combine
into one big mega-Gospel. Each Gospel tradition is unique unto
itself, and we must examine them in terms of their uniqueness to avoid
projecting one onto the other, since in fact they were never written
or intended to be read that way in the first place. As I mentioned
earlier, Matthew follows Mark so closely that their two Gospels
together may be regarding as a single tradition next to those of Luke
and John. It is out of these three traditions that the uber-tradition
of the “Seven Sayings” has developed.
Mark and Matthew are quite clear that, once Jesus replies “You say
so,” to Pilate’s asking him if he is the King of the Jews, he is
utterly silent until just before he dies, when in these Gospels he
cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This single
“saying” of M/M is unique to them; it is not a part of either Luke’s
or John’s tradition. The “My God” saying here reflects the image of
the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 who “did not open his mouth” and
whose life was “an offering for sin,” which fits the atonement
theology of M/M. It is not that M/M “chose not to include” the
“other” sayings; for them, this was the only saying.
Things become more complicated in Luke. Adam Hamilton waxes eloquent
about Jesus’ words in 23:34a, “Father, forgive them, for they do not
know what they are doing,” as “the most magnificent and majestic words
ever uttered by a dying man.” It certainly sounds like something
Jesus would say… or would have said… if he had said it.
Unfortunately, this saying is not in the oldest manuscripts of the
Gospel of Luke. In these oldest manuscripts, the story jumps from
23:33 (the crucifixion of Jesus and the two criminals) right to 23:34b
(the casting of lots for his clothes). Textually speaking, it is far
more likely that such a saying was inserted by a later copyist than
that the saying was original to the text but was removed by a later
copyist (after all, who would deliberately remove one of Jesus’ last
sayings?). Jesus may very well have said these words, but they are
not original to Luke… which means that in terms of the oldest
manuscript evidence the “seven sayings” in the Gospels are actually
only six.
The “next” of Luke’s sayings of Jesus from the cross are, “Truly, I
say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise,” spoken to the
“repentant” robber next to Jesus. However, Luke’s source, Mark,
explicitly says that both robbers reviled Jesus, not that one did
while the other repented. Luke has altered Mark’s story to emphasize
his own theology of God’s free grace and forgiveness to all, which
means, among other things, that Luke’s Jesus is not the “suffering
servant” of Isaiah who “did not open his mouth,” as he is in Mark and
Matthew.
Luke’s final saying of Jesus, “Father, into your hands I commend my
spirit,” is not to be understood as having been spoken by Jesus in
addition to Mark’s “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” but
rather as Luke’s replacement of the Markan “cry of dereliction” with a
saying more amenable to Luke’s theology. Remember, as I pointed out
last week, in Luke’s Gospel Jesus is not scourged before his
crucifixion; he is led straight out to crucifixion without being
flogged first. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus has not been tortured as much
as in Mark and Matthew (there is no Isaianic “by his stripes we are
healed” theology in the Gentile Luke’s Gospel), and so he is depicted
by Luke as being in control of his faculties even while on the cross,
able to carry on a conversation with the repentant thief above. For
that matter, as I pointed out in the notes for week two, in Luke Jesus
also suffers no “agony in the garden”; unlike in Mark or Matthew,
Jesus in Luke is confident until death of God’s presence and of his
own innocence. Hence the Lucan Jesus couldn’t have said, “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?” any more than the Markan and Matthean
Jesus could have said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
This is why we must be careful not to project the Jesus of one Gospel
onto any other Gospel. If we do, we utterly miss each Gospel writer’s
unique understanding of Jesus.
Just as the crucified Jesus of Mark and Matthew is not the crucified
Jesus of Luke, the crucified Jesus of John is not the crucified Jesus
of the Synoptics. John’s “Woman, behold your son!... Behold, your
mother!” which Jesus is depicted as saying to his mother and to the
“beloved disciple” serves to cement the familial relationship between
Jesus and his “beloved disciple” (and to establish the authority of
the “beloved disciple” as the true authentic witness to Jesus): here,
the disciple is to take Jesus’ place with Jesus’ mother. This is not
something that the Synoptic Jesus is depicted as saying or could have
said to his mother or to any disciple, since in the Synoptics the
women and Jesus’ acquaintances are depicted as watching only from far
off, not as being close enough for Jesus to speak directly to them
(and, given the nature of crucifixion, we should not imagine that
Jesus “yelled” these words to them from a distance). In addition, if
we insist upon combining the Gospels together and reading this as four-
fold “history” and assume that the “beloved disciple” is John the son
of Zebedee, we must remember that Matthew says that the mother of the
sons of Zebedee was standing at a distance watching with the other
women. Are we to understand that Jesus “stole” John from John’s own
mother and “gave” him to Jesus’ own mother? We’re not reading
“history” here.
The next of John’s sayings, “I thirst,” while certainly reasonable on
the lips of a victim of crucifixion, serve here to provide an ironic
counterpoint in terms of John’s theology: Jesus, the “living water” of
John’s Gospel, now himself thirsts at the brink of death. No other
Gospel depicts Jesus as the “living water,” and no other Gospel
depicts him as saying these words. They serve a theological, not a
historical, purpose here.
The last of John’s words of Jesus, “It is finished,” reflect Jesus’
words earlier in John 17:4 regarding the work which God has sent him
to “accomplish.” Again, these words serve a theological purpose in
John’s Gospel and reflect a rather different understanding of the
crucified Jesus than we find in the Synoptics.
As Adam Hamilton said, “The last words of any man or woman carry
special weight.” So much more the last words of Jesus. Since the
death of Jesus is the climax of each Gospel (the resurrection is
treated almost as an epilogue), each Gospel writer is careful to
present Jesus’ last words is such a way as to sum up the message of
his Gospel. These “seven sayings” of Jesus are not to be read as “the
seven last things that Jesus said before he died as they are
cumulatively reported by four eyewitnesses” (because the Gospel
writers weren’t eyewitnesses in the first place) but rather as unique
expressions of each Gospel writer’s theology. We must not project
Luke’s “sayings” onto Mark, Matthew or John; we must not project
Mark’s and Matthew’s “saying” onto Luke or John; we must not project
John’s “sayings” onto Mark, Matthew or Luke. No one Gospel presents
Jesus as saying all “seven” of these sayings, and indeed the Jesus of
Matthew or Mark couldn’t have said what Luke or John say he said.
Remember, in these stories we are not reading the unvarnished,
unadulterated Jesus. We are reading Jesus through the filters of
Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, and each filter is unique. The
variations in their stories, the reordering of events and the
“retiming” of the day on which Jesus died in these four Gospels reveal
that what we are reading is not history but theology… theology that is
unique to each of the Gospels. Let each Gospel stand on its own.
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