PhilosopherJay

Hi Ben,

I was saying he wasn't buried according to the passion narrative. As I recall, the Jews had a rather elaborate burial ritual. Mary was actually going to the tomb to perform the ceremony. Putting a dead or seemingly dead body temporarily in a tomb doesn't really qualify as a burial.

The gospel of John does make Mary's trip redundant by suggesting that Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus already performed the ceremony, But perhaps John is just trying to correct the impression that the synoptics give that Jesus didn't really have a burial ceremony and thus had not been buried before his body disappeared.


Warmly

Philosopher Jay



Matthew 27:57-60
When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple: He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.

Mark 15:43-46
Joseph of Arimathaea ... took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre.

Luke 23:50-53
Joseph ... of Arimathaea ... took it down, and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre.

Joseph of Arimataea and Nicodemus

John 19:38-42
So he came and took away his body. 19.39 Nicodemus also, who had at first come to him by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds' weight. 19.40 They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. 19.41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. 19.42 So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.


Acts 13:27-29
For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him. And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre.

gurugeorge

I think any search for the text these people were thinking of may well be fruitless until some "key" turns up - if you're familiar with the way Qabalists can anallyse a text (and I don't think fervid religious analaysis of texts would have been much different at that time, especially considering numbers=letters in Hebrew) they could have found the Messiah in a shopping list if they tried hard enough!

gurugeorge

OK, can anyone who happens to be hanging around who knows for sure say just how much of the normal scholarly dating of Paul's letters as earliest Christian evidence depends on taking Acts (reasonably) seriously as history? Ben?

Or are there other good reasons (e.g. independent philological) for dating Paul's letters as earliest?

Ben C Smith

Mark 14.8: She has anointed my body beforehand for the entombment [ενταφιασμον].

1 Corinthians 15.4a: ...and that he was entombed [εταφη]....

Ben.

aa5874

The "Pauline" epistles have no internal information to date them. "Paul" managed to avoid giving any details of chronology with respect to his writings in all 85 chapters of the epistles.
There is a single clue as to the time "Paul" may have lived, when the author of Corinthians claimed that "Paul" was in a basket, outside a window, during the reign of Aretas (2 Corinthians 11.31-32).

"Paul" is almost entirely ambiguous in "his" epistles with respect to his identity or his whereabouts and the time of writings of the epistles.

Vivisector

That's a good point. I suppose I overlooked it because of the relatively straightforward way that "scripture" is normally used in early Christian writings (i.e., usually as verbatim quotes from well-known HB texts). There are a few apparent exceptions, namely the worker deserving his wages (assuming this isn't derived from consideration of Luke as "scripture") and water from the belly, but this one has always seemed the most arcane.

Do you think the type of analysis you refer to is how the "scripture" was derived?

Cheers,

V.

Doug Shaver

I can't answer that question, actually, because I haven't the foggiest notion of what is the prevailing scholarly argument.

My own argument, offered quite gratuitously, is that they can't have been written later than the Jewish War because it seems improbable to me that there would have been zero allusions to the war if it had already occurred.

gurugeorge

I don't know, but it seems reasonable to me that such a specific image as "Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose on the third day" won't be found by any superficial examination of the OT texts. Whatever those guys "saw", it must have been by some kind of playing around with the text. Numerological coincidences, in particular, can seem very shocking when you light upon them in a receptive frame of mind, so I'm guessing they must have had something to do with it too.

Of course, there's the same problem wether we're talking about an HJ or AJ, but absent any explicit connection between Cephas, etc., and some human being known to them personally who subsequently "appeared" as the Messiah, a Messiah just plain "appearing" in scripture (through some kind of deep, enthusiastic, fervid analysis) is a more AJ-friendly idea.

Vivisector

After reading through the thread again, I'm tempted to side partially with Malachi151 in the sense of considering "according to the scriptures" to have been a gloss (referring to the gospels) that was ultimately incorporated into the text. It might make the most sense, since it requires no phantom scriptures or extraordinarily creative interpretation of scripture.

Cheers,

V.

Ben C Smith

Why the headlong rush to avoid extraordinarily creative interpretations of scripture?

In Romans 9.33 Paul takes a simple metaphor involving the laying of a foundation stone in Jerusalem and interprets the stone as the messiah, Jesus. That seems pretty creative.

In 1 Corinthians 9.9 Paul takes an old Hebrew law about not muzzling threshing oxen and draws a conclusion concerning proper church ministry. That seems pretty creative.

In 2 Corinthians 13.1 Paul takes the Deuteronomic injunction to supply two or three witnesses to any court fact and applies it to his own third arrival in Corinth, as if he himself can count as three witnesses if he makes three separate trips. That seems pretty creative.

Ben.