Why I Am Not Going To Write About The Gospel of Saint John (2)

there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus 

a ruler of the Jews.

the same came to Jesus by night,

and said unto him,

"Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God

for no man can do these miracles that thou doest

except God be with him"

Jesus answered and said unto him,

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee,

Except a man be born again,

he cannot see the kingdom of God"

An eminent Jew comes to Jesus "by night" to ask him questions. The pharisee, Nicodemus, speaks in prose: Jesus speaks in a kind of mystical poetry. The answers don't seem to have much to do with the questions: that's one thing John's Jesus definitely has in common with Mark's version. It isn't clear which sections of the text ought to be printed in black and which sections ought to be printed in red. Are all the poetic bits supposed to be words which Jesus actually spoke? Or are some of them commentary: things which the narrator, "John" is telling us about Jesus? And isn't it more than a little suspicious that it is so hard to tell one from the other?

Nicodemus thinks Jesus is a prophet because of all the miracles he has been doing. But John has, in fact, only mentioned one miracle at this stage: a private one, at a wedding, in Galilee, to which Judean pharisees were presumably not invited. 

So: John's listeners can't be hearing this story for the first time. They already know of Jesus as a miracle-worker; they take it for granted that it he has been doing miracles "off-stage" and that learned Pharisees would be expected to have heard of them. 

Nicodemus's word for miracle, incidentally, is semeion, "a sign", where Mark generally uses dunamis "a (work of) power".

Nicodemus says that Jesus must have come from God and that God must be with him with him. Jesus answer seems to contradict him. You say that I am a teacher sent from God; you say that I am a miracle worker because God is with me. But you are mistaken. No mere teacher can be said to have been sent from God and no mere man can be said to have God with him. The Kingdom of God is something which no human can see. He says "no man has the power to see it". 

No human being can perceive the reign of God. Unless...

Unless that person has been "born from above"; "born all over again". 

Even if you have never heard of Nicodemus, you know that Christians have a thing about being born again. People used to talk about "born-again-Christians" as if they were a specific sub-class. The term doesn't seem to have existed before 1970, but by 1980, being a bornagainChristian was the in-thing. When I first came across the expression, I took it to mean a person who was raised in a Christian community, fell away from his faith, but re-embraced it as an adult, at a deeper and more committed level. Copywriters took it to mean "with a renewed interest in": he's a born again comic book reader, a born again whiskey drinker. A lot of people simply used it to mean "a religious person who makes a great deal of fuss about it." Catholics are devout; protestants are staunch; Christians are born again. Jews are observant. I don't know what Muslims are: fanatical, I suppose. When Cliff Richard told one of his musical associates that he was a born again Christian they replied "So what? I'm a born again Jew -- bubala." 

But this is clearly not what John means. On no possible view is Jesus telling Nicodemus to re-embrace his faith at a more committed level. 

William Blake mentions the story of Nicodemus in his rambling poem the Everlasting Gospel. He takes John to be contrasting Jesus's anarchic spirituality with that of the rule-bound Pharisee. He puts John's story alongside Luke's about the boy Jesus disobeying his parents. See how much Jesus cared about rule-following?

When the rich learned pharisee

Came to consult him secretly

Upon his heart with iron pen

He wrote Ye Must Be Born Again.

I don't know where the "iron pen" came from. I suppose not that many things rhyme with Again. Not many things rhyme with Jesus, either: Blake is one of only two poets I can think of to go with "please us". [*]

Nicodemus saith unto him,

"How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb

and be born?"

Jesus answered,

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee,

except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,

he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh;

and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Marvel not that I said unto thee, 

Ye must be born again."

"Marvel not." Don't be surprised. I haven't said anything very remarkable.

Nicodemus doesn't know what Jesus means. He double-checks that he isn't talking literally. "A person can't go back into his Mummy's tummy, can he?" This happens a lot in John: Jesus says something obscure and esoteric, and his listeners take him grotesquely literally. 

Jesus seems, at some level, to be talking about baptism. Mark's John the Baptist said that he baptised with water; but that his successor would baptise with the holy spirit. (Matthew says "with the holy spirit and fire".) I think we are supposed to remember this when Jesus talks about being born of water and the spirit.

But John the Baptist's baptism was about washing: a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus appears to be talking about procreation: to perceive the rule of God you need to be born of water and spirit. Evangelical Christians do tend to see baptism in this way: initiation, rebirth -- being born-again. That is why they prefer total-immersion to sprinkling. Being pushed under the water and coming up out of it works pretty well as a birth-symbol; sprinkling water on someone's head feels much more like cleaning all the bad stuff away. But maybe "getting spiritually cleaned up" and "being born all over again" are different ways of saying the same thing?

John's Jesus doesn't seem to be particularly interested in cleaning Nicodemus up; he doesn't talk about his sins. He seems to be saying that there are, or are going to be, two distinct kinds of human: the ones made of flesh (because their mothers were made of flesh) and the ones made of spirit (because their mothers were made of spirit). And only these spirit children can see, or perceive, or understand this thing called the kingdom, or reign, of God. Perhaps when Nicodemus goes for the literal, physical, and rather silly meaning of "born again" as opposed to a deeper, metaphysical, spiritual one is what shows that he can't yet perceive God's kingdom? 

"The wind bloweth where it listeth

and thou hearest the sound thereof

but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth:

so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

The same Greek word, we have to keep reminding ourselves, does for air, breath, spirit and wind. It is astonishingly unhelpful of our Bibles to translate pneumas as "wind" at the beginning of the sentence and "spirit" at the end: because it introduces an unnecessary non-sequitur into the saying. The wind blows where it wants: that's what people whose parents are the wind are like. The spirit breathes where it wants: that's what people whose parents are the spirit are like.

Mark's Jesus talked in parables. The kingdom of heaven is like a careless farmer throwing seeds around without caring where they land. And it's also like a man who dropped seeds outside his house and was surprised when plants appeared. And it's also like mighty giant redwoods growing out of tiny, powdery seeds. The disciples don't always grok the meaning, but they understand that they are parables. They never say "So you want us to quit fishing and go into agriculture?"

John's Jesus certainly uses figures of speech: but they work quite differently from Mark's parables. You could imagine something called the Parable of the Air: "The Kingdom of God is like this: a man heard the wind blowing around -- but he didn't know where it had come from or where it was going." But it would be quite a different thing from what Jesus actually says to Nicodemus. He isn't drawing an analogy: "The children of the spirit are in this one particular respect like the wind". He isn't using the the wind as a teaching aid, an illustration -- "if you want to get your head round the idea of the children of the spirit, then thinking about the wind might help you." He isn't painting a grotesque and exaggerated picture so the message sticks in the listener's mind. He seems to be pointing out a connection which really exists; showing how things actually are. Looking through a physical phenomenon and seeing an eternal truth behind it. 

Of course the spirit-children are wind-like. That's their nature.

C.S. Lewis's friend Owen Barfield thought that the linguistic unity of pneumas pointed to a conceptual unity. There was a time when humans perceived breath as being the same as air and air as being the same as spirit. So pneumas doesn't sometimes mean breath and sometimes mean spirit: it always means breath-air-spirit-wind. The breath-air-spirit-wind blows where it chooses: that's what it's like for people whose parents are the spirit-wind-air-breath. Flesh gives birth to flesh; breath-wind-air-spirit gives birth to breath-wind-air-spirit. Unless you are born of water and breath-air-wind-spirit you can't perceive God. 

What are people whose mothers are the spirit, the air, the breath like? 

The answer, my friends....

Nicodemus answered and said unto him,

"How can these things be?"

Jesus answered and said unto him,

"Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

Verily, verily, I say unto thee

We speak that we do know,

and testify that we have seen;

and ye receive not our witness.

If I have told you earthly things,

and ye believe not,

how shall ye believe,

if I tell you of heavenly things?

And no man hath ascended up to heaven,

but he that came down from heaven,

even the Son of man which is in heaven."

"How can these things happen?" asks Nicodemus: how do these things have the power (that word again) to be done. These things must refer to what Jesus has been talking about in the previous paragraph. How can people possibly be born all over again? How can people possibly become children of the spirit with the attributes of the wind?

I find these verses quite perplexing. It isn't clear in what sense Jesus has told Nicodemus, or anyone else, of purely terrestrial matters; and it isn't clear in what sense Nicodemus has not believed them. It would make more sense to say "I have spoken of heavenly things and you crassly assumed I was talking about earthly things." And that isn't what he says. It is hard to understand why Jesus is surprised by Nicodemus's incredulity. All this talk of rebirth and spiritual children is, on any view, highly esoteric and novel: can Jesus really be implying that a learned Pharisee ought to know it already?

The clue may possibly be in the fact that the first "ye" is plural: the New International Version helpfully renders it as "you people". "WE speak of what we know and testify to what WE have seen, but YOU PEOPLE do not hear our message." My first thought is that Jesus is treating Nicodemus as representative of the Pharisees, or of the Judeans in general. This knowledge is available, in your scriptures, but you Pharisees have been entirely unable to perceive the deeper meaning. But the logic of the passage makes me think that "we" refers to "we children of the spirit" and "you people" refers to "you children of the flesh." Jesus is not saying "Come on, you're a teacher, you should know this stuff already." It's more like "No; you flesh children don't understand this stuff. Only we spirit children can understand it." There is an earthly, fleshly way of understanding things; and you haven't even grasped that properly; so when I tell you the deeper, heavenly truths they are going to blow your mind.

I think Jesus must be saying something along these lines. Because in answer to Nicodemus actual question he takes an obscure passage in the book of Numbers and reveals that it has a hidden meaning. 

"and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness

even so must the Son of Man be lifted up

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish

but have eternal life"

The Isrealites are wandering in the Wilderness. They have fallen out with God, again. God is cross with them, again. He sends a plague of snakes to wipe them out, again. YHWH spends a lot of the first five books of the Bible nearly wiping out the chosen people. To smooth things over, Moses makes a big metal snake and hangs it on a pole. As one does. He declares that people who look at the toy snake will be cured of snake bite. 

It sounds worryingly like sympathetic magic: the kind of thing Pharoah's wizards would have got up to. Some seven hundred years later the snake itself was destroyed by King Hezekiah when he rediscovered the Torah, and banned idol worship. Apparently some people had been worshiping it. These Jews, eh?

So: the magic snake-bite curing snake is, at some level, Jesus. (He says Son of Man, but I don't think that we can be in any doubt that son-of-the-human is an oblique way of talking about himself.) Specifically, the act of looking at the snake is like the act of believing in Jesus. People who looked at the snake didn't die of snakebite. People who believe in Jesus don't die, full stop. 

Mark gradually reveals a Messianic Secret. Jesus talks about kingdom, and the Gospel, and the Son of Man, and leaves us surprised and confused when his tomb seems to be empty. John lays Jesus Unique Selling Point on the first page. Clergyman love to tell us that "eternal life" is something spiritual, that "eternal" describes the quality of life, not its duration. But King James was right to go with "everlasting". What people who believe in the raised up Son of Man get is zoen aionion: life-perpetual. 

Step right up, folks. Believe in Jesus and you will live forever.

The "lifting up" of the bronze snake -- putting it on a pole -- is meant to make us think of the "lifting up" of Jesus -- putting him on a cross. You occasionally see religious paintings of crucified serpents for that reason. But it also means "lifted up" in the sense of "exalted" and "set on high". It is quite possible to push the allegory further. The Israelites disobedience to God in the desert represents Adam and Eve's disobedience to God in the Garden of Eden. The deadly snakes represent the punishment meted out on Adam. Mortality: lost access to the Tree of Life. So looking at Jesus on the cross represents the removal of the consequences of Adam's sin. The snake itself doesn't excuse the Israelites bad behaviour. But being sorry doesn't remove the consequence. First the Israelites repent; then Moses exalts the bronze artwork to defang the real snakes.

But I should be inclined to keep things simpler than that. The snake and Jesus are both examples of amazing supernatural saving-things. The original question was "What does it mean to be born again? How on earth can someone become a child of the Spirit." And the answer seems to be "Remember the story about how Moses saved all the people who were dying of poison with a magic snake? That's how."

And then comes the biggie. It isn't clear if Jesus is speaking, or if John is amplifying what he just said. And it probably doesn't matter very much, either.

for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life

for God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world

but that the world through him might be saved.

[CONTINUES]

[*]NOTE: 

Blake: "Had he been anti-Christ, aping Jesus, he'd have done anything to please us."

Leon Rosselson: "Why don't you sing something to please us, nothing nasty about Jesus".

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Why I Am Not Going To Write About The Gospel of Saint John (i)

I went to college to study English Literature. I spent most of my time attending Christian Union Bible Study groups and playing Dungeons & Dragons.

This was rather ironic. Some of the Christian Union thought that Dungeons & Dragons players were Satanists. Most of the Dungeons & Dragons players thought the Christian Union were annoying holy rollers. Many of the Christian Union quite liked having bona fide devil worshippers on their corridors: it presented a bit of a challenge. Quite a lot of the Dungeons & Dragons players rather liked being accused of Satanism: it made us feel less nerdy and more edgy. I had a foot in both camps: one of the C.U once said that I was salt-like. 

The two groups had more in common than either of them would have cared to admit. Earnest young people, squashed into college rooms, neglecting their degrees, sitting on beds or on the floor; fighting forces of evil which no-one else believed in. With a healthy respect for Clerics. A facilitator, nose pressed into a sacred text, directing the exploration, trying to give everyone a fair chance to contribute. Cold mugs of instant coffee. Arguments about minor points of interpretation. Bitterness and schisms.

Spiritual warfare, the whole armour of god, that old dragon Satan. The literal Holy Grail, the Sword of the Spirit. Actual Super-Powers. I am surprised that the Geek/Evangelical axis was not more pronounced. Tolkien of course was himself a Christian. Or, at any rate, a Catholic. I am not sure if that counted.

A Bible study group is a very particular thing. But then, an English literature seminar is a very particular thing as well. A Level English was a kind of bird-watching expedition, in which you explored a Text and crossed similes and metaphors and onomatopoeias off your check list, before stalking the Fully Rounded Character. (Does that make it more like train spotting?) I am told that school children today hunt rarer birds called Fronted Adverbials. Degree English was more about themes and structures and approaches to the text. You are supposed to be interested in what other people have said about a book rather than your own response to it. College English could be defined as the study of books about books: Critical Theory is of course the study of books about books about books. 

Bible Study Groups had their own approach to the Canon. You take a whole chapter of the Bible: a chapter, preferably, of a fairly obscure book. (If you've been in the Christian Union you certainly know your Colossians from your Nehemiah.) You take it in turns to read one verse out loud. And then each member of the group is encouraged to say what they think the passage meant to the people who read it first ("Jews" is the polite term.) And then what it means for Us-As-Christians. (This often involved stretching Old Testament texts so they are really about Jesus. Everything in the Bible is really about Jesus.) Then you tried to say how we should apply the passage to Our Lives Today. And finally you prayed, out loud and specifically, about what you had just read. I never got the hang of that bit. I would have had no particular problem with publicly confessing my sins, but the whole father-god-please-bless-the-meeting-and-watch-over-our-sister-with-flu thing I found (and find) mortifying.

I am rather on board with C.S Lewis who said that his great spiritual moments were more likely to come when studying a difficult theological tome, dictionary or concordance on his desk, cup of tea in his hand, pipe between his teeth. 

I named a Dungeons & Dragons fanzine after one of C.S Lewis's characters. You probably knew that.

I don't know if English Literature teachers thought that writing "irony" in the margins helped one understand Miss Austen's stories; or if Miss Austen wrote stories mainly so students could write "irony" in the margins of them. I think that some Christian Union cell group facilitators really did think that the main reason Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations was so that the Christian Union could have a bible study group about it. One or two Dungeons & Dragons players honestly thought that fighting 2D6 1D8HP Orcs (AC 4) was a way of interacting with Jungian archetypes; channelling the power of Story, descending into the pit of purgatory and confronting our dark sides. Come to think of it, this was probably what the Christian Union had in mind when they said we were Satanists. They actually probably had a point. 

But the process was more important than the object. Writing good lit crit was more important than enjoying Troilus and Cressida. Fortunately. Having a powerful Bible Study Meeting was more important that actually understanding the book of Ezekiel. And pushing metal figures around sheets of squared paper was obviously the most important thing in the world. 

The activities were good improving uplifting civilising spiritualising things to do. The texts themselves were only a prop.

I hardly ever played actual D&D, incidentally, but most of the punters won't have heard of CoC or Jorune. By no means all the Christian Union believed in the Satanic Panic, although some undoubtedly did. Some of them definitely thought that C.S Lewis wasn't a true Christian because of the Emeth thing. 

But this next bit is true. 

One week, the subject of our Bible study group was the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs is in the Old Testament. It is supposed to have been written by Solomon. Who was Wise. 

When we think of Solomon being Wise we probably think of the story of the baby. He's shrewd; he's clever; he second guesses the two mothers; he tricks the infiltrator into giving herself away; but he understands what it means to be a Mum. However, in the Ancient World, wisdom seems primarily to mean Common Sense. The wisdom of Solomon consists of thirty one chapters of common sense, and it's excruciating. Walk with the wise and become wise; walk with fools and become foolish. A wicked messenger brings trouble but an honest envoy brings healing. A wise son hears his father's instructions; a foolish one ignores his father's rebukes. Very true, doubtless, but not very inspiring to base a guided meditation on. 

So we are struggling a bit to find out how any of this Applies To Our Life today and in what way it is really all about Jesus. "Wisdom" does appear as a personified figure at the beginning of the book; calling out to people in markets and "the chief place of concourse" and complaining that people "set at nought all my counsel and would know of my reproof". So maybe Wisdom is Jesus, and Jesus is therefore the subject of the book? But Solomon annoyingly presents Wisdom as female, which would have taken us down paths we probably wanted to avoid. I was very much hoping that the study hour would be up before we needed to hear everyone's detailed opinion on 13:24.

And then one of the people in the group: a very nice, open faced young Caribbean woman who was approximately seventy six times more pious, spiritual and Jesus-like than I am ever likely to be, volunteered. 

"Oh, this is all very well, but can't we do something more spiritual? Maybe we could all read John 3 instead?"

Which is why I don't think I could ever write about John's Gospel. 

[CONTINUES]

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MARK 16

there were also women looking on afar off:
among whom was Mary Magdalene,
and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome;
who also, when he was in Galilee,
followed him and ministered unto him
and many other women
which came up with him unto Jerusalem.

There is an epilogue.

It introduces four — arguably five — new characters. This is not a natural way of telling a story. But it’s the only way Mark can tell it. The hero is dead. The supporting cast have all run away.

Jesus screams. We cut to the temple. The holy curtain is hanging in shreds. We cut back to Golgotha. Jesus is dead. The Centurion sneers. And as the lights come back on, the camera slowly pans to three characters, in the background, who haven’t been mentioned before.

Of course, they are women.

There are always women in the background. Ministering; it says, like Peter’s mother-in-law. Serving. Doing the practical stuff. They had to eat didn’t they? And I suppose someone had to launder the clothes. And when the big guys with the famous names have run away, the women are still there. To clean up the mess.

Mary Magdalene we know nothing about. Her first name was Mary and her last name was Magdalene. Anyone who refers to her as “Mary the Magdalene" or "Mary of Magdala" is seeing stuff in the text which isn't actually there.

We know even less about the other Mary. She had two sons: James “the less” and Joses. Jesus definitely had two disciples called James: James the Son of Zebedee and James the Son of Alphaeus. Zebedee's son is one of the inner circle; so maybe Alphaeus's son was known as the Less Important James? But in that case why not call his mother “Mary the Wife of Alphaeus”? James the Less could just as well mean Little James or Young James. We don’t know.

It would be nice if one of the women in the epilogue turned out to be the most famous Mary of all. It would be nice to think that she had made up with her son since since she called him a crazy man back in Capernaum. Maybe a scribe wrote “Mary the Mother of Joses” when he meant to write “Mary the Mother of Jesus”? But Mark was written in Greek and Iostos / Iesous is a much less plausible typo.

Iostos is Joseph and Joseph was the name of Jesus’s earth-dad and Jesus definitely had a brother called James so maybe when Mark writes "Mary the Mother of Joseph and James…" he expects us to say "…And Jesus as well!"

Maybe he does. And maybe he doesn’t. We just don’t know.

Salome we don’t know one single thing about. Christians have decided she was the wife of Zebedee and therefore the mother of Big James. James and John’s Mum gets a walk-on in Matthew, but we don't know what she was called. Salome was an incredibly common name.

Three women. Two called Mary, one not. One identified by her children; one by her surname; one not identified at all. That’s all we have to go on.

The camera turns to them. And then it turns away again. We haven’t quite got to their part of the story yet.

and now when the even was come
because it was the preparation
that is the day before the sabbath,
Joseph of Arimathaea, an honourable counseller
which also waited for the kingdom of God
came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus.
and Pilate marvelled if he were already dead
and calling unto him the centurion
he asked him whether he had been any while dead.
and when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.




Jesus has died quickly. Pilate is surprised. Enter Joseph of Arimathea.

And exit Joseph of Arimathea, almost immediately.

If you read a certain kind of literature you know all about Joseph. He collected the blood of Jesus at the crucifixion. He hosted the Last Supper. He brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury. He was Jesus’s Uncle and a tin-merchant and used to visit Priddy (where they hold the folk festival). His descendents were the Fisher Kings.

Mark tells us nothing about him. We don’t know where Arimathea was, or indeed if there ever was such a place.

Rich guy. Probably on the Sanhedrin. Secret follower of Jesus. Asks Pilate for the body. Pilate hands it over. Performs a hasty funeral and disappears from history.

Why does Pilate surrender the body of Jesus to Joseph? Because he doesn’t want to antagonize the people by leaving a dead body rotting on a pole during the festival? Or precisely in order to antagonize them. “I couldn’t stop you lot lynching him; but you can’t stop me giving him an honourable burial.” Or maybe Pilate was just a decent chap who thought that even criminals deserved a decent funeral. We are told that Albert Pierrepoint was rather fussy about how the authorities disposed of his clients after he had finished with them.

and he bought fine linen
and took him down
and wrapped him in the linen
and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock
and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre
and Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses
beheld where he was laid.

Joseph bought the linen-cloth specially. Mark thinks that is important: something we need to know. The fine linen is sidoni: the same word Mark used for the clothes that Naked Guy lost in the garden of Gethsemane.

Mark has abandoned any pretence that Jesus literally died on Passover: Joseph is concerned about the Sabbath, but goes out and buys a linen shroud on the holy day. The women have been to the spice-market, too.

Joseph wraps Jesus in the cloth.

He put him in a sepulchre. Most modern translations say “tomb”: if we wanted to be literal we should probably say “memorial”. He rolls a stone in front of the door. He must have been a big guy. He can move a stone by himself which three grown-up ladies couldn’t move together.

And that’s it: Joseph’s part of the story is over.

And we pull back again. The three mysterious ladies are still in the background. Watching.

and when the sabbath was past,
Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome,
had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.
and very early in the morning the first day of the week,
they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.
and they said among themselves,
“Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?”
and when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away
for it was very great
and entering into the sepulchre,
they saw a young man sitting on the right side,
clothed in a long white garment;
and they were affrighted.
and he saith unto them,
be not affrighted:
“ye seek Jesus of Nazareth,
which was crucified:
he is risen;
he is not here:
behold the place where they laid him.
but go your way,
tell his disciples 

and Peter
that he goeth before you into Galilee
there shall ye see him
as he said unto you”
And they went out quickly
and fled from the sepulchre
for they trembled and were amazed
neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid…

And this is where Mark's story ends.

Dot. Dot. Dot.

The disciples ran away. Some women stayed. So the women first heard the news.

Jesus had no truck with the prejudices of his day. Women were crucial to his ministry and it’s silly that some churches still have a problem with women taking on pastoral roles. Mary, Mary and Salome were in a very real sense Apostles to the Apostles. Mary Magdalene became the Holy Grail…

Yes. All that. Maybe.

But also, this:

The people who were, or should have, expected the Resurrection ran away. Jesus told the disciples that he was coming back. He told them five times, at least. But Judas defected. Peter recanted. Everyone else scattered.

What happened next — according to Mark?

Not according to Matthew or John or Luke. Not according to Robert Powell or the Ladybird Book of Jesus. Not according to the Easter Morning liturgy. According to Mark.

Imagine yourself reading this book, for the first time, on what would have been Jesus’ seventieth birthday.

Dot. Dot. Dot.

What happened next?

No-one knows.

Or at any rate, Mark doesn’t know. Or if he did know, he didn’t want us to know. People who understand Greek tell us he broke off mid-sentence. Your Bible might have some verses after this: it may very well print them in [square brackets]. That’s because different manuscripts have different endings and the different endings are written in different styles and they are pretty much just summaries of John, Matthew and Luke. But the two oldest Bibles in existence break off at this point.

Dot. Dot. Dot.

It has to be girls who go to the tomb. The boy disciples, the eleven, were expecting to Jesus to come back to life. Because he told them that he would: over and over again. The three women are not expecting Jesus to wake up or stand up. They are expecting to embalm a dead body.

They are expecting to anoint him: which is probably a good thing to do with a horribly mutilated corpse, but also, ironically, the appropriate thing to do with a dead Messiah.

The people of this time practiced burial and reburial: after a year or so the bones of a dead person were exhumed and reinterred in ossuaries. We shouldn’t think of the tomb as a single cave with a single bier for a single body: it was more likely to a mausoleum or a morgue, with spaces for a number of burials and an entrance that could be sealed and unsealed. That is why the young man has to point out the place where Jesus was laid.

Yes; it is a young man.

Pretend you are reading this story for the first time.

Would you read this and say “Oh, when Marks says ‘they saw a young man in a white shirt’ he obviously means ‘two angels came down from heaven and caused an earthquake’”?

Or would you say “Oh. Some other disciple got here first.”?

Would you, perhaps, say “Oh, it’s naked guy from Gethsemane: I knew he was going to turn out to be of some importance later on?”

I think that if you were reading the story for the first time, you might say: someone got to the tomb first. And it must have been a guy, because he was strong enough to move Joseph’s stone. And that person found that Jesus’ body wasn’t there. So he waited for the other disciples to come. But they never did. Only some women.

So: Mysterious Young Guy says to Mysterious Women. “Of course his body isn’t here. Haven’t you been paying attention? He's going to meet you all back home Galilee. Go and remind the disciples. Go and remind Peter in particular. And do call him Peter. He can have his name back. That’s important.”

Dot. Dot. Dot.

The women panic. They run away. The don’t pass the message on. They vanish from the story.

They never tell no-one, so no-one never knowed.

Dot. Dot. Dot.

That is the story. That is not Matthew’s story or Luke’s story or John’s story, and it isn’t the church’s story. But it is Mark’s story.

The boys ran away. The girls heard that Jesus had come back to life. But they never passed on the message. The disciples were meant to meet Jesus back in the Galilee. But they never went. They missed the appointment.

Dot. Dot. Dot.

Matthew changes the story. The young man is now an angel who has come down from heaven and created an earthquake. He is waiting for the women outside the tomb. But there is still an odd emphasis on his clothing: white as snow. The women run out of the tomb to tell the disciples, but they bump into Jesus himself, who repeats the angels instructions: tell the disciples to meet me in Galilee. The disciples do indeed go back to Galilee; where they do indeed see Jesus: he tells them to pass his teachings on and then goes back to heaven.

Luke changes the story. The young man in a white robe is now two men in dazzlingly shiny garments. The women go and tell the disciples straight away. Peter checks out the tomb, and what do you think convinces him that the story is true? Linen cloth. Eventually, they all see Jesus: the meet him one last time in Bethany and he goes back to heaven. But they don’t return to Galilee. They stay in Jerusalem. Jesus specifically tells them to.

John changes the story. A group of women go to the tomb and encounter no young men and no angels: only — what do you think? — linen garments, folded up. They go and get John and Peter. John goes into the tomb but Peter doesn’t. John is convinced that Jesus has come back to life but Peter less so. Mary stays behind and sees the resurrected Jesus. Then all the disciples apart from Thomas see him. Then Thomas does. Everyone drifts back to Galilee and take up fishing again, where they see Jesus one last time.

But we are reading Mark’s version.

Dot. Dot. Dot.

“And that is what happened; forty years ago. And only now is the truth coming out. Jesus told Peter and Peter told me and I am telling you. He knew all this would happen. The thousands of bodies hung up on crosses. Pigs in the Holy of Holies. The temple reduced to a pile of rubble. Jesus warned us in advance. And he said that when that happened — that would be the proof that he had gone back to his Papa, and his Papa had put him in charge of the universe. And he’ll be back. Any day now. So hang in there. Don’t fumble the ball this time. Don’t fall asleep like you did in Gethsemane. Don’t say you never met Jesus. Don’t lose your shirt and run away naked. Don’t fail to pass on the message. We have another another chance. Don’t blow it….”

That, it seems to me, is Mark’s understanding of the Gospel. A secret that got out; a message that didn’t get passed on. It is how we would read Mark’s Gospel if we were truly reading it for the…

Mark 15

and straightway in the morning 

the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council 

and bound Jesus 

and carried him away 

and delivered him to Pilate 

and Pilate asked him, 

“art thou the King of the Jews?” 

and he answering said unto him, 

“thou sayest it” 

and the chief priests accused him of many things: 

but he answered nothing. 

and Pilate asked him again, saying, 

“answerest thou nothing? 

behold how many things they witness against thee” 

but Jesus yet answered nothing 

so that Pilate marvelled

now at that feast he released unto them one prisoner 

whomsoever they desired

and there was one named Barabbas 

which lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him 

who had committed murder in the insurrection 

and the multitude crying aloud 

began to desire him to do as he had ever done unto them. 

but Pilate answered them, saying, 

"will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?" 

for he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy. 

but the chief priests moved the people 

that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. 

and Pilate answered and said again unto them, 

"what will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews?" 

and they cried out again, "crucify him" 

then Pilate said unto them, 

why, what evil hath he done? 

and they cried out the more exceedingly, "crucify him" 

and so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, 

and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified. 

I am trying to make sense of Mark as a storyteller. But this part of Mark’s story does not make sense to me. 

Mark has painted a picture of Jesus’s conflict with the Temple. Mark has shown Jesus blaspheming in front of the supreme court. I understand why Mark thinks the Priests wanted Jesus dead. 

But now a new character enters the story. You probably have a picture of him in your head. He’s dressed in a Roman toga with a wreath on his head; or perhaps dressed as a Roman legionnaire, with a face oddly reminiscent of Michael Palin. (Be honest.) A brooding figure; prone to symbolic gestures, who sings one enigmatic song in the first act. 

Mark doesn’t introduce Pilate. If we were really reading the story for the first time it wouldn’t be completely clear who he was: clearly a judge or figure of authority; someone whose power the Jews reluctantly acknowledge; with the power to have a man killed. 

Next comes someone called Bar-Abbas. We have seen that “Abba” is what little kids call their fathers, so he name means Son of His Papa. I guess that means he was a bastard. He’s some kind of revolutionary or terrorist; but here Mark is strangely evasive. He says that he has been imprisoned with some rebels; and that those rebels killed someone during an the uprising. He doesn’t say that Dad’s-Son himself is a revolutionary or a murderer. About the failed revolution he tells us nothing. 

And then there is a crowd. Outside Pilate’s residence, early in the morning — after cock-crow but before 9AM — on (allegedly) Passover morning. Where did they come from? Where do they go? And why does Pilate involve then in events? 

Pilate calls Jesus “King of the Jews”. He uses the phrase four times, and puts a sign “King of the Jews” above the Cross. He has heard of Jesus; he knows that people are calling him Messiah; and he has a pretty shrewd idea about that word means. But he doesn’t think that letting people call you Anointed amounts to a capital offence. If he did the trial would have been very short. 

We know what happens. It is the maybe the most famous story in the world. Pilate asks Jesus if he is King. Niether Pilate nor the Priests take “You say so” to be an admission of guilt. If they did the trial would have been very short. The Priests run through their charge list; presumably the same accusations they made an hour ago in the High Priest’s house. Jesus doesn’t answer. Pilate repeats the question about whether or not Jesus is king: still no answer. 

And suddenly, from nowhere, there is a crowd. (An ochlos: a multitude; a rabble; a riot.) And they petition Pilate to grant an amnesty to a prisoner. Apparently this was a local custom. Pilate offers to release Jesus: the crowd ask him to release Daddy’s-Son. Pilate acquiesces; and hands Jesus over — that word again — to be executed. Without pronouncing him guilty of anything. 

What does Mark think just happened? 

There is no reason to assume that Barabas is a thug. He might be an heroic figure. He could also be a hard-luck case, on death row because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. People do get killed by despotic governments because they happened to be adjacent to the place where a bad thing happened. "Common purpose" they call it. "Let him have it, Chris".  

There must have been a plan for a mass crucifixion. There are other rebels in prison: at least two people go to their deaths at the same time as Jesus. No-one suggests that Pilate might release one of the “two bandits”; no-one suggests that he free the other rebels. Barabbas is a special case. 

Is the crowd a delegation of Barabbas’s friends and supporters? Perhaps they have come specifically to try to claim the amnesty on his behalf? In which case they wouldn’t know who Jesus was: it's a foregone conclusion they’ll ask Pilate to free the popular freedom fighter, not the religious nutter from up north.

So why does Pilate go through the motions of offering to release Jesus? He understands that the Priests have a grievance against Jesus. Perhaps he has a Machiavellian plan to put the priests in his debt by killing their enemy for them? But he doesn’t have a good legal basis to proceed. 

So perhaps he is being sneaky. Perhaps he is saying “Let’s put it to a vote. And let’s ask these good people who have specifically come to ask for the release of Bar-Abbas. We are going to commute one sentence today: shall it perchance be this popular and unfortunate local hero; or shall it be this Northern preacher who only arrived in town three days ago. Oh, really? Is that your final word? Then I am afraid there is nothing I can do about it. It’s out of my hands.” 

This makes some sense. But the story, as Mark tells it, is very obscure. 

and the soldiers led him away into the hall, 

called Praetorium 

and they call together the whole band. 

and they clothed him with purple 

and platted a crown of thorns 

and put it about his head, 

and began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews! 

and they smote him on the head with a reed 

and did spit upon him 

and bowing their knees worshipped him. 

and when they had mocked him 

they took off the purple from him 

and put his own clothes on him 

and led him out to crucify him 

It sometimes happens in a fairy tale that the Prince disguises himself as a peasant or a servant. And if the tale is told in the form of a pantomime, there will likely be a scene in which the nagging old cook or the cruel school mistress says “Who do you think you are, the King of England?” or “Well, just sit down and eat your gruel, your Majesty”. (Cakes often get burned at the same time.) 

The terrible climax of Mark’s story is full of this kind of irony. Pilate has called Jesus “Jewish King” five times; the soldiers now take up the joke. Jew-King, Jew-King! They even dress him up as a carnival King and stage a mock coronation. Religious artwork usually depicts the crown of thorns as an instrument of torture; but I am not sure how you would go about plaiting a thorny branch. Maybe it just means “a silly fake crown like kids would wear if they were playing kings and queens”. 

We are not supposed to think “How ironic! They are calling him a King in jest, but if they but knew it, he really is secretly a king.” We are supposed to think: “This is King Jesus: this is what he looks like. The first are last and the last are first. He is the very last. Being hurt and spat on and laughed is the ultimate glorification.” 

and they compel one Simon, a Cyrenian 

who passed by 

coming out of the country 

the father of Alexander and Rufus 

to bear his cross 

Simon of Cyrene is another mysterious, random figure. Some people say that the sons of the man who carried the cross must have been afforded a special status in the ancient Church. There would be no point is calling Simon “the father of Alexander and Rufus” if Mark’s readers didn’t know who Alexander and Rufus were. That might be true: but it’s no help to us

Cyrene is in Libya. This shows that race is no barrier to love: Simon, an African, helped Jesus, a Jew, when no-one else would. 

Or else it proves that white people have always thought it is the job of black people to carry their stuff.

and they bring him unto the place Golgotha 

which is, being interpreted, the place of a skull. 

The Hebrew word gulgolet mostly means “head”: for example in the sense of a “head count”. But it sometimes means “skull”: when Samson crushes the skull of one of his enemies, he crushes their gulgolet. Mark says that the name Golgotha means Kraniou Topos: place of a skull. (Compare our word cranium.) The Latin translators left Golgotha as it was, but kraniou topos became calvariae locus, which is why you still get churches, hills and sentimental hymns locating Jesus death at a place called Calvary. 

Mark does not say that Kraniou Topos is a hill, green or otherwise. 

and they gave him to drink wine 

mingled with myrrh 

but he received it not 

We sometimes read that a condemned man is offered a blindfold but refuses to wear it: I am told that modern American prisons have the charming custom of offering inmates valium before killing them. Jesus told his disciples in the upper room that he would never drink wine again: Mark wants us to know that he kept his vow.

and when they had crucified him, 

they parted his garments, 

casting lots upon them, 

what every man should take

We don’t seem to be able to get away from clothes. Perhaps Mark wants to allude to; but not dwell on, a secondary but still unpleasant fact. Jesus is not merely bound to stake: he is on public display mother-naked. 

In her novel To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf famously relegates the First World War to a parenthesis. Mark puts the climax of his story in a subordinate clause: it is as if we look away from the stake and look at the soldiers instead. They take him to the killing ground. They offer him a sedative. And after they have executed him, they take his clothes. It’s as if you had said: They went for a nice walk in the park. The roses were pretty. He had a strawberry lolly, she had an ice-cream. After he had murdered her, he put the wrappers in the bin. 

It is not at all unlikely that an execution party should be allowed to keep the condemned man’s possessions. We don’t need to imagine them shooting craps for Jesus’ robe: quite possibly they flipped a denarius or just did the Roman equivalent of chartam, forfex, lapis. But the casting of lots is a callback to the Old Testament: to another one of King David’s hymns. A man — we don’t know who — is going though his ultimate time of trouble; rejected by everyone for no reason: 

all my bones are on display 

people stare and gloat over me 

they divide my clothes among them 

and cast lots for my garment 

A majority of Christians would say that this is simply and straightforwardly an oracle; describing the exact circumstances of the death of Jesus a thousand years before it happened. David looked into a magic mirror, saw the death of his remote descendant, described it in a poem; and set it to a tune called the Doe of the Morning. The more militant kind of sceptic would say that the Psalm came first and the story came afterwards. There was no Jesus and no crucifixion: Mark’s Gospel is a patchwork of Old Testament quotes. 

The truth lies somewhere in between, as the truth usually does. Maybe the Romans really played a game of chance to see who took Jesus’ clothes and maybe they didn’t: it doesn’t matter either way. What does matter is that Mark made a conscious choice to write about the crucifixion of Jesus in the words of the old, old poem. It’s like a spiritual hyperlink. "When you read this story", says Mark, "I want you to think of the twenty second Psalm."  

Would Roman torturers really have nailed their victims to stakes? Or would they have just tied them up and left them to the weather and the insects? Certainly, Mark doesn’t mention nails. If they did use nails, they would have gone through ankles and wrists. But almost every Christian painting and almost every Christian play shows Jesus with nails in his hands and feet. That comes, not from Mark’s text, but from David’s poem: 

dogs surround me 

a pack of vultures encircles me 

they pierce my hands and my feet

and it was the third hour, and they crucified him. 

and the superscription of his accusation was written over 

THE KING OF THE JEWS. 

and with him they crucify two thieves; 

the one on his right hand, and the other on his left 

A week ago, James and John asked if they could be placed on Jesus left hand and right hand when he became King. And here he is hanging from a stake, half-dead, with a sign above his head saying "this is what happens to so-called Jew-Kings". 

And who are on his left and his right? Two other naked dying guys. 

People at the top are at the bottom. You want to be with me in my glory? You don’t what that means. But now you do. 

and they that passed by railed on him, 

wagging their heads, and saying, 

“Ah, thou that destroyest the temple, 

and buildest it in three days, 

save thyself, and come down from the cross.” 

likewise also the chief priests mocking 

said among themselves with the scribes, “He saved others; 

himself he cannot save. 

let Christ the King of Israel 

descend now from the cross, 

that we may see and believe.” 

and they that were crucified with him reviled him. 

The people who are mocking Jesus are the ones who happen to be passing by: the mob who were screaming for his blood outside Pilate’s palace have vanished from the story. Golgotha sounds as if it was by a public road: if you wanted to send a message about what happened to Jewish Kings, you probably wouldn’t put the stake at the top of a hill. Despite the sign, the passers-by seem to understand that Jesus is really being killed because he is the enemy of the temple. 

Mark is treating Psalm 22 pretty much as a shooting script. 

all they that see me laugh me to scorn: 

they shoot out the lip, 

they shake the head, saying, 

he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him 

let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. 

and when the sixth hour was come 

there was darkness over the whole land 

until the ninth hour. 

English teachers talk about the Pathetic Fallacy: writers have a tendency to make the natural world reflect the emotional state of their main character. Thunderstorms when he is sad; warm spring sunshine when he is in a good mood. Thomas Hardy does it all the time. It is such a cliche that modern movies tend to go for the Antipathetic Fallacy: how many rainy weddings and sunny funerals have you seen? 

But when the hero is God it is not a fallacy. You’d expect his suffering to result in a supernatural darkness. 

Many people have spotted that the Jewish Passover runs on a lunar calendar: and Christians have decided that it is very important that Easter should be celebrated during a full moon. (The first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal equinox, since you asked.) Whatever happened on that Friday, it definitely was not an eclipse. 

and at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, 

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” 

which is, being interpreted, 

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” 

Anyone with a religious background knows that Jesus spoke five times from the cross. But those five “words” are a conflation of four different versions of the story. In Mark’s version, Jesus speaks only once. 

And we are still in the Psalms: “My god, my god why hast thou forsaken me” is the first line of Pslam 22. David’s poem ends with God coming to help the suffering man; or at least, with the hope that he will do so. So if Jesus died quoting the psalm, then he died crying out for God’s help — not despairing because God would not help him. 

But it is strange that he quotes it in Aramaic. If he had been quoting scripture, surely he would have quoted it either in Hebrew or in Greek? You would expect an Muslim to quote the Koran in Arabic or a Catholic to quote the Bible in Latin, not in a vernacular translation. So perhaps Jesus really did blurt out something desperate in his mother tongue? 

and some of them that stood by, 

when they heard it, said, 

“Behold, he calleth Elias” 

and one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, 

and put it on a reed, 

and gave him to drink, 

saying, “Let alone; 

let us see whether Elias will come to take him down” 

Elijah, Elijah, Elijah. 

John the Baptist was kind of like Elijah; many people thought Jesus literally was Elijah. The inner circle of disciples saw Jesus talking with Elijah. And some of the witnesses to his death thought that Jesus called for Elijah at the end. 

Just suppose. 

Jesus is dying: he screams out something in his own language. And the people present — either the ones who were paid to hurt him, or the ones who had turned up because they liked seeing people being hurt — decide to offer him a drink to give him a few second’s relief. (We are told that hangmen used to use softer ropes for their favourite murders.) Vinegar is not our condiment, of course: it just means cheap wine, very probably what a Roman soldier might have in his provisions pouch. A reed is just a rod or a stick. No-one actually thinks that Elijah is going to come down from heaven in a chariot of fire and rescue Jesus. It must be a cruel joke. Let’s see if Elijah comes: and then we can wait for Santa and the Tooth Fairy as well. 

Just suppose. Jesus really did call for Elijah. There was a close connection between the Son of Man and Elijah. Suppose he hoped, even at that moment, that God’s top prophet was going to come and save him and they could inaugurate the Messianic age side by side. 

Suppose Jesus' last words were “Elijah… Elijah…” And suppose Mark, unable to make sense of them, after four decades of mediation, decided that he must have been quoting an Aramaic version of an old Hebrew Psalm. 

and Jesus cried with a loud voice 

and gave up the ghost

The word is exepneusen. We have seen that pneuma is both “breath” and “spirit”; and that what Mark calls the pneuma haggio our Bible renders as “holy ghost”. So perhaps’ Jesus spirit departed his body at this moment. It’s even possible that the pneuma haggio, God’s dove, left him and went back to heaven through the hole in the sky. 

But the most probable explanation is the simplest one. Jesus expired. He breathed his last. He quit breathing. 

and the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom 

Mark is quite clear that this is the veil of the temple; not merely “one of the temple curtains”. He must surely mean the curtain that separated the innermost temple, where God lived, from the rest of the place. 

This is as close as Mark comes to providing a theology of the Crucifixion. He doesn’t say why or how. He just says that Jesus died: and the boundary between the sacred and the secular — or at any rate between the Holy and the Even More Holy — fell away. 

Evangelicals will tell us that this means that Jesus has torn down the barrier — sin — which separates Man from God. But in the light of everything else which Mark has said, I wonder if the primary meaning is simpler. The temple is over; the special office of the priests is ended. In a sense, Jesus did what he was accused of. He has destroyed the Temple. 

and when the centurion, 

which stood over against him, 

saw that he so cried out, 

and gave up the ghost, 

he said, 

"truly this man was the Son of God" 

“That he so cried out” seems to be a translator’s gloss. The Greek appears to say that Centurion said what he said “having see that thus he breathed his last”. He sees Jesus stop breathing: and he says that Jesus alethos — surely or certainly — was the Son of God. It’s the same word the serving woman used to Peter. Surely you were with him. You were with him, weren’t you? 

This is often taken as an upbeat ending: a ray of light in the desolation. But I am afraid it is one last twist of the knife. Everything in this chapter has been bitter and ironic. There is a sign over the cross. JEWISH KING. Pilate put it there, not because he thinks Jesus is king, but because he doesn’t. The Priests have asked him to prophesy to them, not because they think he is a prophet, but because they think he isn’t. The passers-by have challenged him to come down from the cross, not because they think he can, but because they think the can’t. And finally, his executioner says that he was the son of God: not because he thinks he is, but because he thinks he isn’t. 

A few hours ago, Jesus was praying: “Daddy: please get me out of this. But no, Daddy: please don’t answer that prayer.” Now he says "Jehovah! Why did you desert me?” screams, and dies. 

And in one way, that is the end of the story. It has to end like that; in complete desolation and despair; because that is the whole of the message. The high is the low. The big is the small. I can only be the highest by becoming the lowest. You will know that I am the ultimate king when I become the ultimate pariah. 

So naturally, that has to be the final line. 

“Yeah. Right. This you call the Son of God?” 

But that isn’t quite the end of the story. There is an epilogue. And the epilogue is the strangest thing in this very strange book. 

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