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Contradiction? Who Took Down Jesus' Body?


ficino

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I never noticed this before.

 

In Mark, Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate and asks that Jesus' body be released to him for burial. Pilate grants the corpse to Joseph. "And buying a shroud, having taken down the body, he [Joseph] wrapped him in the shroud and placed him in a tomb ..." Mark 15:46.

 

So where was Jesus' body when Joseph first took it? It was still up on the cross. This has to be its location, because "having taken down," καθελὼν, has the prefix kata-, which means "down." This is not just my interpretation. It's the tradition, giving rise to countless depictions in art of Joseph and others taking Jesus' corpse down from the cross.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_the_Cross

 

But as with other details, so too here, the Gospel of John gives a different story. In John 19:31-42, "the Jews" petition Pilate that the legs of the bodies of the crucified be broken and the bodies taken away, so that the bodies don't remain on the crosses on the sabbath, since that sabbath was a holiday. The soldiers go and do this to the two others who were crucified. When they come to Jesus, they see he's already dead, so they don't break his legs. One soldier pierces his side with a lance, and out comes blood and water. After this, Joseph asks Pilate for permission to take away the body of Jesus. "And Joseph came and took away, ἦρεν, his body," 19:38. And Nicodemus came w/ a huge amount of spices, and they bound Jesus' body with the spices and pieces of linen, etc.

 

John does not say that Joseph "took down" Jesus' body. John says Joseph "took away" Jesus' body. The verb used, ἦρεν, is the same verb as in the Jews' request that the bodies "be taken away" (19:31) so that they would not remain on the crosses during the holy day.

 

So in gJohn, where was Jesus' body when Joseph received it? John doesn't specify this, but it's clear that it was not still on the cross. It was the soldiers' job to take down the bodies from the crosses. And Joseph does not go first to Pilate, then to the cross, then take down the body, then dress it. In John, Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate AFTER the body has been taken down: "And after these things," 19:38.

 

I think this is a contradiction. Mark has Joseph get permission from Pilate to take the body down from the cross. John has the soldiers go to take down all three men from the crosses, and Joseph only comes into the picture after this. Joseph only takes away the body in John. In Mark he "took down" the body.

 

Luke merely repeats Mark's story with embellishment (23:50-53). Matthew is rather vague about the body's location. Matthew says only that Pilate ordered the body of Jesus to be given to Joseph of Arimathea, who "took it" and wrapped it in a shroud (27:59).

 

Inerrantists might point to the guy who witnesses the proceedings in John, who was at the cross and saw Jesus' body pierced with the lance. They might argue that the Romans broke the legs of the thieves while the thieves were still on the crosses and then left them there for relatives or friends to take down. In Jesus' case, on this theory, Joseph would have been already at the cross, and he and others would have taken down the body of Jesus.

 

This won't work. In John, Joseph has to go to Pilate to request custody of Jesus' corpse. It makes no sense to imagine Jesus' disciples taking his corpse down from the cross and then Joseph going to Pilate to request access to the corpse, if the corpse had already been transferred by the Romans into the control of Jesus' disciples. In John, the soldiers break the legs of the two thieves. I'm not aware of evidence from antiquity about the details of taking bodies down from crosses. I don't think there is much, possibly none. Haven't gone into that problem. On the face of it, I think it's unlikely that the soldiers would break the legs of the thieves while the thieves were still alive and then GRANT THEM TO THEIR RELATIVES while still alive. A thief is crucified and then allowed to survive in his relatives' custody? Um, no. And it seems a hassle to try to break the legs while the thieves are still hanging up on the crosses, as opposed to the soldiers' breaking the legs when the thieves have been put on the ground or in a cart.

 

You just can't harmonize this aspect of the story in John with its presentation in the Synoptics. You can't get the Deposition from the Cross pericope out of John.

 

So I call contradiction. I couldn't find it in the well-known list of contradictions on Secular Web:

https://infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/contradictions.html

 

Has anyone seen this pointed out, or thought about it? Is there a plausible way to save the NT's inerrancy on this point?

 

The only solution I can think of to preserve inerrancy is to construe "taken away" in John as simply "taken" down from the crosses. That Greek verb, αἴρω, means literally to "lift up, take up." Often in classical Greek it is used for "lift up and take away" and basically means "take away." But maybe the inerrantist can argue that the soldiers only "lift" the bodies of the thieves from their crosses and don't "lift" Jesus' body - he's already dead - but leave him there. And later Joseph gets permission to "lift" Jesus' body from the cross, where the soldiers had left it. But that scenario would leave the soldiers disobeying the original order to get the bodies off the crosses - "so that the bodies would not remain on the cross[es] on the sabbath," John 19:31. So I don't think that in John 19:38, Joseph of A "lifted the body of Jesus from the CROSS and took it away." Joseph "lifted the body" from wherever the Romans kept it "and took it away." And that picture contradicts Mark and Luke.

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I always understood that the purpose of breaking the legs was to speed up the suffocation process of the crucified.  The position in which a person was crucified made it necessary to push against the spikes in the feet in order to lift the upper body and draw a breath.  Breaking the legs, then, would make this motion impossible, thereby allowing the crucified to suffocate relatively quickly.  This would also mean, however, that the intended victim (the thieves, in this case) were still on the cross when their legs were broken.  

 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/apr/08/thisweekssciencequestions

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Yes, thanks, I just came across that, too. I only have one commentary on John at home, by Leon Morris. He says that the soldiers would use a heavy mallet. So yes, the criminal would still be on the cross.

 

So far I don't think that this resolves the contradictions between John and the Synoptics. In John, after all this stuff is done at Calvary, Joseph goes to Pilate: "and after this ..."  On the picture in John, it's left vague who is going to take the bodies down from the crosses. But the whole point of the Jews' request is to get the bodies off the crosses before sabbath, because the Torah mandated that the dead body of an executed criminal was not to remain all night "upon the tree" but was to be buried, so as not to defile the land (Deut. 21:23). Josephus, Jewish War IV.317, says that criminals who are crucified are  taken down and buried before sunset. Jewish law thus requires relaxation of the Roman purpose for leaving corpses on crosses as a deterrent. So at Calvary, somebody had to be responsible to get the bodies off the crosses. Are we to imagine that the soldiers left the bodies on the crosses, and it was up to relatives et al. to take them down? Or "the Jews" were standing around, waiting to take them down? In that case, we are to imagine "the Jews" standing around, eager to get Jesus' body off the cross, but they have to wait while word is brought to Joseph of Arimathea to go to Pilate to request the body, and then Joseph has to come back to Calvary and take the body down. The disciples at the site are keeping "the Jews" from taking it down? And all this in the short amount of time available before night, when Shabbos begins? And the Jews, who in Matthew are worried that the disciples may steal the body and claim resurrection, are fine with waiting around until Joseph can come back and ... the disciples can take the body?

 

This is all fishy. I think Morris recognizes the problems when he comments on "And after these things, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate ..." (19:38), with the following: "The expression ["after these things"] does not appear to denote strict chronological sequence. Thus it does not necessarily place Joseph's approach to Pilate immediately after the incident with the spear. It may mean that Joseph went to Pilate as soon as Jesus' death appeared imminent, or perhaps had taken place" (824 n. 107). In fundyspeak, when the doctrine of inerrancy requires it, "after this" can mean, not "after this," but "before this." 

 

I am still not convinced that the Synoptics and John do not contradict each other. But maybe there's a plausible way for the inerrantist to resolve their disparities.

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I think most apologists will say you are simply arguing semantics.  You hit the nail on the head with "after this" can mean not "after this".  In much the same way as "take away" can mean anything from getting a message to picking up Chinese food.  With such a wide spectrum of meaning associated with one phrase, I'm sure there's room enough for "take away" to also mean "take down".  At least, in the mind of an inerrantist.

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Inerrantists sho' nuff are skilled with spinning words. Leaving "took/took away/lifted up" aside, the story that Joseph of Arimathea begged Jesus' corpse of Pilate presumes that the Romans were in charge of the corpse at the time when Joseph met Pilate. It also presumes that the Romans were in general in charge of the corpses of executed criminals. In order for the soldiers to fulfill their orders, given in response to the Jews' original request that all the bodies be taken down before Shabbos, the soldiers had to see that the bodies were taken down. Given what's presumed by Joseph's request of Pilate, Jesus' body has to remain in custody of the Romans. It clashes with other elements of the account to imagine that the soldiers simply left Jesus' body on the cross and departed. And it can't be the case that the soldiers broke the thieves' legs and then departed, leaving their bodies on the crosses but not verifying that they were dead. And again, the soldiers would have no guarantee that anyone else would take down the thieves' corpses, which was the goal of the soldiers' orders.

 

All this does not compute.

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No Christian will be phased by this.

They swallow bigger contradictions daily.

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It's funny that in Morris' commentary on John, he admits that the noun translated as "piece of linen/linen cloth" (othonion) denotes a thin strip or bandage, whereas "sindon" of the Synoptics refers to a sheet or shroud. Morris does not even speak to the discrepancy between the singular "shroud" of the Synoptics and the plural "pieces of linen" plus "head cloth" of John. The best strategy for handling a biblical contradiction is to ignore it.

 

Other stuff from Morris:

 

1. St. John Chrysostom wrote that myrrh "glues linen to the body not less firmly than lead." This has to do with the Shroud of Turin: shouldn't there be evidence on the shroud of the YUGE amount of myrrh and aloe reported by John? John says that Nicodemus brought about 100 pounds of myrrh and aloe, and that they bound the corpse with the spices in linen cloths. Is the image on the shroud consistent with the effect that you'd expect if so much spice were bound up with the body? Wouldn't it have adhered to the body?

 

2. II Chronicles 16:14 describes the funeral of the king, Asa. He was buried in a tomb that he'd had cut out of rock and was laid on a couch which was filled with spices and aromatics compounded into an ointment. This compound is like the compound of myrrh and aloe of John. Morris points out how John's description highlights Jesus' role as king. That part makes sense. In fact, I think it may be sufficient to explain the entire Nicodemus/spice part of the story; John wants to depict Jesus as king so invents this story.

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No Christian will be phased by this.

They swallow bigger contradictions daily.

Right. But if I am correct, WE have yet another contradiction to notch up on the doorpost.

 

A few years ago I wrote a spiel here in the Den about contradictions in the Gethsemane story. Some Christian came on and tried to dismiss the problems. I forget who it was ; maybe the young philosophy student? Anyway, I don't recall the discrepancies actually being resolved.

 

Christians who may reply, "Well, you're just trying to nitpick, the Gospel account is clear," would be incorrect. The Gospel account is not clear. The hypothesis that part or all of it is invented fits the texts better than the hypothesis that the Gospels are in their entirety reports of an actual series of events. And as for nitpicking, Christians need their own nitpicking to justify their distinctions in doctrine about belief and conduct. If some of the nits can't be picked out of accounts of events that are in principle verifiable, there is little reason to take the Bible as inerrant on topics where nothing is verifiable.

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christ's body was "taken down" in much the same way as Axl Rose was "taken down" to the paradise city.  This is one of those times when it's not necessary to understand scripture within its cultural, historical, and linguistic context.  

 

I'm trolling obviously; because I do see the contradiction you're pointing out.  It does, however, lend itself readily to the apologist's broad brush defense.

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christ's body was "taken down" in much the same way as Axl Rose was "taken down" to the paradise city.  This is one of those times when it's not necessary to understand scripture within its cultural, historical, and linguistic context.  

 

I'm trolling obviously; because I do see the contradiction you're pointing out.  It does, however, lend itself readily to the apologist's broad brush defense.

The crux of the contradiction that I'm alleging is, who took Jesus' body down from the cross? In Mark and Luke, it's Joseph of Arimathea. In John, it cannot be Joseph of Arimathea. If we take everything in John as a starting point, we cannot account for how Joseph can be said to "take down" Jesus' body in Mark and Luke.

 

Ironhorse I suppose may want to reply that he doesn't know the answer but all that is needed is the simple faith of a child.

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No Christian will be phased by this.

They swallow bigger contradictions daily.

my thought exactly, this is hair splitting compared to what passes as a coherent narrative to them.
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Hi guys, I can believe that many Christians may not be fazed. Still, given the proposition P, "Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus' corpse down from the cross," Mark and Luke present P as true. John presents P as false, though one has to tease out this false conclusion from the passage.

 

So as far as I can see, we have another gospel contradiction, whether or not an individual Christian wants to pay attention to it. But, oh well, I'm a text geek. I can't expect the generality of Christians to follow what I attempt to say!

 

There are other contradictions in there, e.g. in the synoptics, Jesus' whole body is wrapped in one cloth. In John, Jesus' body is not wrapped in one cloth but in pieces of linen with a separate head piece.

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christ's body was "taken down" in much the same way as Axl Rose was "taken down" to the paradise city.  This is one of those times when it's not necessary to understand scripture within its cultural, historical, and linguistic context.  

 

I'm trolling obviously; because I do see the contradiction you're pointing out.  It does, however, lend itself readily to the apologist's broad brush defense.

The crux of the contradiction that I'm alleging is, who took Jesus' body down from the cross? In Mark and Luke, it's Joseph of Arimathea. In John, it cannot be Joseph of Arimathea. If we take everything in John as a starting point, we cannot account for how Joseph can be said to "take down" Jesus' body in Mark and Luke.

 

Ironhorse I suppose may want to reply that he doesn't know the answer but all that is needed is the simple faith of a child.

 

Agreed ficino.  It is a contradiction that supports the claim that, in the final analysis, the gospels are myth.  

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It's not a contradiction. You have four separate theologians putting their own stamp on the Jesus mythos for four separate ekklesia. IMO none of the four authors intended for their evangelion to be read alongside the other three. They cannot be reconciled with one another, as the authors deliberately wrote them as "the only true evangelion" that contained unique details that only they knew (because they invented them). 

 

If I rewrite the Epic of Gilgamesh in 500 BCE and invent a scene where Gilgamesh fights a there-headed dog, I'm not contradicting the other versions. I'm applying creativity to a floating sacred tradition, and empowering myself in the process by claiming my version has previously unknown details. 

 

The breaking of the legs is an allusion to the paschal lamb on Passover in Exodus 12:46. ("Do not break any of the bones.") So the anonymous author of John included this so he could say this was not only a fulfilled prophecy, but one that God only revealed to him, not the erroneous synoptic authors. 

 

In John, the crucifixion appears to occur at mid-day, which is when the Passover lambs are slaughtered. John is over-emphasizing the metaphor that Jesus is the personification of the paschal lamb whom "the Jews" slaughter and crucify, something that is far more vague in the synoptics. All the gospels are anti-Jewish but John is especially so. This is widely misunderstood, because modern theologians assume that only Jews would have known or cared about these things at the time of the writing of the New Testament texts. So they mistakenly think that the heavily anti-Jewish Gospel of John was written by a Jew. 

 

Bultmann passes over "the Jews" taking down Jesus's body lightly in his Commentary on John (1971), simply saying that it is "of relatively late origin." He does note that virtually everything about the crucifixion scene is different in John (mainly by what the author chooses to exclude):

 

- Jesus carries his own cross, not Simon of Cyrene

- no mention is made of drinking wine before the crucifixion

- no indication of the time of the crucifixion is given, though mid-day is implied, unlike Mark's "third hour"

- the division of clothes is different

- nothing is mentioned of the mocking passers-by or those crucified with him

- no mention of darkness

- Jesus's last words are different ("It is accomplished")

- the torn Temple curtain is not mentioned

- the centurion's "surely this was the son of god" is not mentioned

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No Christian will be phased by this.

They swallow bigger contradictions daily.

Right. But if I am correct, WE have yet another contradiction to notch up on the doorpost.

 

A few years ago I wrote a spiel here in the Den about contradictions in the Gethsemane story. Some Christian came on and tried to dismiss the problems. I forget who it was ; maybe the young philosophy student? Anyway, I don't recall the discrepancies actually being resolved.

 

Christians who may reply, "Well, you're just trying to nitpick, the Gospel account is clear," would be incorrect. The Gospel account is not clear. The hypothesis that part or all of it is invented fits the texts better than the hypothesis that the Gospels are in their entirety reports of an actual series of events. And as for nitpicking, Christians need their own nitpicking to justify their distinctions in doctrine about belief and conduct. If some of the nits can't be picked out of accounts of events that are in principle verifiable, there is little reason to take the Bible as inerrant on topics where nothing is verifiable.

 

 

Ficino,

 

OrdinaryClay's spin on Biblical contradictions was that the text wasn't perfect - just sufficient for our salvation.

 

So he could sidestep any argument like yours and still be a true believer.

 

have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too.jpg?w=840

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OrdinaryClay's spin on Biblical contradictions was that the text wasn't perfect - just sufficient for our salvation.

Really? I had forgotten. OC is lodged in my memory as a doughty defender of inerrancy. I can easily imagine him saying that the Bible is inerrant in its original autographs but that the manuscript copies we possess contain copyists' errors. Did he actually admit that the Bible makes erroneous assertions?

 

Maybe he played the old "this passage isn't asserting P, it's only mentioning/metaphorically riffing on P" game.

 

I think Catholics can get away with the above more consistently than can conservative Protestants. The latter have no mechanism beyond private judgment for determining how to discard one scriptural statement and maintain the authority of another one.

 

Blood, I am in agreement that the author of John is doing a lot of his own things with the stories. To say whether a given utterance entails a contradiction depends, I suppose, on what speech act the interpreter thinks the utterance performs. I think your scheme is like what we get in Greek mythology, where poets give different versions of stories. Some ancient writers, who in our terms read myth as assertion, criticized poets precisely for their mutual contradictions. If there are Christian apologists who say that the Bible is to be classified as Myth AND that it is infallible on dogma and morals, I dismiss such people out of hand. Don't know whether there are actually such people.

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Not diminishing the importance of this contradiction. It means a lot to me as I still see more and more why my old religion was a gross waste of my life.

 

Please continue to pile on the contradictions even though believers will believe anyway. The one or two on the fence and questioning are still helped by this info.

Good job!

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OrdinaryClay's spin on Biblical contradictions was that the text wasn't perfect - just sufficient for our salvation.

Funny that - that is exactly my fathers go to defense now.

 

First he believed the Bible was inerrant. Once I pointed out the varying and many contradictions, he said "well the Bible is inspired, but still written by fallible men. I don't expect the text to be perfect."

 

He then goes on to talk about the fine tuning of the universe which has me thinking: How does God fine tune the constants of the universe but can't get a perfect book out.

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Anybody who is self-important enough to write their own autobiography is also going to be arrogant enough to ensure it is accurately translated once it hits the international market.  An omniscient and omnipotent god with the same ego problems, such as the god of the bible, should not need to resort to translation errors to explain why his book is so fuckity.

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It's not a contradiction. You have four separate theologians putting their own stamp on the Jesus mythos for four separate ekklesia. IMO none of the four authors intended for their evangelion to be read alongside the other three. They cannot be reconciled with one another, as the authors deliberately wrote them as "the only true evangelion" that contained unique details that only they knew (because they invented them). 

 

If I rewrite the Epic of Gilgamesh in 500 BCE and invent a scene where Gilgamesh fights a there-headed dog, I'm not contradicting the other versions. I'm applying creativity to a floating sacred tradition, and empowering myself in the process by claiming my version has previously unknown details.

Hi Blood, I've thought about this issue a bit more. From the point of view, not of our analysis, but of gJohn's intended audience, it seems that the account is meant to be understood as though based on actual events. Right in the passage, after it says that a soldier pierced Jesus' side and out flowed blood and water, the narrator adds, "This testimony has been given by an eyewitness, and his testimony is true. He tells what he knows is true, so that you may believe" (19:35).

 

It doesn't follow that this assertion of veracity applies to anything other than the report about the piercing/blood/water. It doesn't follow that this assertion of veracity is itself true. It doesn't follow that the purpose of the writing is not a kind of propaganda. I think it does follow, though, that the writer is presenting his account as though readers are to think it a report of eyewitness testimony. Thus, though we may classify gJohn as a sort of myth, I think the writer is passing it off as an accurate record of actions and statements. And isn't that generally how it was received, from the time when we get reference to it? Justin Martyr speaks of "the memoirs of the apostles" as though they transmit a record of events actually witnessed by the writers.

 

Why do I say this? Because I think it's important to oppose apologists who play genre games to try to preserve biblical authority. Those games, in my view, boil down to shifting the goalposts. I don't think they should get away with arguing that a purportedly factual passage that contradicts another purportedly factual passage is not an error because it's really a speech act other than assertion.

 

Bultmann passes over "the Jews" taking down Jesus's body lightly in his Commentary on John (1971), simply saying that it is "of relatively late origin."

Does Bultmann say that it's "the Jews" who take down Jesus' body in gJohn? As far as I can see, John doesn't specify who takes down Jesus' body from the cross, but only gives enough info that we can see it's not Joseph of Arimathea who took it down.

[Adding: my Catholic translation of 19:38 reads "Pilate granted it [sc. permission to take away Jesus' body], so they came and took the body away." My Greek NT has "he came [i.e. Joseph of A] and took the body away," but in the critical apparatus, it says that codex Sinaiticus before correction, and a few other Greek manuscripts, as well as the Old Latin [pre-Jerome] and Sahidic [from Egypt] translations, read "they came and took the body away." Is Bultmann getting "the Jews" out of "they"?]

 

About the myth business, I'm not sure we're really disagreeing, although as I think you know, I haven't summoned up the gumption to pronounce the existence of Jesus of Nazareth a myth!

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No, Bultmann does not say "the Jews" took down Jesus's body from the cross; I did not mean to imply that he did. He says (pp. 666-67 of his Commentary) "in vv. 31-37 the removal of Jesus from the cross is performed by the soldiers*, whereas according to v. 38 it is Joseph of Arimathea who takes Jesus from the cross."

 

* the footnote reads: "Certainly it is not expressly said, but it is presupposed."

 

But then on page 667 he writes, "In the narrative of the burial, the source [of John's gospel] diverged more markedly from the Synoptics. The latter know nothing of the report about the taking down of Jesus from the cross occasioned by the request of the Jews.

 

So Bultmann reads this pericope as "the Jews" requesting that the body be taken down, but this is done by Roman soldiers, which John doesn't mention. 

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Thanks, Blood. I agree with Bultmann that it's presupposed in John that the soldiers take down Jesus' body from the cross. I disagree that suddenly we have Joseph taking the body down in verse 38. I think one is only entitled to say that he (or "they" in some textual witnesses) took the body away.

 

You have probably read studies such as Bart Ehrman's that suggest it's unlikely that Pilate "in real life" would have released the body of anyone crucified as a zealot or the like.

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It's not a contradiction. You have four separate theologians putting their own stamp on the Jesus mythos for four separate ekklesia. IMO none of the four authors intended for their evangelion to be read alongside the other three. They cannot be reconciled with one another, as the authors deliberately wrote them as "the only true evangelion" that contained unique details that only they knew (because they invented them). 

 

If I rewrite the Epic of Gilgamesh in 500 BCE and invent a scene where Gilgamesh fights a there-headed dog, I'm not contradicting the other versions. I'm applying creativity to a floating sacred tradition, and empowering myself in the process by claiming my version has previously unknown details.

Hi Blood, I've thought about this issue a bit more. From the point of view, not of our analysis, but of gJohn's intended audience, it seems that the account is meant to be understood as though based on actual events. Right in the passage, after it says that a soldier pierced Jesus' side and out flowed blood and water, the narrator adds, "This testimony has been given by an eyewitness, and his testimony is true. He tells what he knows is true, so that you may believe" (19:35).

 

It doesn't follow that this assertion of veracity applies to anything other than the report about the piercing/blood/water. It doesn't follow that this assertion of veracity is itself true. It doesn't follow that the purpose of the writing is not a kind of propaganda. I think it does follow, though, that the writer is presenting his account as though readers are to think it a report of eyewitness testimony. Thus, though we may classify gJohn as a sort of myth, I think the writer is passing it off as an accurate record of actions and statements. And isn't that generally how it was received, from the time when we get reference to it? Justin Martyr speaks of "the memoirs of the apostles" as though they transmit a record of events actually witnessed by the writers.

 

Why do I say this? Because I think it's important to oppose apologists who play genre games to try to preserve biblical authority. Those games, in my view, boil down to shifting the goalposts. I don't think they should get away with arguing that a purportedly factual passage that contradicts another purportedly factual passage is not an error because it's really a speech act other than assertion.

 

 

Right, but we're not apologists. My concern is how we non-apologists read and interpret the texts. From the apologist's point of view, there are no contradictions in the Bible, so IMO it's rather pointless to convince them that there are. We non-apologists, not having any psychological need for the texts to be inerrant, have no need for the base texts to be historical reports, and therefore do not need to characterize the creativity of the authors as "contradictions." 

 

The author of the gospel is certainly trying to present it as historical. 

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Thanks, Blood. I agree with Bultmann that it's presupposed in John that the soldiers take down Jesus' body from the cross. I disagree that suddenly we have Joseph taking the body down in verse 38. I think one is only entitled to say that he (or "they" in some textual witnesses) took the body away.

 

You have probably read studies such as Bart Ehrman's that suggest it's unlikely that Pilate "in real life" would have released the body of anyone crucified as a zealot or the like.

 

 

Yes. Nothing about the entire trial, passion, crucifixion scenes could have happened in reality. It's an entirely mythical story created by evangelists working out "DaVinci code" type interpretations from the Septuagint and Josephus. It is this strange juxtaposition and methodology that leaves the gospel texts so hard to characterize or dismiss as conventional mythology.

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