Jesus of Nazareth

by Gerhard Lohfink

  Burial

  We have already seen that in antiquity burial was denied to those who had been crucified, and we also saw what Joseph of Arimathea’s approaching Pilate meant in this context (chap. 6: “The Many Faces of Being Called”). Joseph, one of Jesus’ sympathizers, also made sure that the shroud was purchased and Jesus’ body taken down from the cross. Then Jesus was wrapped in the newly purchased shroud and placed in a tomb. Women who were part of Jesus’ circle of disciples were present (Mark 15:42-47).

  We can draw a vivid picture of Jesus’ tomb on the basis of many archaeological parallels in and around present-day Jerusalem and from the reports in the four gospels. It was close to the Golgotha rise (John 19:41); it was hewn in one of the bands of rock that ran through the abandoned quarry west of Golgotha; it was in a garden; it was a tomb chamber with benches on the sides for bodies; it had a relatively low door opening through which one could only enter by bending over and that entry door was closed with a stone that could be rolled back and forth (Mark 15:46); it was a previously unused tomb in which no one had yet been laid (John 19:41). So we may be certain that Jesus’ body did not remain on the cross, nor was it thrown into a common grave for criminals; it was placed in a family tomb whose location was known in Jerusalem. On the morning of the first weekday after the Sabbath, the women would go to this tomb.

  Strategies

  The events of the passion were crammed into a few hours: struggle in prayer, arrest, hearing before Annas, session of the Council, delivery to Pilate, condemnation by Pilate, scourging, mocking, execution, burial. All that took place in under twenty-four hours. Those who desired Jesus’ death knew why it all had to proceed so swiftly, and they knew their business. That business included the strategies applied by Jesus’ opponents. The Council internally considered Jesus deserving of death because he led the people astray and was a blasphemer. But before Pilate they made the religious seducer of the people into a political rebel, and Jesus’ confession of his authority became an admission that he was a messiah with a political purpose. It was this strategy, which completely twisted Jesus’ real claim, that brought him to the cross.

  But Pilate followed his own strategies as well. He wanted to avoid pardoning Barabbas at the Passover festival, and Jesus became a means to his end. Pilate was so preoccupied with carrying out his strategy that he did not notice how, in suggesting that Jesus be pardoned in place of Barabbas, he was already declaring him guilty and so losing control of his own judicial powers. Pilate’s political strategy also became deadly to Jesus in the end. But Pilate, despite his much greater power, is the weaker figure in this game of clashing moves. The Sanhedrin—quite unlike Pilate—never lost sight of its goal and pursued it unerringly. That goal was to bring Jesus to the cross.

  But we can scarcely understand the unerring purpose of the Jerusalem temple aristocracy in seeking Jesus’ crucifixion without considering the background in Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which is about the burial of those who are executed. It is presupposed that, after their execution, they will be hanged on a pole (as a warning?). The law in Deuteronomy 21:22-23 says that the bodies of those who are hanged in this way may not remain overnight but should be buried on the same day. In this context it is said that “anyone hanging on a tree is under God’s curse.” That sentence from Torah was already applied by pre-Christian Judaism to those who were crucified. As the “Temple Scroll” found at Qumran shows, the statement “anyone hanging on a tree is under God’s curse” was applied to the crucifixion of Jews who betrayed their people to a foreign nation and brought evil upon them.18 It must therefore have seemed appealing to the Council to have Jesus crucified with the help of the Roman occupying power as someone who was leading the people astray and corrupting them.

  From this point of view the Passover festival with its masses of pilgrims represented an uncomfortable obstacle to having Jesus seized by the police, but on the positive side it offered the opportunity to expose Jesus publicly before assembled Israel as someone cursed by God. For once Jesus was hanging on the cross it would be obvious: God could by no means be behind a man like that.

  All these strategies show that Jesus had fallen between the millstones of powers much stronger than he who (like Pilate) wanted nothing to do with any question of truth or who (like the Sanhedrin) saw it as their religious duty to expose Jesus and get rid of him. But were they really stronger than he? The Jerusalem temple aristocracy who condemned him have vanished from history. Jesus has not vanished. He started an unimaginable movement. He changed the world and goes on changing it. All those who have tried to get rid of him have been wrecked in the attempt. Their project continually turns into its opposite.

  The Question of Guilt

  Those who seek to reconstruct what happened on Jesus’ last day cannot avoid the question of guilt. They cannot be content to note, coolly and clinically, what took place in Jerusalem on that day. They must think about the guilt of the Council and that of Pilate but also the guilt of all those who had encountered Jesus, since his appearance in Galilee, with unbelief, skepticism, or indifference. And they must reflect on the guilt of Jesus’ disciples, who left him in the lurch and fled.

  It will be clear to those who have read this book to this point that it is not intended to argue an anti-Jewish cause, certainly not to sow hatred against the Jews. Sadly, there has been such hatred in Christianity, a horrifying mass of it, throughout the centuries. But there can be no talk of any kind of collective guilt on the part of Israel, and even if there were such a thing the Christian response would have to have been completely different.

  In reflecting on Jesus’ death we must also refuse to simplify things the way the old passion plays did: here the Holy One, there the evil ones! Instead, we must assume that there were many among Jesus’ opponents who desired nothing but to follow their consciences. The depth of the conflict with Jesus is not simply apparent from the fact that the general public here acted against the good—although, of course, one must always take the possibility into account. There is a kind of lust for evil, and it would be nave to suppose that all people desire only the true and the good. At any rate, often they desire neither good nor evil but simply their own convenience. But to get back to the point: the real depth of the conflict emerges only if we see that here people who sought to defend the honor of God or God’s Law set themselves against an individual who, in their opinion, was blaspheming God’s honor and destroying the holy Law.

  It appears that the Sanhedrin thought they had to defend the temple, the Torah, and the people against Jesus. But Jesus had not questioned the temple, the Torah, or the people of God. He did want to gather Israel together so that it might finally become what it was intended to be in the eyes of God. And he did not destroy the Torah but interpreted it radically in terms of God’s will. He wanted the temple to finally become what the prophets had longed for: a place of true worship of God in whose forecourt even the Gentiles could worship. Certainly, behind all that lay the claim that the fulfillment of the Torah had arrived in his own person and that where he lived out the reign of God with his followers “something greater than the temple” (Matt 12:6) was present. Israel, and with it the Sanhedrin, were faced with this tremendous claim.

  This makes it clear that the question of the guilt of Jesus’ opponents is much more complex than it at first appears. For if all this is true, then it is a conflict we all face and in which we all must find ourselves guilty: we too constantly hear God’s true claim, fully evident in Jesus, but we cover it up with our own ideas, habits, and convenience and so shove it out of the world. Therefore an examination of the passion of Jesus cannot be about diluting or downplaying the guilt of Jesus’ opponents. On the contrary: it is about uncovering the depths of that guilt, because that is how we will uncover the guilt of us all.

  Chapter 18

  The Easter Events

  This book is about Jesus’ public life: What did he do? What did he want? Who was he? Is it even permissible to introduce the Easter events i
nto this context? Shouldn’t we stop with Jesus’ death? Doesn’t something completely different begin with his resurrection—something that can only be grasped in faith?

  Such questions are urgent, and yet they only partly touch the reality of Jesus, since ultimately his activities in Galilee and later in Jerusalem can also be understood only by faith. Nevertheless, those matters have to be examined historically. In the same way, Jesus’ resurrection belongs to the realm of faith, and yet theology, insofar as it works historically, may and must ask: what really happened among Jesus’ followers after Good Friday? How can we understand the phenomenon that they first separated and then came back together again? How can we explain that, despite the catastrophe of Good Friday, they suddenly became a community? That was anything but a matter of course. It was evidently connected to the Easter faith. But how did that Easter faith come to be? And what did it look like in the concrete?

  The events after Jesus’ death are certainly part of his “life.” Without those events he still could not be understood, even if we reconstructed only the external sequence. And within the imponderable history of Jesus’ actions, which still goes on, these first days and weeks are a time of special focus. It is this particular period after Good Friday that the present chapter attempts to grasp.

  The Flight of the Disciples

  The evangelist Mark does not make the slightest attempt to conceal the dreadful loneliness in which Jesus’ life ended. Judas Iscariot, one of the group of the Twelve, handed him over; he made Jesus’ nighttime arrest possible. Then, when Jesus was taken into custody, all the disciples left him and fled (Mark 14:50). Only Peter followed at a distance, to the court of the high priest’s house. Then he too left Jesus in the lurch—after having denied him. According to Mark, not one of the men from the group of disciples was present at the crucifixion, but some women from among Jesus’ followers watched from a distance (Mark 15:40-41).

  Jesus’ burial was carried out, as we have seen, by Joseph of Arimathea, a Jesus sympathizer but not a member of the group of disciples (Mark 15:42-46). According to Mark, the Twelve took no part in the events at the empty tomb.1 The oldest tradition associates those events exclusively with the women, especially Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:1-8).

  So in Mark we can speak of an accelerating disappearance of the Twelve from the ending of the gospel. How should we interpret their vanishing? Did they simply hide in Jerusalem, so that we may still suppose they were in the city? Or did they leave Judea and flee to their homeland in Galilee? There are two texts that favor flight. The first is Mark 14:27, where Jesus, quoting Zechariah 13:7, says, “You will all become deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’” This text speaks about the scattering of the disciples in a kind of epic anticipation that, however, is historically retrospective. “Scattering”—that seems meant to say more than merely concealment in the capital city. A second text, John 16:32, says much the same. There Jesus prophesies, “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his [home], and you will leave me alone.” This text too acquires its historical force only if we see it as retrospective. The translators of the NRSV have expanded the Greek expression “each to his own” to read “each one to his home,” which captures the meaning; an alternate translation would be “each to his private interests.” But that means that the disciples have fled, returned pell-mell to their homeland, and they have resumed their former occupations.2

  But at this point we need also to take note of Mark 16:7 (cf. 14:28), where an angel orders the women, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” Lived history lies behind these words as well. The disciples—or more precisely the Galileans among them—have gone to Galilee. Why? Evidently because they have fled there. But the angel’s words give their flight a positive meaning: the disciples flee and seem thereby to have abandoned Jesus, but in reality he is with them; he is even ahead of them. Precisely in the place where they appear to have lost him forever they will find him: in their home, in Galilee, when they have taken up their old occupations once more.

  So Mark 16:7 in particular seems to presume the flight of the disciples to Galilee, and it is completely plausible. Jesus’ execution would have had a shocking effect on his followers. As we have already seen, on the basis of Deuteronomy 21:23, “being hanged on a tree” would have seemed like God’s judgment on Jesus. From that point of view the confusion of Jesus’ associates and the pell-mell flight of the group of Twelve is easily understood. In addition, it was completely possible at the outset that the inner circle of disciples was threatened with a fate similar to that of Jesus himself. What was more likely than that the Galileans would return to Galilee? There they could feel safe; in Galilee they were far enough from the Sanhedrin’s grasp.

  The Beginning of the Appearances

  One of the surest indicators of the flight of the Galilean disciples to their home country is, in fact, the phenomenon that the appearances to Peter and the Twelve did not take place in Jerusalem but in Galilee. It is true that the gospels give a contradictory picture in this regard: Mark 16:7 announces that the first appearance will be in Galilee, and Matthew 28:16-20 tells of the first appearance to the Eleven, which for him is a summary of all appearances, and locates it in Galilee. Luke, in contrast, places all the appearances in or near Jerusalem. But in doing so he betrays an obvious theological intention: for Luke, Jerusalem is a symbol of the continuity between the time of Jesus and the time of the church.3 Therefore he omits the angel’s order, according to which the disciples should go to Galilee, even though he read it in Mark, which he was using as a model.4 According to Luke the disciples were to remain in the city (Luke 24:49). He thus says nothing about the Galilean appearances, which very certainly played as great a role in the tradition as did the accounts of appearances in Jerusalem.

  John also locates the appearances in Jerusalem, but in this he appears to be directly or indirectly dependent on Luke. Finally, we are faced with the striking phenomenon that chapter 21, an addition to John’s gospel, tells of an appearance to seven disciples in Galilee, on the Sea of Gennesareth. It is not introduced as a first appearance, but it might originally have been the story of such an initial encounter. The overall finding thus points clearly to Galilee as the place where appearances to the inner group of disciples began.

  Here commenced a series of appearances in which the Risen One was seen. The first of these Galilean appearances apparently came to Simon Peter. Two texts favor this. First there is the very ancient confession of faith retained in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Paul himself had received it as a faith tradition and handed it on to the congregation in Corinth:

  I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (15:3-5)

  Probably the ancient creed ended here, but Paul adds the following, on the basis of a good knowledge of the first period after Easter:

  Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (15:6-8)

  The second text that speaks of an initial appearance to Peter is Luke 24:34. The context here is that the two disciples who had encountered the Risen One on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus have returned immediately to the capital. There they have found the Eleven and a larger group of Jesus’ followers gathered together, and the group says to them, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon.” It is odd that Luke does not describe the appearance to Simon Peter but simply inserts a formulaic reference to it in a single sentence. What he is really telling about is the appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, not the much more importan
t appearance to Peter. How can we explain that? By no means can we say that he had no narrative of an appearance to Peter available to him. The matter is much more simply explained: the tradition that related the appearance to Peter was so clearly located in Galilee that Luke, who concentrates all appearances in Jerusalem or its neighborhood, simply could not include it at this point. A story that took place at the lake, with boats and a fisherman pursuing his task, was one that Luke with the best will in the world could not shift to the city of Jerusalem. It is true that John 21:1-14 does not tell of an appearance to Peter alone, but the text does clearly reflect the possible milieu of such a story.

  So we can with good reason suppose that Peter, who had fled to Galilee with the rest of the inner group of disciples, experienced an appearance of the Risen One there. It banished all doubts and made Peter one of the first Easter witnesses. Apparently the high regard for Peter and his leading role in the early church rested, among other things, on that appearance, which was then followed by further appearance phenomena, including some in Jerusalem.