On What Day Was Jesus Crucified?

On What Day Was Jesus Crucified?

That depends on which gospel account you read. The writer of John’s account has Jesus eating the Last Supper on the Day of Preparation (14th of Nisan [Jewish calendar]), the day before the Passover so that he would be crucified on the Passover. That scenario has Jesus buried for two nights and resurrected on first day of the week (Jn. 20:1).

However, in the Synoptic accounts (meaning "seeing together -Matthew, Mark, Luke) Jesus ate the Passover meal with them (15th of Nisan); in which case he would have eaten the Passover with them on Friday, been tried and crucified on the Sabbath and buried for only one night (Matt. 26:17-30, Mk. 14:12, Lk. 22:7-14).

Compare again with the writer of John’s account (13:1-2), Jesus ate his last supper with his disciples the day before the Passover; the evening meal was in progress, not the Passover. In this account Jesus was crucified on the Passover and never ate that meal with them. The Jewish leaders and Caiaphas the high priest brought Jesus before Pilate early in the morning so they could eat the Passover meal (Jn. 18:28). Jesus was crucified the same day and his body taken down from the cross before the Sabbath began at 6 PM.

Are the Synoptic accounts correct or is John's account? This is a pretty big discrepancy.

There are many implications. If John's is correct, then the following events as recorded in Matthew 26:17-19 never happened:

17 Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?

18 And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples.

19 And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the Passover.

Implication: It would make the above dialogue fictitious.

But if Matt, Mk and Lk are correct then it would make the following from John 18:28 fictitious:
28 Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover.

Which is it? They can't both be right.

Biblical Credibility or Authenticity

Biblical Credibility or Authenticity

When approaching the question of whether or not the Bible is believable there two very different perspectives.  First, is it believable as you read it in the translation of your language?  The second question relates to authenticity--did the people who are listed as the authors actually write the books ascribed to them?  How accurate is the translation?  How many errors have been inserted deliberately or accidentally into the manuscripts of the original language?  What is the time of writing?

THE FIRST PERSPECTIVE

This perspective belongs to the average reader.  Let's view this in terms of reading the Book of Genesis.  In Chapter 1 we read that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days.  He rested from his labor on the 7th.  Each day of creation concludes with the statement, "And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day" (TNIV), the second, the third, etc. The reader asks himself the question, "Did the writer intend for me to understand these days as literal or figurative?"  The answer to this question will depend on how the reader approaches the book.  She will read on the first page, or the page before, that Genesis belongs to a group of 5 books known as the Five Books of Moses, the Pentateuch (Greek for five books), or the Torah (Hebrew for instruction).  She approaches the reading with prior information that God himself inspired Moses to write about the beginning of creation.  But let's say she is critical about that, so she asks herself the question, "Did God really inspired Moses?  Did God really speak and say, 'Let there be light'.  If so, does God want me to understand this literally for figuratively?  If it is literal, then creation is a miracles that defies the laws of physics and the discoveries of modern geological and biological science.  This is a dilemma a bronze age man or woman simply did not face--there was no science.

Let's call the reader Jane.  Jane lives in Indiana and she attended public high school.  She has already learned about dinosaurs living millions of years ago long before human beings walked the earth. She also has seen or heard about that on TV documentaries, through the internet, or by visiting a museum. She knows about the big bang happening billions of years ago that got the universe going. She's familiar with the carbon dating of fossils.  So Jane faces a dilemma. Does she disbelieve science and believe what she reads in the Bible? Or does she disbelieve the Bible because she cannot give up what she knows from science?  Or, does she understand Genesis Chapter 1 figuratively, and if so, what would it mean anyway.  She most likely will decide, based on the manner in which it is written, that the author wrote it to be understood literally.  Does she believe it or not.

We could read many other stories in Genesis and face the same dilemma.  Did God really make Adam and Eve in one day?  Did Adam really name all those animals? Did a flood cover the entire earth to the tops of the mountains?  Well, if you believe God wrote the Bible through men so that it's God's Word, yes, you do have to believe that.  Or you will have to conclude that it is not God's Word.

When Jane goes on to read Genesis Chapter 2 she will find another story about creation that is quite different, but not until verse 4.  The transition is a little choppy.  The story provides more detail about how God made the man and the woman, but before she reads about that, she will read, "Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth..." then God formed the man.  Wait a minute.  In Genesis Chapter 1 plants were created before animals.  Jane will be confused and doubt the credibility of Genesis as being the Word of God, unless someone can explain that to her.  This is the question of credibility faced by most people who read the Bible.

THE SECOND PERSPECTIVE, AUTHENTICITY

This perspective belongs to the biblical scholar.  He or she has earned a PhD in Biblical languages--Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Ugaritic, Phoenician, etc. Let's call him Bill.  He probably has several degrees from different universities that have specialized departments in this field of study.  Bill has studied ancient history and archaeology  pertinent to his field.  Bill has written several treatises, a score of articles in scholarly journals and even a number of books.  You get the idea.

Bill approaches the Bible with a very different perspective.  First of all, his study is either going to be in the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament.  It may be even more specialize to focus on the Torah, or one of the prophets.  He is not even going to ask himself whether or not it is inspired by God because that is a theological question rooted in Jewish and Christian tradition--that belongs to church theologians and church historians.  He approaches the Torah, for example, as a document written by a man or a woman or a group of people.  After all, even if you believe it was inspired by God, it was still written through the minds and by the hands of human beings.  He is going to look at the text in the original language.  He is going to ask questions like, "Who wrote this?  When was it written?  Why was it written? How does it relate to what was happening in that part of the world? Are there variant readings in different texts (errors)? How was this translated into the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint in 200 BCE)?  That last question is important because that will reflect on the Hebrew manuscripts they used back then and how they interpreted them.  What is the style of Hebrew used and how does that compare with Hebrew of the time in which it claims to be written? 

If Bill is worth his salt as a scholar he will approach the study with as little bias as possible.  I say with as little as possible because no one is completely without bias.  Bill's passion, however, is to know the truth academically.  On top of all the questions I listed there are many more.  Bill has to know what every scholar before him has written on his subject.  To do that, it is not enough to read that English translations of those works.  Since 18th and 19th century treatises were written in German, he had to learn German.  Because earlier works were written in Latin, he had to learn Latin.

So let's focus on Bill's study of Genesis Chapters 1 and 2. First, he will notice that within the text the author does not identify himself.  It was ascribed to Moses by someone else.  Why? When?  He will notice that Genesis 1 is written in a later style of Hebrew from between 700 to 500 BCE.  So it could not have been written by Moses.  Bill will find a transition in Genesis 2:4a that appears to be inserted by an editor so that what comes before and what follows might appear to be the same account by the same author.  But they are not.  Genesis 2:4b and following is an older style of Hebrew.  Also, the name of God changes in 4b from Elohim (God) to Yahweh Elohim (LORD God). Why?  How are these names for God used later in the text or elsewhere in the Torah and why?  Of course, there are many more questions that have to be answered.

Bill comes to the conclusion that Genesis 1 and 2 are different stories about creation from two different sources in two different ages.

Bill wasn't the first to discover this because this has been an understanding for more than 150 years, but he will work through this on his own, in doing so he may agree or disagree with other scholars.  He might even discover something about the text that other scholars have missed. Of course, that's exactly how you and I may differ from Bill, we can read his work and the works of other scholars and agree or disagree with our limited knowledge.  If we disagree we are not going to win an argument with him. We can only refer to other scholars who differ with him.

That is how credibility and authenticity differ and how the average reader differs from a scholar.  Of course, if you believe in the Bible as credible and coming from God, it will be authentic to you.

Enoch Was Not: The bogus book quoted by New Testament Writers

Enoch, a man who walked with God (Gen. 5:24), was the seventh from Adam.  His walking with God indicated his faithfulness to God, because he walked with God, God took him.  Evangelicals like to think of Enoch as the first person to be raptured, taken up to heaven body and soul.  Somewhere in the cosmos or in another dimension, Enoch and Jesus exist body and soul.  Elijah can be added to the group--he was taken up in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11).

In the few centuries before Jesus, the character and story about Enoch fascinated the Jewish people.  Many scholars believe that pious scribes, zealous for the law, believed the characters found in the Book of Genesis knew many details of the law that would later be given to Moses.  These early pious characters surely were prophets, they believed.  We don't really know how long the stories existed, eventually they were written, or invented and written, during the Hasmonean Dynasty ruled by the Jewish priest-kings in the mid-2nd century BCE.  The intention of the authors was to stem the cultural tide of Greek influence in Palestine (Hellenization). All Jewish literature at that time was religious, Yahweh was always part of the story line together with angels and demons with names and ranks (something the Jews picked up in Babylon).  Most notable among the books written were Enoch, The Testimony of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Book of Jubilees (attributed to Moses).

Of course, Enoch was not the author of the book bearing his name.  No one believes that today; many Jews and Christians before and after Jesus believed it was Scripture and that Enoch really did write it. Today the book is consider by all (even Fundamentalists) to be both apocryphal (not Scripture) and psueopigraphal (a complete fake). By the time of the Hasmonean Dynasty, the priests (who pretty much controlled all Jewish life) forbade any more prophets bearing new messages from Yahweh--there were enough prophecies already and, besides, the Law was sufficient.  A good Jew only need obey the law, attend the feasts and observe the temple sacrifices.  This may have been the reason why pious scribes who believed there was yet another message from Yahweh, attributed a new prophecy to a revered Jewish character long since dead.

So what was the prophecy of Enoch?  The writer was very preoccupied with exhorting the Jews to faithfully observe all the commandments of the Lord, especially in avoiding sexual promiscuity and adultery.  The writer focused on the brief and bizarre story recorded  in Genesis 6:1-4.  Before we get into that story I want you to notice that Noah was introduced in the last verse of Chapter 5--"And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth." The account about Noah picks up again in 6:9.  And so the account from 5:1-8 is an introduction inserted  into the story about Noah and the flood.

Now you know the story about Noah--God told Noah to build the ark large enough to hold him, his wife, his three sons and their wives and select animals.  When the ark was finished and they were all safe and snug inside (can you imagine the smell), God would send a flood to wipe out all life on earth. The rain continued until the waters cover the tops of the highest mountains.  Why did God bring the flood?  "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them" Gen. 6:5-7.

But how did people get so wicked?  What happened to cause that?  The answer is found in the introduction to flood in Gen. 6:1-4.  This is was happened.  The Sons of God (bene-elohim) saw the daughters of men (adam) that they were fair (good ones) and so they took whomever they chose and had children by them.  The offspring became the giants (nephilim) who became men of renown (masterful men, warriors).

That drove God to say, enough is enough, and he wiped them out by the flood.

It is a very vague passage of Scripture, so vague that orthodox and evangelical commentators don't know what to say about it, but that doesn't stop them from offering suggestions.

After all, who or what were the sons of God who took the daughters of man?

Enter the Book of Enoch.  The writer believed he had the answer.  Enoch, the righteous man who lived during the time described in Gen. 6:1-4 observed the wickedness that was being committed.  Through his prophecy he is able to tell us who/what the Sons of God were.  God also revealed to him the prophecy about what would become of those wicked Sons of God together with many exhortations to people how they show flee from the wickedness of the Sons of God.

Here is the true story God revealed to Enoch.

The Sons of God were angels who were called watchers. The watchers saw the daughters of men and lusted after them; they forcibly took them as their wives so they could have sex with them.  The result was the birth of children who were not quite right--they were half angel and half human.  The sin of the watchers was lust.  God responded by cursing the watchers and condemning them to a place with falling columns of fire (fiery water fall?).  That would be their future destiny (after their death?).  But the watchers were not done, they taught humans all kinds of wicked practices.  God had enough, and so he brought the flood to wipe out the watchers, their perverted offspring and all the people on earth who had been corrupted by them.

That is the Prophecy of Enoch in a nutshell.  Of course, the prophecy rambles on and on, describing their sexual perversity, all the wickedness they sponsored and the kinds of punishments God had in store for them.

All of it was bogus.  Even though it was popular among the people.  Even the Christian apologist, Justin Martyr (150 CE) believed its authenticity and used it to explain human sinfulness.  Enoch was eventually rejected by the bishops and church councils in the 4th century, but not before it left a lasing impression on Christians and their theology.

Jude--in the Book of Jude in the New Testament--quoted Enoch's bogus prophecy (Jude 14,15 compare with Enoch 1:9, an exact quote). 

What does that make of the Book of Jude.

But wait, there's more.  The writer of 2nd Peter also quoted from Enoch (2 Peter 2:4).  The Book of Revelation is full of quotes from Enoch, it reads just like the Prophecy of Enoch.  Even Jesus used expressions and terms found in Enoch. 

Theologians converted Enoch's story of the rebellious angels and used it to explain the origin of Satan and his legions of demon, even though Satan was not the leader mentioned in Enoch (Samlazaz and 9 other leaders-- they are later called satans, accusers).  Theologians connected this incorrectly to Isaiah's prophecy of the destruction of the king of Tyre and of Tyre itself (a city-state on the Mediterranean adjacent to Israel): "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"  The king of Tyre was given the name Lucifer (Son of the Morning).  It really had nothing to do with the devil.  Doesn't matter, Christian today believe Lucifer was the most beautiful angel God created who then led the other angels in rebellion against God.  Lucifer (Satan) then tempted Eve to rebell, etc. It became a the theme of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Christian do not even know the story non-biblical.

 The Book of Enoch, edited by Joseph B. Lumpkin, can be purchased from Amazon for your Kindle for .99 cents.  I have quoted from the Hebrew Book of Enoch which is the oldest version.

Why Cathedral In the Sky

Granted, this book has a strange title that is also confusing.  “What do you mean by ‘Cathedral In The Sky’?” I have been asked.  Cathedral in the Sky is a metaphor I used for the Judeo Christian faith.  The medieval cathedrals scattered across Europe are impressive, elaborate, complex, ornate edifices that took hundreds of years to complete. They were built to overwhelm the senses and the imagination, creating the illusion of drawing nearer the throne of God. Generations of masons and laborers toiled on those structures; bishops, priest and ruler inherited and continued their construction, each generation adding new space and making changes according to the needs of their time.  Maintenance and improvements are never ending and continue to this day, hundreds of years later.  The Christian religion is like that; it is an impressive and ancient institution. Like the great cathedrals—elaborate, complex, and ornate, designed to inspire the imagination, creating the illusion of a god who is omnipotent, immutable and complex, a god who demands obedience and justice. It took hundreds and thousands of years to build, generations of priests, scribes, prophets, prelates and scholars have contributed to its construction, with each generation making changes in doctrine and practice according to the needs of their time. 

While the cathedrals of Europe in all of their beauty, intricacy and grandeur are real structures to be admired, the Judeo-Christian religion, while intricate, involved and grand, is, nonetheless, false, an illusion maintained by the faithful. It is not what it claims to be and it leads people to believe what is not true.

The Relationship between Judaism and Christianity

Judaism must be studied separately--there would still be Judaism if there were no Christianity.  But there would not be any Christianity without Judaism, one cannot study Christianity without also studying Judaism and, in particular, Judaism in the few centuries before and during the lives of Jesus and the Apostles. While not all Jews believed in the same messianic message, apocalyptic messianism was very popular among some of the Pharisees, the Essenes and the common people.  Apocalypse means unveiling.  Jewish Apocalyptic writers used images of cataclysmic proportions to describe the end of days.   The Christian Book of Revelation, The Apocalypse of John, shows the influence Jewish apocalyptic literature.  The messiah described as the Son of Man, a term used by Jesus to describe himself, is first found in the Prophecy of Daniel  7:13-14.  Daniel  Chapters 7 to 12 date from 2nd century BCE at the time of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid emperor, Antiochus Epiphanies, about 160 BCE. The other aspect of Apocalyptic literature is that is psuedopigraphal (falsely attributed to someone) and/or apocryphal (not accepted into the canon of Scripture.  While most scholars believe Daniel 7 - 12 is psuedipigraphal (Daniel probably did not write any of the prophecy attributed to him), it is included in the canon of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The style of Daniel's prophecy is very similar to other apocalyptic prophesies written during the same period--The Book of Enoch (2nd century), The Book of Jubilees (anonymous, 105 BCE) and The Testimony of the Twelve Patriarchs.  The influence of Enoch on John's Apocalypse is unmistakable. Early Christians into the 2nd century CE believed Enoch was Scripture, notably among them, Justin Martyr. References to Enoch are found in 2 Peter 2:4-5 and Jude 6 and 14 (14, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones, see Enoch 40:1).

The mythology of Genesis 6:1-4 is the puzzling account about the Sons of God who lusted after the daughters of men, so they took them as wives and had children by them, children who became a race of giants, Nephilim.  No one knows what was the intent of this ancient legend, but the Jews of Jesus' time and the early Christian church (2 Peter and Jude) were convinced that the Sons of God were fallen angels who lusted after and then married women.  Enoch's prophecy was the full account of their fall, their influence on humans and their final judgment.  Of course, the story is preposterous to the intelligent reader.  The Apostle Paul, a highly educated man, would not have believed such a story. But those were the kinds of things people believed two thousand years ago.

Enoch's prophecy is also clear that hell is a place of burning fire where the fallen angels (Gen. 6:1-5) will burn in a place where there are columns of fire.  The fallen angels became demons who taught people how to sin and commit all manner of evil.  Sexual lust is depicted as the greatest of all evils as it was the temptation that led the angels of rebel against God.

Of course there are many other Jewish influences on Christianity.  Apocalyptic literature is only one. Jesus was a Jew who advocated adherence to the Laws of Moses.  He stated that he was sent to the people of Israel.  In Mark's account the gospel of Jesus was very clear--repent for the kingdom of God is soon to appear.  The early Christian church was Jewish, comprised of the more Pharisaic persuasion of Judaism. They accepted Jesus as the Messiah, he would return in their lifetimes to establish the restored Kingdom of David.  While they accepted Jesus they also believed the Jewish faith should continue with the temple in Jerusalem as the focal point of worship and atonement for sin.  They did not recognize Jesus' death as a sacrificial atonement for sin, but a necessary step for resurrection and restoration.

Cathedral in the Sky

I chose Cathedral in the Sky is a metaphor, an elaborate and ostentatious edifice constructed over centuries by many generations that represents the composition of the Hebrew Scriptures and Judaism with the New Testament and Christianity.  While cathedrals in all of their beauty, intricacy and grandeur are real structures to be admired, the Judeo-Christian religion, while intricate, involved and grand, is, non-the-less, false, an illusion because it is not what it claims to be and leads people to believe what it not true.

Of course, not everything is false. Myth is often built upon the scaffold of historic events.  The nation of Israel had a history, many things written about Israel actually occurred.  But many oral legends, many of them pure myth, were presented as historical facts.

Cathedral in the Sky is the title of the book I have been working on for two years (beginning in the fall of 2012). The blog will reveal some of the work without quoting any chapters.  The central thesis will show that neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the New Testament can be relied upon as inerrant or infallible.  The documents in both were written by deeply religious persons in times when life was explained in terms of a supernatural world of gods, angels and demons. Many of them (perhaps even most of them) were sincere, they believed they were speaking in behalf of God.  The spiritual claims of one generation were pass on to the next.  Jesus and his apostles inherited a tradition and a law they were convinced came from God.  The apostles and the early church added Jesus as the Messiah, then Jesus, God in the flesh. The early church assembled the New Testament and passed that onto us.

All the Jewish writers of the Hebrew histories, the prophets, the priests, the scribes, the Jewish sages, Jesus, the Apostles, the early church fathers, the commentators, theologians, historians, kings and emperors have all inherited what they passed on to us--adding, subtracting, editing, refining into theology, handing to us an interpretation of reality that entirely false, while some moral platitudes are valuable but only because they express human wisdom.  It is an amazing and elaborate illusion, authenticated only by its antiquity, the sheer number of its followers and the fear to question its authority.

However, The Cathedral in the Sky is not real, it has no foundation.  It exists only in the collective imaginations of people.  It is a Cathedral in the Sky whose foundation continues to fall away while people in vain continue to build it. It is part of our history and always will be.  It is part of our evolution as human beings.