more New Testament nonsense

[sistawendy]

I finished The Gospel According To Mark. In the New Revised Standard Version, like "Wayne's World", it has three endings:

1. The short ending, wherein Mary Magdalene et al. walk into Jesus's tomb, hear from the mysterious white-clad stranger who tells them to tell everybody. They freak, GTFO, and tell no one. Roll credits. (But then how did Mark and his traditional source, Peter, know?)
2. The intermediate ending, where after the tomb encounter the women tell the Apostles, the Gospel spreads, hallelujah. This ending actually makes sense.
3. The long ending, which is both of the above plus a little speechifying by Jesus himself.

I'm just sitting over here shaking my head and smiling at the obvious consternation of ancient editors.

If you're not religious, it sounds as if Jesus's body got stolen. So what did they do with it if they didn't want to be discovered?

1. Dig a grave in the Jerusalem area in, for example, Gethsemane? Time-consuming and prone to detection in a city.
2. Dig a grave well outside Jerusalem? Less risk of detection and you might gain the luxury of time, but there's the problem of transportation. They needed at least a donkey and they were poor as (ha ha) church mice.
3. If you're going to go to the trouble of taking the body out of the city, you might as well eliminate all risk of anyone finding the body. At least two of the Apostles knew their way around boats. My personal favorite theory is that poor Jesus ended up as fish food. (That's some tasty irony right there.) There's even a reference to someone in the water with stones tied to him in the Gospels; I forget exactly where*. And even though the Dead Sea is closer, I'd bet they took him all the way to the Sea of Galilee: they were from there so they had connections & local knowledge, and they didn't have to deal with the Dead Sea's salinity making things float better and preventing decomposition. Come to think of it, the Gospels direct the disciples to follow Jesus to Galilee after the resurrection.

I've started The Gospel According To Luke. Luke is the slick Gospel; tradition has it that Luke was the only native Greek speaker among the Evangelists, a physician who was manifestly familiar with the literary conventions of his time. But what's not so slick to me is that in one passage in Luke that isn't in the first two Gospels, a woman is ashamed of her infertility. Yet another reminder that morality has evolved. We don't and shouldn't want to be these people. Never mind how slavery is treated as a fact of life.



*Edited to add: Matthew 18:6 and Mark 9:42.

Comments

[tylik]

Have you read Another Roadside Attraction?

[sistawendy]

I have not! I’d heard of it, though.

[staxxy]

I love these chapter reviews, btw.

And I love theory #3.

(also, I do not see the reference in Matthew tying stones but the Mark one is fun. The Wycliffe (pre KJV actually has two different possible translations listed - "And whoever shall cause to stumble one of these little that believe in me, it were better to him that a millstone were done about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. [And whoever shall offend one of these little believing in me, it is good to him that a millstone of asses were done about his neck, and were sent into the sea.]"

But the Coverdale translation is more streamlined - "And who so offendeth one of these litle ones that beleue in me, it were better for him, that a mylstone were haged aboute his neck, and he cast in to the see."

Personally, I like the addition of the asses. It paints a very clear picture.