joelr
Well-Known Member
Jesus' Death in LukeI put them in order for you,
Luke’s account is also very interesting, thoughtful, and moving, but
it is very different indeed (Luke 23:26—49). It is not just that there
are discrepancies in some of their details; the differences are bigger
than that. They affect the very way the story is told and, as a result,
the way the story is to be interpreted.
In Luke as in Mark, Jesus is betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter,
rejected by the Jewish leaders, and condemned by Pontius Pilate,
but he is not mocked and beaten by Pilate’s soldiers. Only Luke tells
the story of Pilate trying to get King Herod of Galilee—the son of
the King Herod from the birth stories—to deal with Jesus, and it is
Herod’s soldiers who mock Jesus before Pilate finds him guilty. This
is a discrepancy, but it doesn’t affect the overall reading of the differ¬
ence between the two accounts that I’m highlighting here.
In Luke, Jesus is taken off to be executed, and Simon of Cyrene is
compelled to carry his cross. But Jesus is not silent on the way to his
crucifixion. En route he sees a number of women wailing over what
is happening to him, and he turns to them and says, “Daughters of
Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your
children” (Luke 23:28). He goes on to prophesy the coming destruc¬
tion that they will face. Jesus does not appear to be in shock over
what is happening to him. He is more concerned with others around
him than with his own fate.
Moreover, Jesus is not silent while being nailed to the cross, as
in Mark. Instead he prays, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t
know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). 2 Jesus appears to have
close communion with God and is concerned more for those who
are doing this to him than for himself. Jesus is mocked by the
Jewish leaders and the Roman soldiers, but explicitly not by both
men being crucified with him, unlike in Mark. Instead, one of
them mocks Jesus but the other rebukes the first for doing so, in¬
sisting that whereas they deserve what they are getting, Jesus has
done nothing wrong (remember that Luke stresses Jesus’ complete
innocence). He then asks of Jesus, “Remember me when you come
into your kingdom.” And Jesus gives the compelling reply, “Truly
I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (23:42—43). In
this account Jesus is not at all confused about what is happening to
him or why. He is completely calm and in control of the situation;
he knows what is about to occur, and he knows what will happen
afterward: he will wake up in God’s paradise, and this criminal
will be there with him. This is a far cry from the Jesus of Mark,
who felt forsaken to the end.
Darkness comes over the land and the Temple curtain is ripped
while Jesus is still alive, in contrast to Mark. Here the torn curtain
must not indicate that Jesus’ death brings atonement—since he has
not died yet. Instead it shows that his death is “the hour of darkness,”
as he says earlier in the Gospel (23:53), and it marks the judgment of
God against the Jewish people. The ripped curtain here appears to
indicate that God is rejecting the Jewish system of worship, symbol¬
ized by the Temple.
Most significant of all, rather than uttering a cry expressing his
sense of total abandonment at the end (“Why have you forsaken
me?”), in Luke, Jesus prays to God in a loud voice, saying, “Father
into your hands I commend my spirit.” He then breathes his last and
dies (23:46). This is not a Jesus who feels forsaken by God and won¬
ders why he is going through this pain of desertion and death. It is a
Jesus who feels God’s presence with him and is comforted by the fact
that God is on his side. He is fully cognizant of what is happening
to him and why, and he commits himself to the loving care of his
then confirms what Jesus himself knew full well, “Surely this man
was innocent.”
It is hard to stress strongly enough the differences between these
two portrayals of Jesus’ death. Earlier I pointed out that scholars
have sometimes suggested that Mark’s account was written in part
to provide hope for those suffering persecution, to let them know
that, appearances notwithstanding, God was at work behind suffer¬
ing to achieve his redemptive purposes. What might Luke’s purpose
have been in modifying Mark’s account, so that Jesus no longer dies
in agony and despair?
Some critical interpreters have suggested that Luke may also be
writing for Christians experiencing persecution, but his message
to those suffering for the faith is different from Mark’s. Rather
than stressing that God is at work behind the scenes, even though
it doesn’t seem like it, Luke may be showing Christians a model of
how they, too, can suffer—like Jesus, the perfect martyr, who goes
to his death confident of his own innocence, assured of God’s pal¬
pable presence in his life, calm and in control of the situation, know¬
ing that suffering is necessary for the rewards of Paradise and that
it will soon be over, leading to a blessed existence in the life to come.
The two authors may be addressing similar situations, but they are
conveying very different messages, both about how Jesus died and
about how his followers can face persecution.
The Payoff
The problem comes when readers take these two accounts and com¬
bine them into one overarching account, in which Jesus says, does,
and experiences everything narrated in both Gospels. When that is
done, the messages of both Mark and Luke get completely lost and
glossed over. Jesus is no longer in deep agony, as in Mark (since he is
confident as in Luke), and he is no longer calm and in control as in
Luke (since he is in despair as in Mark). He is somehow all things at
once. Also, his words mean something different now, since he utters
the sayings of both. When readers then throw both Matthew and
John into the mix, they get an even more confused and conflated
portrayal of Jesus, imagining wrongly that they have constructed
the events as they really happened. To approach the stories in this
way is to rob each author of his own integrity as an author and to
deprive him of the meaning that he conveys in his story.
This is how readers over the years have come up with the famous
“seven last words of the dying Jesus”—by taking what he says at his
death in all four Gospels, mixing them together, and imagining that
in their combination they now have the full story. This interpretive
move does not give the full story. It gives a fifth story, a story that
is completely unlike any of the canonical four, a fifth story that in
effect rewrites the Gospels, producing a fifth Gospel. This is per¬
fectly fine to do if that’s what you want—it’s a free country, and no
one can stop you. But for historical critics, this is not the best way to
approach the Gospels.
My overarching point is that the Gospels, and all the books of the
Bible, are distinct and should not be read as if they are all saying the
same thing. They are decidedly not saying the same thing—even
when talking about the same subject (say, Jesus’ death). Mark is dif¬
ferent from Luke, and Matthew is different from John, as you can
see by doing your own horizontal reading of their respective stories
of the crucifixion. The historical approach to the Gospels allows each
author’s voice to be heard and refuses to conflate them into some
kind of mega-Gospel that flattens the emphases of each one.
Yup, your "mega-gospel" completely flattens each story, contradicts them and mocks the writing. In order to fix contradictions you have to make a ridiculous story where angels are introduced, then again, events are switched around, muddled, the narrative is a mess and you didn't answer certain questions.
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