April 13th

Posted on April 11, 2006

Although I often teach this course in the Spring term, it only occasionally happens that we get to the "Passion" and "Resurrection" narratives the same week as Easter (and this year Passover falls in the same week; this Thursday is Holy Thursday for Christians, the celebration of the Last Supper, which, in the Synoptic Gospels, was a Passover meal).

Thursday's class will fall into two parts. In the first half we will deal with the narratives in all four of the Gospels treating the movement from the Last Supper to Jesus' arrest to his torture, trial, carrying of the cross, death, and burial. Crossan discusses quite a lot of this in his chapter 6: "The Dogs Beneath the Cross." What I want you to focus on are 1) the core sequence that the Gospels have in common (note that John's is different in some obvious ways; and 2) the differences in the accounts (there are both obvious major differences and some very subtle ones). Crossan doesn't focus exclusively on these differences, but he does give some important examples (e.g. how the burial accounts differ). Crossan is also trying to get us to reflect on why Jesus was actually crucified: what did the historical Jesus do to get killed (and is that how the Gospel writers "redact" the story)?

In the second half of class we will consider the Resurrection and post-Resurrection narratives. While all the writers have a scene at the tomb ("Easter"), they have very different accounts about what happens subsequently (and even the "tomb-scenes" have slightly different compositions of characters). Please note that Mark's gospel originally ended at 16:8 (and you should stop there so that you get a feel for how the other writers change his story). One of Crossan's key points in chapter 7 ("How many years was Easter Sunday?") is that, whatever the early Christians actually believed about the resurrection as an "historical event"--and the reading from St. Paul's Letter to the Corinthians will tell you something about this-- the resurrection stories do not aim to reconstruct the resurrection in terms of "what really happened"). So please give that special consideration. We will look at some of the specific arguments Crossan makes about these stories, but we will try to go beyond his account as well. We will certainly give some special attention to Luke's account (his "Road to Emmaus" story is a great one, and I read this a bit differently from Crossan), and if we have any time left we will give some attention to the first 8 verses of Mark 16 (it's quite amazing how much is packed into that small space).

A reminder that you have an essay due on Friday.