Failed Prophesy and a Mirror

I was pleased as punch when my Sunday school class didn't have me burned at the stake for suggesting that one of the first failed prophesies concerning The Rapture (tm) was that of Tars Tarkas Paul of Tarsus. He spends a good deal of time explaining why one shouldn't get married or treat your spouse in a manner other than how you would a sibling - Jesus is comin'.

With all the gleeful mocking by more sensible Christians of Harold Camping's May 21 prediction for The Second Coming (tm), it is easy to forget that Jesus made a similar, if slightly less specific, prediction in Matt 24:33-34:

³³ Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. ³⁴ Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

And Matt 16:28:

Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

As James McGrath bravely points out, it has been two thousand years. Maybe it's time to stop looking for a guy in sandals to fly in and hit the reset button. Any number of bloggers chimed in with all the standard predictions of May 22 rationalizations and pity for Camping's followers. And yet many of them claim that to expect that God's judgment could happen any day now. Do they really fail to see the millenia of post-failure rationalization?

• A thousand days is like a single day to God (2 Peter)?
• God's time is not man's time?
• There was a spiritual Second Coming?
• It all happened in 70 ce (Preterism)?
• It happened at the Ascension?
• When Jesus said "generation" he meant "race" (Jerome)?
• God changed his mind - you passed the test (Shepherd of Hermas)?

The excuses pile up until the "reasonable" Christian just ignores the issue while continuing to insist that belief in the Second Coming is essential to Christian belief.

It all reminds me of the defense offered by the religious against being called a cult, "My religion has been around for thousands of years." Essentially, a failed prophecy stops being a failed prophecy once it has failed long enough.

Missing Mark Found!

In my last post I examined what the post-resurrection appearance in Matthew's gospel might tell us about original ending of Mark. It was late and, well, I'm a moron so I left out the other equally probable interpretation.

Instead of having an indication that Matthew was "correcting" an appearance-less Mark, Matthew may be preserving the original but now lost ending of Mark. Matthew obviously has very little tradition of Jesus appearances to draw on and the short scene he did include would be in keeping with the sparsity of Mark's narrative. Are the vocabulary and grammar sufficiently Markan to warrant this conclusion or my previous one? I will have to leave that analysis to the experts.

Now imagine that Matthew got to the end of his source, Mark, found no post-resurrection Jesus and just, well, stopped like Mark did. Wouldn't "is told among the Jews to this day" make a snazzy ending. I can just see Matthew stoking his beard significantly as he reads these words to the audience at the Gospel Slam. Now we would have both Mark's and Matthew's sitting around with the ends exposed and the scribes having to fix up both!

Missing Mark Found?

It is well known that the ending of the Gospel According to Mark is problematic. Some ancient manuscripts end the gospel at Mark 16:8 and others insert a number of different endings suggesting that no solid tradition survived concerning any text after the eighth verse. This has led some scholars to conclude that there never was an ending and that the author of Mark intended the sudden and dramatic ending.

One thought that has occurred to me is that Matthew's gospel gives a further indication that the "missing" ending may never have existed or at least was lost extremely early. We all know (I think) that Matthew borrows heavily from Mark. In fact Mark is Matthew's primary source for narrative details. When we read the end of the Gospel According to Matthew, of course we get the cute story about the guards which "is told among the Jews to this day" (Kudos to Matthew for this nice bit of apologetics). This is followed by chapter 28, verses 16-20

¹⁶Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

This brief and simple appearance story pales next to Luke's and John's memorable versions. However, if we line it up with Mark's passion narrative a curious thing happens. Matthew's appearance story is precisely what we would expect to follow Mark 16:8, namely the disciples meet Jesus in Galilee just as the young man in the white robe instructed the women at the tomb saying, "he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." Mark 16:7.

Is Matthew stuck with a copy of Mark that ends without the promised reunion? Does he feel the need add exactly the scene that so many scribes felt compelled to supply as well? I must admit that I never felt completely satisfied with the conclusion that Mark ended so abruptly but this little detail has me rethinking my position.

Matthew II

Reading through Matthew, again. I noticed right there at the beginning that the Angel never speaks to Mary, only to Joseph. The angels only appear in dreams, as well.

Matthew

Just finished reading the Gospel according to Matthew as a stand alone book. A few surprises, as advertised: The Son of God references never seem to imply divine status, just David-style Messiahship.

The one place that nearly got me is where the disciples "worship" Jesus after He walks on water in Matt 14:33. The Greek word translated here as "worship" is the same as that used to describe how Nathan approached David. Perhaps "prostrate" would be a better fit. This raises a few questions. First off, without a knowledge of Greek, can you ever hope to understand the Bibles we read? Second, did the translators here pull a fast one? Did they chose the translation that fit the accepted theology at the cost of losing Matthew's message? Lastly, have I become a complete shill for Bart Ehrman?! (The Triple - the mark of fine comedy. Watch for it)

I am still trying to pull together exactly what Matt 27:62 means when it says (NRSV) "The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation..." Is John's placement of Jesus crucifixion on the day of Preparation for Passover messing me up here with regards to preparation day before the sabbath?

Lastly, Matt 28:2 has an angel flying down, throwing open the tomb and showing that there is no body in there: Ta Dah! If Jesus were bodily risen from the grave, it must have been in one of those nifty glorified bodies that can walk through walls, obfuscate its visage and disappear. You know, like the one He wears in John's post-resurrection appearances.

On Selective Interpretation

Matthew 18:9 And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

It is kind of funny that we would take the Hell portion of these verses literally, but not the dismemberment part. Some of us don't think it's too much for Jesus to be describing a place of eternal torment, but we do think it's too much for him to actually mean we should cut off our limbs. There's something backwards in that.

terri at Wheat Among Tares