did jesus clearly announce his suffering and death to his disciples or did his arrest
crucifixion and reported resurrection take them completely by surprise
these questions are far more significant than we might initially think in the christian
gospels jesus repeatedly foretells his death and resurrection to his closest followers
i'll give you a few examples to give you a feeling a sense of what is involved in matthew chapter 16
it reads from that time on jesus began to show his disciples that he must undergo it must go to
jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and
be killed and on the third day be raised peter took him aside and began to rebuke him it said
peter understood what he was saying and then in mark's gospel chapter 8 we read then he
began to teach them that the son of man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the
elders the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again he said
all this quite openly and i'll give you just one last example because there are a number of them
from mark chapter 10. he took the twelve aside and began to tell them what was going to happen saying
see we are going up to jerusalem and the chi and the son of man will be handed over to the chief
priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and then they will hand him over to the
gentiles and they will mock him and spit upon him and flog him and kill him and after three days
he will rise again so these are really explicit detailed precise predictions repeatedly made
by jesus to his disciples um hopefully that point is clear so what how can one deal with this how
does an objective historian uh consider these uh statements in the gospels are they historical are
they uh invented sayings how are we to understand them and to help us explore this issue i want to
look at this book giza vermesh that's how it's pronounced the authentic gospel of jesus now
um giza uh vermesh is a scholar specializing in ancient judaism and early christianity
he's best known for his complete translation of the dead sea scrolls into english
and his research focuses on the dead sea scrolls and other ancient hebrew writings in aramaic
and on the life and religion of jesus vermees uh is one of the most important contemporary
uh jesus research scholars and has been described as the greatest jesus scholar of this generation
so uh he is a professor at oxford university so he writes um a section on this in his book starting
on page 385 and i want to share his insights with you i think he is what he says is actually really
interesting and sheds a very different light on this whole question of whether or not jesus
made these predictions in the first place and i'll let you judge for yourself whether or not you find
his argument persuasive i personally do i think most biblical scholars actually do but that's
a different subject he says the predictions which i've just read are not mysterious on the contrary
they are expressed in plain words one of the gospel writers explicitly stresses that jesus
intended to be understood and his words remembered let these words sink into your ears
luke 9 44. in some we are left in no doubt that the apostles have been put in the picture by jesus
about the forthcoming happenings not once or twice but several times on the other hand
how did these same apostles and disciples react when the predicted events began to materialize
they certainly showed no foreknowledge of the scenario when jesus was arrested all his
companions fled see mark 14 50. when confronted peter even denied that he had anything to do with
jesus or even that he knew him mark 14 66 none of the apostles or for that matter any member of the
family of jesus accompanied him to golgotha according to the synoptics golgotha is the
place of crucifixion the place of the skull as it's called after the death of jesus on
the cross the apostles do not seek comfort in the thought that in three days time all would be well
on the contrary when the women had gone to the tomb to complete the burial rites reported
that the body of jesus had disappeared they encountered only total disbelief
voiced with a customary male superiority of the age in fact for the apostles the words of
the women were lyros now this is luke 24 11. now i've looked up leros in uh because i can read the
greek in my uh greek lexicon of the new testament and lyros uh means silly talk nonsense silly talk
nonsense so that's what the word means in english so for the apostles the words of the women were
silly nonsense luke 24 11. according to luke neither of the two disciples traveling to emmaus
nor the apostles in jerusalem recognize jesus when he appears to them after his resurrection
in matthew's totally different account of the manifestation of the religious
of the risen jesus is to is to his 11 disciples on the galilean mountain even some of these are
said to have doubted so even after he appeared to them according to matthew some or all depending
on which translation he used still doubted that it was him would people who had been assured in
advance by their charismatic and prophetic teacher that the tragic events should be followed promptly
by a happy ending have displayed such profound incredulity even allowing for
the momentary shock and natural fear caused by the arrest of jesus in the depth of the night
the apostles should surely have recalled the sequence of events so often and so recently
rehearsed before them by jesus there's a very good point that uh gizer amish makes they think
and there's more hence he says the irreconcilable descriptions in the gospels present us with the
following dilemma either jesus did not predict his fate and the cowardly behavior of the disoriented
disciples resulted from natural distress weakness and disarray or he actually forewarned them
in which case the inglorious conduct of each one of the apostles is inexplicable
and the distorted canvas must surely be made entirely of the writers of the gospels
weighing up the pros and cons it is easier to account for the latter insertion of inauthentic
predictions than to provide a believable explanation for the undignified conduct of
the closest associates of jesus possessing full full knowledge of the events to come
this is a very good point the greatest difficulty in which the subsequent decades
in the subsequent decades facing the apostles and the early christian missionaries was how to
explain to jews and to gentiles the death and resurrection of jesus it should be recalled
that neither the death nor the resurrection of the messiah formed a part of the beliefs
and expectations of the jews in the first century a.d now this is giza varmish's area of speciality
so no jews at that time expected this but actually we know from other evidence and
i mentioned this before that no jew prior to the rise of christianity ever thought that the messiah
would suffer and die and rise again on the third day it simply didn't exist so
the apostles he continues and the evangelists that's the authors of the gospels endeavored to
account for his death and this death and resurrection and to make them acceptable
by asserting that jesus had full knowledge in advance of them that he conveyed this knowledge
to his disciples and that the subsequent events simply fulfilled his own predictions
as is well known the chief method adopted by the spokesman of the early church
in order to prove their message about the messiahship of jesus was to show that his
story was prefigured in the bible that's the jewish bible and consequently foreordained by god
the teachers of the dead sea scroll by he's the world's leading expert on this the teachers
of the dead sea sect use the same technique known as pressure interpretation that's p e
s h e r p pressure interpretation in the persons and events of the quantum community the ancient
predictions were realized in retrospect a similar fulfillment exegesis was inserted by the gospel
writers into their narratives regarding jesus's suffering death and resurrection
in other words it's not really there but they read it into the story
in addition to jesus's own announcements regarding his end mark and matthew make him
allude to the prophecies for telling his arrest for the son of man goes as it is written but
woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed mark 14 21 they put words into jesus mouth
but let the scriptures be fulfilled mark 14 49 or but how then should the scriptures be fulfilled
that it must be so matthew 26 54 elsewhere in an ambiguous way marks jesus asks how is it written
of the son of man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt mark 9 20.
in turn the jesus of luke remarks everything that is written of the son of man by the prophets will
be accomplished luke 18 31 and his and his risen jesus also declares thus it is written
that the christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead luke 24 46 it is highly
remarkable says gizavermish however that none of these illusions actually cite the biblical
passages in which the death and resurrection of jesus are supposed to have found their realization
they don't quote the passage ever where this says when it's allegedly is cited nor does paul
reproduce any quotation from the holy books to support the claim that christ died for our sins in
accordance with the scripture that's 1 corinthians 15 3. this shows that the acceptability of the
teaching concerning the death and resurrection of jesus increases if it is assumed that these
events had been foretold not just by him but also by the prophets long before him
and finally giza vermish mentions in consequence jesus jesus's appropriate
predictions were incorporated into the gospel narrative this the inter the interpolation was
then accompanied by further adjustments to make the behavior of the apostles look less perplexing
the gospel writers tried to excuse them by remarking that they could not understand jesus
and that the meaning of the words was concealed from them luke 18 34. why would god conceal
you know jesus makes his predictions and then god promptly conceals them from the from the
disciples understanding it doesn't make much sense the apostles are made to pretend that they had no
idea of what rising from the dead signified mark 9 10 although by the first century idea id a.d
the concept of resurrection was common currency amongst the jews so this is the world's leading
expert on first century judaism they everyone knew what it meant the resurrection of the dead but uh
mark 9 10 tries to make out that they had no idea what it meant the disciples failure to ask jesus
for an explanation was due to their being too distressed matthew 17 23 or too frightened 9
32 of mark amazingly it is even implied that some of them had simply forgotten the predictions
we learned that the angelic informants encountered the women in the empty tomb had
to remind them of jesus prophecies and all of a sudden they remembered his words luke
24 6. to give a semblance of coherence to their version of the story the gospel writers demand
the apostles pay a high price they are portrayed as obtuse and spineless in other words as idiots
so that's uh giza vermish's uh rebuttal and i think he makes a brilliant point
it doesn't make any sense historically and psychologically and the gospel stories have
retrospectively read back into their narrative these predictions which were made up after the
event to give a kind of coherence that god is in charge of all this so i hope you find that
of interest do let me know what you think feel free to disagree and there we are until next time