CADRE Comments

One of the most well-known events in Scriptures is Jesus' exchange with Pontius Pilate at his trial as described in John 18. In verse 38 of that chapter, Pilate asks the question that may be the most ironic in the history of the world, "What is truth?" A less known but equally intriguing saying of Jesus from an apologetics viewpoint can be found in Jesus' response to an earlier question in the same trial. It is a question that is not often quoted, but on those rare occasions when it is quoted, Jesus' response is often overlooked as not particularly important or relevant to today's world. However, it is my experience (as well as the experience of many people who have truly spent time studying the Scriptures) that little, if any, of what Jesus said in the Bible lacks significance across time. To best understand the response, it's important to see the response in context. The situation is this: Jesus has been arrested following His betrayal by Judas I...

"Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover." ~ John 18:28  The Gospel of John reflects that Jesus was taken before Pilate at the Praetorium. Now, Praetorium isn't a word that we use regularly in the 21st Century, so it is a word that needs to be defined. The International Bible Encyclopedia defines Praetorium as follows:  Praetorium: pre-to'-ri-um praitorion, Mt 27:27 (the King James Version "common hall"); Mr 15:16; Joh 18:28,33; 19:9 (in all margins "palace," and in the last three the King James Version "judgment hall"); Ac 23:35, (Herod's) "palace," margin "Praetorium," the King James Version "judgment hall"; Php 1:13, "praetorian guard" (margin "Greek ‘in the whole Pretorium,' " the King James Version "palace," marg...

New to the series? I recommend tracing back through previous entries to catch up. Part 6 is here. Part 7: Hints of a Particular Person and Place So, where are we now? We have the chief priests, setting guards over a body. Which pretty much obliterates the notion that the body was thrown into a common grave. Jesus' disciples wouldn't have thrown their own Master into a common grave; the only people who would have done that, would be the Romans or the Sanhedrin itself. If the Romans had done this, then Romans would have accepted any necessary responsibility for guarding it (assuming any guarding was thought to be desirable in the first place). Yet as I have shown, it is not the best historical conclusion that the Romans were the ones who sent the guard (even before we get out of the Key and into other parts of the GosMatt story, much less into other accounts of the incident!) So either the Romans never had anything at all to do with the body--as far as the Key by itself goes, and...

New to the series? I recommend tracing back through previous entries to catch up. Part 5 is here. Part 6: The Backhanded Strength of a Weak Story Jews had been replying, to GosMatt's Christian audience, that guards had been 'witnessing' (so to speak) that they had fallen asleep, or otherwise rested (to the point of inattention), during the night and the body had been stolen then by Jesus' disciples. This story, however, is very weak. I already have considered one of these weaknesses--the chief weakness, in fact. Here is a detail of guards, charged by someone in authority to guard a dead body at night. Even if they were Temple guards coming off a hard duty (and thus somewhat likely to fall asleep during a boring watch in the middle of the night, especially if it's in a nice quiet graveyard garden outside the city walls as indicated by the story prior to the Key), what must we believe to accept their story? We (or anyone) must be prepared to believe that a set of sold...

Note: at this point it's easier for me to just point back through previous entries in the series ( Part 4 is here with links going back to Part 1), than to try to summarize it. Part 5: No Body Knows The Trouble They Seen Guards don't spring into existence out of nothing to guard bodies. Guards work for someone. The Jews near GosMatt's writer had evidently been saying something about these guards: namely that the guards had testified to their own failure to keep the body from vanishing, which they explained by claiming they had fallen asleep on the job (or had been so lazy they might as well have fallen asleep. The Greek of GosMatt’s counter-counter-polemic report could be read either way, or so I understand.) It would be ridiculous for the Jews to care enough about the GosMatt Christians' resurrection story, to provide such a refutal, if the Christians’ story did not concern something that touched them as Jews . GosMatt's author evidently thought it did this; which...

In Parts 2 and 3 of this Round, I demonstrated that the actual data of the texts does not indicate the authors were using the name "Jud-", including with Judas Iscariot, to heap derision on orthodox Judaism; that there is no clear progression across the texts of exonerating Pilate while blaming the Jewish religious authorities; and (most problematic of all, perhaps), that Bishop Spong himself has less than no problem admitting that there was a fatal rejection of Jesus and his teaching (even on Bishop Spong's theologically truncated notion of Jesus' teaching) by the mainstream Jewish authorities of his day: a rejection leading to Jesus' death at the hands of the Romans via the Sanhedrin. Which admission of historical accuracy, radically undermines Bishop Spong's theory for the reason why the authors would invent a fictional character of 'Judas Iscariot', in order to promote rejection of orthodox Judaism among Jewish Christians. There is, of course, th...

Click here for Part 2 of this Round, where I cross-check Bishop Spong's theory about "Judas" being a codename used for denigrating orthodox Judaism in the eyes of the Jewish Christian audience of the Gospels, with actual textual details. (Readers can follow links back to the beginning of this Round, and of this series of analysis, too.) In an attempt to make this theory sound like it has a shred of credence, Bishop Spong writes: “The leaders of the orthodox party of that nation, who defined the worship of the Jews, were by the time the gospels were written increasingly the enemy of the Christian movement. It is simply too convenient to place the blame for Jesus' death on the whole of orthodox Judaism by linking the traitor by name with the entire nation of the Jews. […] The Romans killed Jesus, but by the eighth decade of the Christian era, when the story of Jesus was being written, something compelled the gospel writers to exonerate the Roman procurator, Pilate, and...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: see here for the previous entry; and see here for the first entry of the series. (It explains what I'm doing, and how, and contains the Johannine prologue.) And On That Day He Rested (The storytellers continue in harmony...) Now when all the groups who had come together for this sight, observed what had happened, they began to return (to the city), beating their breasts (in grief). And many women were there; who had followed Jesus from Galilee, waiting on Him--among whom was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and Joseph, and Salome the mother of the sons of Zebedee. They stood at a distance, with all His acquaintances, seeing these things. ....... Now, after these things, as evening was already coming... Look!--a rich man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, named Joseph! A good and fair-minded man, a prominent member of the Sanhedrin, who himself had been a disciple of Jesus and who was waiting for the kingdom of God. He had not ...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: see here for the previous entry; and see here for the first entry of the series. (It explains what I'm doing, and how, and contains the Johannine prologue.) The plotnotes continue factoring heavily for this entry; so I'll continue blockquoting them to help distinguish them from textual data. The King of Trials Now when morning had come, all the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled the Sanhedrin and led Jesus away to their council, saying: "If you are the Anointed King, tell us." [Trialnote: this incident is reported only by the Scholar, who does not report any earlier trials at the house of Caiaphas and/or Annas. (The Scholar also, incidentally, is the one who shows us Jesus looking at Peter during the third denial--as He is being led out the gateway of the high priest's house.) Still, it fits with other data: the verdict must be reached again in official session, at the very least so that Pilate will have some...