I see an event which, if had really happened, would have been known and written about the world over. It's not.
what do you read at Matthew 27:52,53 ?
by evergreen 28 Replies latest watchtower bible
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AGuest
Thank you! Greetings and may you all have peace!
Actually, what is written in the book of Matthew is in fact an addition, by early Jewish converts as support in of their need to "justify" that my Lord was indeed Messiah. According to Jewish tradition, one of the manifestations of Messiah "coming" was that there would be a corresponding resurrection. (Note, this is in fact true, and for those who need to see it in writing, it is recorded at Chapter 5, verses 15 through 17, in Paul's letter to the Thessalonians; however, please note that what Paul wrote is not to be considered "more accurate" than what Matthew wrote; Matthew did not make the addition in question to his original account).
When my Lord was put to death in the flesh and certain physical phenomena occurred (i.e., sun darkening, thunder, etc.), the disciples anticipated a manifestation that he was indeed the Son of God... or "the resurrection." He was dead, and thus, they believed they were apparently in "the last day." What they did not understand until later was that the things he spoke of had to do with that which is SPIRITUAL... and not that which is physical. So, that it is when he arrives as a SPIRIT that the [first] resurrection will occur. But he warned them, for he told them that the things they would see were a BEGINNING of the conclusion.)
There is a purpose of this addition, however, and that is to help us understand the TRUTH: that the gospels were not "inspired" - they are not "scripture" - but they are simply versions of what occurred, according to one person or another, for various reasons (i.e., for something to be "inspired," it MUST be borne of holy spirit, with the writer being directed to write BY that Spirit. Luke, however, wrote NOT at the behest of holy spirit, but of Theophilus, a Greek and/or Roman ruler who wanted to know what was going on between the Jews who followed the former way, and the Jews who were newly called "christians" - the former was persecuting the latter something fierce, and using Jewish religious law to justify it, so that Theophilus, who were actually in charge, wanted to know what the situation truly was. Luke interviewed many who were present with my Lord and compiled his account NOT at the revealing by holy spirit, but based on what such ones shared with him.)
The result of statements such as that included at Matthew 27:52, 53 is (1) confusion, which is exactly what the Leader of Confusion desires and uses "the scribes and Pharisees" to do, so as to (2) lead those seeking not TO God, through Christ, but AWAY... through the "false stylus." How can one put faith in that which appears to contradict itself time and time again? How is one to know what truly took place, who one is to truly believe?
The answer is simple and one that the Bible itself repeatedly tells us: go to the Source. For isn't "water" cleanest when drank right at the SOURCE... rather than someplace downstream... after it's gathered the usual dust, dirt and filth? And even if it's been "filtered", is it truly as clean as it was originally? Does it not now contain various additives and chemicals so as to give it the appearance of purity?
The very book that many put their trust in as "the Word of God"... TELLS us to go to the Source... as well as that the book itself is NOT the Word of God and that it is TO the Word of God... TO the Truth... that we must go... to get the TRUTH. Truly, there is no "truth" and there is no other "way" to know truth, to know the Truth, to know God, or to get to God, know God... or be known by God: Revelation 19:13 John 1:14 John 17:17 John 14:6 John 8:32 John 14:6 John 8:36 John 7:37, 38 Matthew 11:28, 29 John 5:39, 40 John 14:9 John 17:3
The Bible is just another "golden calf"... which, like religion, was established for those who lack faith, those who cannot worship... what they cannot see... who need some kind of physical manifestation to gaze at... or into... until Messiah "returns." Just as Israel at Sinai lost faith in the return of their "mediator" Moses, most have lost faith in the return on the True Mediator, Christ, so that they continually need something between them and God: the Bible... or religion.
But we have been told keep our eyes NOT on that which is seen... but on that which is UNSEEN... the SPIRITUAL... versus the PHYSICAL. Christ is a SPIRIT... no longer a physical man... and it is with our SPIRIT... the man that we are on the INSIDE... that we can see and hear him.
John 10:3, 27
Therefore, if you TRULY want to know what is true... and what is NOT... ASK. Acknowledge that you are blind and deaf... SPIRITUALLY... and ask him to "excavate" ears so that you may hear what is "whispered"... and eyes so that you may see... what is NOT seen. Matthew 10:27 Revelation 3:18, 20 Psalm 40:6
All it takes... is faith. For without faith... one should not suppose one will receive anything... for one hasn't really made up one's heart that one truly wants what is being asked for: ears to hear... and eyes to see.
I, SJ, have shared it with you just as it was given to me by my Lord, JAHESHUA MISCHAJAH, Son and Christ of the Most Holy of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose name is JAH... of Armies.
I bid you peace!
A slave of Christ,
SJ
P.S. For those who would ask, "If you don't believe the Bible to be inspired, why quote it?" I must respond that I do not do so because of my own reliance, but instead for the benefit of those who do not know what the Bible itself says about these matters and/or who cannot put faith in the "thing heard," unless they see it in writing. Peace to you!
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Midget-Sasquatch
I've enjoyed all the comments so far but actually decided to look up the passage in Ezekiel mentioned by Willpower.
Ezekiel 37:12-13 in part reads: "....Here I am opening your graves, and I will bring you up out of your graves, O my people, and bring you in upon the soil of Isreal. And you will have to know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and when I bring you up out of them..."
Matthew has his sequence of events in verse 52-53 in step with these verses. Having the Centurion in verse 54 declare that Jesus must have been the Son of God also meshes well with the ending in Ezekiel of having to know "that I am the Lord."
Matthew regularly uses OT passages and incorporates them as actual historical events in the life of Jesus, as proof that Jesus fulfilled them, and so must have been the foretold Messiah. Some of the stuff he wrote about, the other Gospels don't even mention (detour into Egypt, or Herod's order to slaughter the baby males). I don't think its a stretch to chalk this up as one more example of Matthew co-opting some Jewish beliefs about things to happen upon Messiah's coming, and including it to bolster his case for Jesus.
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Leolaia
What comes to my mind here is what ties in with what Jesus said in his final words when speaking to God. Into your hands i commend my spirit.Which would indicate that he was giving up his spirit at the moment of death (the society say it is his life force).His body being raised after the 3rd day so that the human eye could literally see proof that he had been raised.
The beliefs about Jesus' resurrection developed in several stages and various strata are detectable in the gospel tradition. The "Empty Tomb" story and the tradition of a corporeal resurrection three days after the crucifixion are later than the tradition that Jesus' spirit (like the spirits of faithful old patriarchs of Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, etc.) ascended to heaven to Paradise on the day of his death. Luke 23:43 probably belongs to this early statum. So do the statements in the Passion narratives that Jesus "yielded up his spirit (aphéken to pneuma)" or said as his last words "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (paratithemai to pneuma mou)" (Matthew 27:50; Luke 23:44-49). Most telling is the version in the Gospel of Peter which says that "having said this he was taken up (analémphte)" (5:19). This is the same verb that occurs in Acts 1:11 and in 2 Kings 2:11 (LXX) to refer to the heavenly ascensions of Jesus and Elijah respectively. Connected with this tradition is the docetic/proto-gnostic belief that the human Jesus was the chosen "vessel" of the heavenly Redeemer (so Cerinthus and to some extent, Hermas of Rome) who left Jesus' body as he lay dying on the cross. The earlier docetic post-crucifixion epiphanies of the risen Jesus in Luke 24:30-31 and John 20:19 are supplemented by anti-docetic addenda emphasizing the corporeality of the resurrected Jesus in Luke 24:33-35, 36-49 and John 20:20-29.
Despite the fact that orthodox Christianity left docetic notions vigorously behind even in the late first century (cf. especially Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp), the Society's own explanation of the resurrection is itself docetic -- namely, in that Jesus was raised as a "spirit" whose apparent body, bearing simulated marks of the crucifixion. Such a notion is far from the concept in the complete canonical gospels of Jesus rising from the dead through a physical resurrection (hence the significance of the Empty Tomb -- it is empty because Jesus has left it).
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A Paduan
the tombs also were opened,
Woe to you! for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. They don't build on their ancestors' spirit, but rather - their tombs ie. follow their earthly pursuits for you are like whitewashed tombs
and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised,
But some one will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" ..what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain..........it is raised a spiritual body........I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God
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evergreen
Thankyou to every one who have responded to this topic. I remember reading this portion of scripture years ago and was always baffled back then by the WTS insight on it.
Without going into too much detail, i personally think as some have already mentioned on this message board, that the supernatural events that happenned that day were really showing that Jesus was truly the son of God and his death marked the most important event for mankind .The earthquake ,the darkness, the curtain being torn in two and the events at the memorial tombs .
Why not, is it really so far fetched to believe this account.Jesus when alive ressurrected many people including Lazurus right before the eyes of many eye witnesses.Yet is Lazarus here to day. No he probably died of old age because of the imperfect AGE we live in. These people ( perhaps sincerely faithful to God wether they had heard the message of jesus before they died or not) were it appears raised from the dead and appeared to many ( probably people who had not long died as they would have been recognised by their friends and family) which proved beyond any doubt that Jesus was the Messiah.( These to would eventually have died in time due to imperfection within this AGE). No doubt many would certainly have put faith in Jesus being the Christ , just as those would have when Lazarus and many others were ressurrected by him.
I find that by reading the simple message of the bible (taken at face value) strengthens my faith in God even when some things are a little hard to understand. I hadn't read the bible for a few days; and when i read it yesterday coupled with prayer, i could feel the power of Gods word comfort me in this very troubled world we live in.
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Leolaia
evergreen....One theological problem, as mentioned before, is that the Apostle Paul believed that Jesus was the "first fruits" of the resurrection and that the resurrection of the faithful dead would occur later "in their proper order". There is no evidence that Paul knew of the stream of tradition of resurrection miracles represented in John (< the Semeia Gospel) and the young rich man in Secret Mark. There is also a profound difference between what supposedly happened with those in the memorial tombs during Jesus' crucifixion and the resurrection of Lazarus. Lazarus had begun to smell and he had been dead a few days (John 11:17), but his flesh had not rotted away. The miracle, and that especially of the demonic epileptic child in Mark, is less of a full-scale resurrection than in the case of the miracle reported in Matthew. The ones being raised are the hagión, the "saints" (Mathew 27:52), a term that especially referred to the faithful who died in persecution, especially those who died under Antiochus Epiphanes IV (cf. Daniel 8:24; 1 Maccabees 7:17; 2 Maccabees 15:24; compare Revelation 11:18, 13:7, 10, 16:6, 17:6, 18:24). These are those who are long dead, who had long rotted away to bones, but who were being resurrected in Matthew at the time of Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus' own resurrection instead was more like that of Lazarus, of someone who had been dead a few days but who did not need to have his flesh reconstituted (a la Ezekiel 37, in a non-symbolic interpretation; Daniel 12:2), and yet he was preceded by the full-scale resurrection of those saints "sleeping in the dust" whose resurrection would have fulfilled the popular interpretation of Ezekiel 37, far beyond the scale of either Lazarus or Jesus in both number and manner.
That is the problem that a later Paulinist copyist of Matthew faced, of how Paul claimed that the resurrection of Christ preceded the resurrection of the righteous (1 Corinthians 15:20-23) and how "Paul" could deny that any such "resurrection has already taken place" (2 Timothy 2:18). This is the apparent motivation of the bizarre interpolation in the text (absent in the Diatessaron) that delays the appearance of the resurrected dead until after Jesus' resurrection. It is an awkward attempt at harmonizing the text with Pauline theology -- awkward because the centurion at the cross reacted to the sight of the resurrected dead even though they did not appear until three days later. The Diatessaron version lacks both the Pauline language and the interpolation, suggesting at it is more original than the version in the received text.
The Ebionite Ascents of James (second to third century AD), which circulated in the same Jewish-Christian communities where Matthew originated, also has a more primitive version which states only that the tombs were opened -- without any legendary expansion referring to a specific resurrection:
"When he suffered, this whole world suffered with him. Even the sun grew dark, and the stars were moved, the sea was troubled, and the mountains loosened, and the tombs were opened. The veil of the temple was torn as if mourning for the coming desolation of the place. Because of these things, all the people were afraid and were constrained to question them" (Ascents of James, Syriac Rec. 1.41.3-4).
Any mention of tombs opening or of a further raising of the dead is absent in either the original Markan narrative, or the revisions of Luke, John, and the Gospel of Peter. The silence of the earlier account in Mark and the other witnesses of Mark is quite striking considering the awesomeness of the event. Indeed, the only thing Mark mentions is the renting of the temple veil (15:38) -- with no reference to even an earthquake. We can thus see how the story was embellished over time: (1) first only the renting of the temple veil is mentioned (which in the Gospel of Peter, like Mark, occurs at the moment of death), (2) then both the veil renting and the earthquake are mentioned (cf. Luke, Gospel of Peter), (3) then mention of the tombs opening is added (cf. the Ascents of James), then (4) reference is made to the tombs opening and the dead being resurrected and walking out of their tombs (cf. the version of Matthew attested in the Diatessaron), and finally (5) a more mitigated version in which the appearance of the dead saints is delayed until after Jesus' resurrection (cf. the interpolated text in canonical Matthew). It should be noted tho that the Gospel of Peter, the Ascents of James, and the Diatessaron are involve gospel harmony but which may individually preserve earlier readings altered in the canonical tradition.
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Leolaia
There are some interesting theories on the OT background of episode in Matthew. Some have noticed the similarity with the theophany in Zechariah 14:3-5, which alludes to an "earthquake" at the Mount of Olives "with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south," during which the "Lord God will come and all the holy ones (pantes hoi hagioi) with him" (LXX). There are five parallels to Matthew here: (1) the locale just outside of Jerusalem, (2) the earthquake, (3) skhisthó "split" occurs in both texts with reference to the splitting of rocks, and (4) the plural of hagios "saint", and (5) the "darkness" mentioned in v. 7. Another interesting coincidence is the prophecy of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37, in which the reviving of the bones of the dead occurs after a "breath" like the four winds is sent. In Matthew 27:52-53, the raising of the "holy ones" occurs immediately after Jesus breathes his last in a "loud voice" (v. 50).
The NWT, by the way, circumvents the problem by rendering égerthésan "being raised up" in Matthew 27:52 literally as "raised up," referring merely to corpses that were exposed during the earthquake. However, this is closely related to the word egersin that occurs in the very next verse to refer to Jesus' own resurrection. Moreover, the identical word is used throughout the gospel to refer to Jesus' resurrection: "But after I have risen (egerthénai), I will go ahead of you to Galilee" (Mathew 26:32), "Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised (égerthé) from the dead" (27:64), "He is not here, he was raised (égerthé)" (28:06), and so forth. The verb is consistently used in connection with the dead to refer to the resurrection. It would be a case of special pleading to treat Matthew 27:52 any differently. As for the Diatessaron rendering, Ephraem the Syrian also plainly indicated: "He said 'wait until' meaning that they should wait until the tombs be rent asunder and the righteous come forth, the recent and the ancient, and enter into Jerusalem, the city of the great king. And lo, then will they believe that he who resurrected them also resurrected Moses" (Commentary on the Diatessaron, 14.9-10).
And regarding the Pauline language in this text, its awkward nature, and the evidence of it being a later addition, even the Society admits the possibility of an interpolation here:
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w61 1/1 p. 30 Was There a Resurrection? ***In view of all the questions that these texts raise, their contradictory reading and the variations in them found in the most ancient manuscripts, another alternative may not be ruled out altogether. And what is that? That these verses were not written by Matthew himself but added by an early copying hand. This position seems to find further support in the fact that the particular Greek word for "resurrection" (RS) used here, égersis, occurs nowhere else in the Christian Greek Scriptures. Also, here is the only use of the expression "the saints," "holy ones," in all the Gospels, it first appearing after Pentecost. The fact that these verses are found in the apocryphal Gospel of the Nazarenes but not in any of the other canonical Gospels further makes these verses suspect.
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Narkissos
(Re: w61) Wow! Seems to be the only case (apart from the "Jehovah" stuff) where the WT explicitly ventures on the border of conjectural textual criticism and literary criticism... This text is embarrassing.
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Leolaia
In my last post, I overlooked the similarity in wording between Matthew 27:52-53 and Ezekiel 37:12-13 and Isaiah 26:19:
"Behold, I will open (anoigó) your tombs (mnémata), and will bring you up out of your tombs (mnématón), and I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened (anoixai) your graves, that I may bring up my people from their graves" (Ezekiel 37:12-13; LXX)
"The dead (nekroi) shall rise (anastésontai), and they that are in the tombs (mnémeiois) shall be raised (egerthésontai), and they that are in the earth shall rejoice; for the dew from you is healing to them; but the land of the ungodly shall perish" (Isaiah 26:19; LXX)
Compare with Matthew 27:52-53 which has the "tombs" (mnémeia) being "opened" (aneókhthésan) and the saints "being raised" (égerthésan).
Another point to be made is the tension between this story and the Empty Tomb story. Why was Jesus' tomb so special when tombs all around were supposedly empty? Perhaps the interpolation was also aimed at easing the potential conflict with Matthew 27:64.
Narkissos....Yes, I was surprised to read that. It seemed like any possibility was better than admitting that a general resurrection took place during the crucifixion.