[Dialogue] 5/12/2022, Progressing Spirit: Dr. Carl Krieg: What the Disciples Believed About The Resurrection of Jesus; Spong revisited

Thu May 12 09:25:58 PDT 2022

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What the Disciples Believed
About The Resurrection of Jesus
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|  Essay by Dr. Carl Krieg
May 12, 2022
 We don’t know when Jesus was born, but we do know when he died. His birth was linked to existing pagan festivals celebrating the winter solstice, but his death can be dated relatively specifically, and occurred during the Passover Festival, Jerusalem, early April in year 30.

According to the narrative, he rose from the dead three days after he was crucified, a day we call Easter, a day celebrated around the world, not by all, but by many. It behooves us, as best we can, to review the pieces of the puzzle as we seek to understand historically what really happened. That is to say, setting aside any analysis or statements that presuppose some sort of faith, what can we say about what the disciples describe as their experience? We investigate through the eyes of a secular historian and seek to understand what happened to the disciples of Jesus.There are seven facts that shape that understanding.Fact 1 We have no direct and conclusive evidence of what the disciples experienced when they were with Jesus. At first there were only oral reports that were gathered into narratives, collected in various cities, and then written down for use in church liturgies. The earliest of these documents dates from about 70 ce. Fact 2 Most people may have been intrigued by Jesus, but not enough to become disciples. Those who were personally impacted by him remembered his life and teaching, and ultimately committed their witness to writing. Fact 3 The documents that we do have that possibly offer information about the historical Jesus are six in number. 1: the gospel of Mark, which Matthew and Luke used in part as the basis of their gospels, 2: a second source, referred to as Q, which, along with Mark, also formed the basis of Matthew and Luke, 3: verses peculiar to and found only in Matthew [M], 4: verses peculiar to and found only in Luke [L], 5: the extra canonical, non-biblical document known as the gospel of Thomas, the reliability of which many scholars put on a par with Mark, Matthew and Luke, and 6: perhaps some sections in the gospel called John. Paul, whose various letters are the earliest documents in the Christian Writings, offers no information about the historical Jesus.Fact 4 Significantly, two of the sources, Q and Thomas, have no account of the empty tomb. Equally significant, the other sources’ accounts of the empty tomb [Mark, M, and L] all differ from one another in the details of what supposedly happened. Fact 5 Paul makes no reference at all to an empty tomb, but instead speaks of the post crucifixion new life of Jesus as a “spiritual body” raised from the dead.Fact 6 The crucifixion of Jesus did not destroy the commitment of the disciples to their Lord. In fact, they became even more dedicated to the mission of spreading the newness of life that they had discovered because of Jesus.Fact 7 Despite the fact that there were thousands upon thousands of crucifixions committed by the Romans, archaeologists have discovered only one intact skeleton of a person who was crucified, and that person was not Jesus.This last fact alone indicates that, from a purely historical perspective, Jesus the troublemaker, like thousands of others, was crucified and left hanging on the cross. There was no tomb. But aside from the manner in which Roman crucifixion was carried out, we can also look at the resurrection narrative from a perspective internal to the young community. Focus on the fact that two of the primary sources for knowing anything at all about Jesus, Q and Thomas, have no reference to an empty tomb whatsoever. The takeaway is that the empty tomb was not an event that the early disciples experienced. We need to understand why this is so, why it is that the resuscitation of a dead body who left the grave was not integral to the story developed by these disciples.Imagine Jesus walking around the villages and countryside of Galilee. He is a powerful personality. He teaches, criticizes the power structure that dispossesses the poor, and he continually flaunts the social codes. Some people are attracted to him, some of whom become his disciples. Some of those disciples stayed with him [I will refer to these as the stayers] and some moved on [I will refer to them as the movers], but all of them felt that they had discovered in him a new awareness of who they were and who God was. Those who did not remain with him did not witness the crucifixion, and so when their thought was later put into the written form of Q and Thomas, the cross and the empty tomb did not appear. What happened to these disciples, what changed their lives, happened while Jesus was still alive and with them, showing them a new perspective on life.The disciples who did remain with Jesus, about 25 women and men, were also encountered and felt awakened to a new life while Jesus lived, the only difference being that they chose to stay. So what we find, both among those who moved on and those who stayed, are people profoundly affected by Jesus, embodying a new lifestyle that did not falter, no matter the circumstance, and which carried on throughout their life. And, contrary to everything we have ever been told or believed about Easter morning, the empty tomb and a resuscitated Jesus was not part of the disciples’ experience. But what they did claim to have was the Spirit of Jesus in their midst. That spirit was with the movers even while Jesus was still alive in Galilee and Jerusalem. And that Spirit was with the stayers even though Jesus had been crucified. Both groups claim to have experienced a new type of being in their midst, a type described by Paul as a “spiritual body”, a reality beyond description because it was beyond understanding. The Spirit of Christ was a mystery that transcended  comprehension, but a reality for them nonetheless. If we think of this new life as a resuscitated corpse, we fail to recognize the power of the resurrection-belief on the disciples. Because if we now take this one step further, the faith that Jesus lives in a new form, meant for the disciples that evil and death are overcome. The basic faith that Jesus rose convinced the disciples that evil and death, as epitomized in the crucifixion, have no ontological status. They believed that within the context of Reality, death and evil have no ultimate reality. That is the essence of the disciples’ faith, the source of their excitement, their confidence, their boldness, and their joy. ~ Dr. Carl Krieg

Read online here

About the Author
Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith and The Void and the Vision. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife Margaret in Norwich, VT.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By A Reader

I don't understand why Faith appears to be on a decline, I find God by observing his work here on earth.  Do you think it has to do with so many people choosing to live in concrete jungles/cities and failing to understand the importance of connecting with and being close to nature? 

A: By Rev. Matthew Syrdal
 Dear Reader,I am glad to hear you find God by observing his work here on earth. It is encouraging to look for God.  I am not sure if I am sensing your meaning entirely, but it is a concern I have heard shared by many people that religion and faith appear to be on a decline. There has been broken trust by those in authority, especially spiritual authority, and a cultural reckoning of the abuses of power within the church. 

Many people are turning away from institutional forms of religion, mainline denominations and even Evangelicalism because of disillusion, anger, and fear. It is also true that a growing percentage of people are authentically trying to forge a new path of faith and spirituality and looking for faith-oriented communities that can support them as seek belonging, greater authenticity, and risk change to their old belief systems.

One place people are seeking a supportive container is in exploring a deeper reconnection with faith and the natural world, the Creation and spirituality. Another place people are seeking support is through learning communities rooted in direct experience and prayer practices, rather than external authority and a reliance on dogmatic theology. 

You mention the tension between the struggle for identity and a healthy and authentic way of life and the difficulties and injustices of city life. This is not a new problem. The historical John the Baptist movement of the first century CE, through which Jesus entered the public stage, is an example of wrestling with purity, connection with nature as a place of revelation, and the healing energy of shalom. Bless you as you continue to ask the hard questions! ~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal

Read and share online here

About the Author
Matthew Syrdal M.Div., is a pastor in the Denver area, visionary and founder of Church of Lost Walls, a Denver-based wild church and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild, an eco-spiritual training program for leaders on the edge of spirituality and ecology. Matt has begun a new venture seeding an online project called Mythic Christ, developing a mystery school for awakening mythic imagination and ritual embodiment, and is launching a new podcast coming in September of 2022. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. Matt has a mentoring and coaching practice as a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute. His work weaves in myth, archetype, dreams, deep imagery and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god.  |

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|  Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook!  |

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|  Dear friends of ProgressiveChristianity.org,I'm going to keep this short and to the point.Last year our organization saw a pivotal change to our finances – real hope that our work was sustainable.How did it happen? You. In numbers we hadn't seen before, you stepped up and gave financial support for the work that we do. We couldn't be more grateful.This year, however, has not been like last year. We are well behind where we need to be in donations in order to not only sustain the work we have always done, but also to create the new resources we'd like to make available.If you are able, please donate today. Schedule it to be a monthly donation and insure our work going forward.We are striving to continue to bring you the most useful progressive Christian information and resources. Thank you for helping us continue to do so.PEACE!

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Board President & Co-executive Director
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The Moonshine Jesus Show
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

"Think Different—Accept Uncertainty" Part XII:
Are the Miracles of Jesus Miracles or Interpretive Signs?

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
June 14, 2012Last week, we began to look at the miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels.  Most of them are familiar stories to those of us raised in the Christian faith.  When I was a young child growing up in North Carolina, I was taught that the miracles were both demonstrations of Jesus’ divinity as well as proofs of that divinity.  He could do these supernatural things, I was told, because he and God were identical.  It was a comfortable, but pre-modern and uninformed conclusion that was destined not to stand the test of time. Miracles would prove to be a casualty of the advancement of our knowledge, both about the Bible and about how the world operated.

The first crack in this religious armor came when I discovered that there were other miracle stories in the Bible connected with people besides Jesus.  If one has to be divine to do miracles, then it seemed to me that they should be limited to the life of Jesus. Yet I discovered that miracles are found in three distinct cycles in the biblical narratives, only one of which is related to Jesus.

First, there were the miracles associated with Moses, the founder of the Jewish religion.  Moses’ power was such that miracles seem to continue to gather around his successor, a man named Joshua.
Second, there were miracles associated with Elijah, who was regarded as the founder of the prophetic tradition.  Elijah’s power, like that of Moses, was so great that miracles continued to gather around his successor, a man named Elisha.

Third, miracles were associated with the Jesus of the gospels and so great was Jesus’ power that these miracles seemed to gather around those who were portrayed as Jesus’ successors, the apostles. Apostolic miracles are narrated in the book of Acts. The pattern was thus quite similar in all three cycles. That was my first surprise.

Once I had identified this similarity in the miracle stories in the Bible, I then examined each cycle eager to see if I could discover any other similarities. The first thing I noticed was that prior to Jesus the ability to do miracles did not result in the claim of divinity. Instead the assumption was that the miracle workers were simply so close to God that God’s power could work through them as chosen vessels.  No one, however, subscribed divinity to the vessel.

Turning first to the Moses-Joshua cycle of stories, I found that the miracles they were said to have performed fell into two categories.  One category had the ring of magic about it.  These are miracle stories hardly ever quoted, referred to or preached about in Christian churches, not even by fundamentalists.  There is almost an embarrassment associated with finding them in the Bible.  These magic signs were special powers that God had supposedly given to Moses to equip him to negotiate the release of the Hebrew slave people from Egypt.  One of these was Moses’ ability to hurl his staff to the floor and have it turn into a snake or serpent.  If Moses’ negotiations with the Pharaoh were not going well, Moses was to resort to this miracle.  It was a pretty spectacular trick, but Pharaoh was not impressed.  Instead he brought his court magicians into the negotiations and they replicated Moses’ magic.  They threw their staffs on the floor and these staffs also became snakes.  A miracle that can also be performed by one’s opponents is not an impressive tool for negotiations.  The story was rescued, along with God’s power, when we learn that Moses’ snake proceeded to eat up the snakes of the Egyptian magicians.  It is no wonder that such a tale is better not being mentioned or even by forgetting that it is actually in the Bible.  It is there, however, and you may read it in Exodus 4.

The second of the miraculous signs that were supposedly given to Moses in order to assist him in these negotiations was that of thrusting his hand into his bosom, Napoleon style, and then drawing it out to reveal a hand filled with leprosy.  When those he was trying to impress were sufficiently horrified he would then thrust his hand back into his bosom and it became clean and healthy again.  If those two tricks were not sufficient to convince the Pharaoh of God’s authority and thus of the Pharaoh’s need to release the Hebrew slaves, Moses was empowered to produce a third magical sign by taking some water from the Nile River, pouring it on the ground and watching it turn into blood before the eyes of the assembled hosts. If all of these miracles failed to secure the release of the chosen people from the oppression of the Pharaoh, then the Bible tells us that Moses and God would turn to natural miracles on a grand scale.

These heightened miraculous events are described for us in the book of Exodus when we read about the plagues that were to fall on Egypt.  There we learn that the waters of the Nile River were turned to blood and became undrinkable.  When that did not secure the freedom of the chosen people a multitude of frogs infested the whole land covering everything from the Egyptians’ bedrooms to their kitchens.  When that did not work, first gnats and then flies swarmed over the land.  Then all the cattle were struck with something like Mad Cow disease.  Next, all the Egyptians broke out with boils.  This was followed by a storm of hailstones and then the sky was filed with locusts.   Next a strange darkness covered all the earth.  When none of these plagues caused Pharaoh to change his mind, the final plague visited on this nation was the death of the first born male in every Egyptian household.  This slaughter took place on the night of the Passover.

Moses was surely believed in the Bible to have had miraculous power to alter the circumstances of the physical world.  That power was newly confirmed when later he split the waters of the Red Sea and then was able to call down from heaven bread, called manna, to feed the Israelites in the wilderness.  When Moses died, this power was said to have been transferred to Joshua, who could then, in Moses-like fashion, part the waters of the flooded Jordan River; cause the walls around the city of Jericho to fall to the ground, and even stop the sun in the sky to allow more daylight in which to slaughter his enemies, the Ammonites.  The miracles attributed to Moses and Joshua were all in the category of manipulating the forces of nature.  They were thus “nature” miracles.

About 400 years later in Jewish history, miracle stories appeared again in the biblical narrative, but this time about both Elijah and Elisha.  Most of their supernatural acts also appeared to be nature miracles.  Elijah was said to have had the ability to call down fire from heaven, as well as the ability to manipulate the weather patterns in order to create draughts or to allow rain.  Both of these prophets also were said to have had the ability to expand the food supply.  It was not manna from heaven, but it was oil and meal that never diminished no matter how much was used.  A new miraculous power, however, begins to appear for the first time in the Bible in this Elijah-Elisha cycle. Elijah raises from the dead the only son of a widow.  Elisha raises an official’s child from the dead.  Elisha heals the leprosy of a Syrian named Naaman.  The miraculous tradition is growing.

There was one other place in the scriptures before the text reaches the Jesus story, in which the ability to perform miracles is described and anticipated, but not acted out.  In the 38th chapter of Isaiah, someone must have asked the prophet how one would know when the Kingdom of God was drawing near or when “the end of the world” could be anticipated.  Isaiah responded by describing the signs that will accompany the end of the age.  “Water will flow in the desert,” Isaiah said, and then other signs would break out for all to see. Human life will be made whole: “the blind will see, the deaf hear, the lame leap and the mute sing.” So into the Jewish expectations of the messianic age came the idea that the arrival of the Kingdom of God on earth would be announced in the wholeness that would replace the brokenness of human life.  When these sources of miracle stories are lifted out of the Hebrew Scriptures we find that many connections to the miracles attributed to Jesus become visible.

Turning now to those New Testament miracles of Jesus we discover that the same three categories, which were in the Old Testament cycles, are present there.  First, there are the nature miracles: Jesus walks on water; Jesus stills the storm; Jesus expands the food supply of five loaves and two fish to feed a multitude of thousands, and Jesus lays a curse upon a fig tree causing it to die to its roots.  These are all nature miracles.

Second, Jesus like Elijah and Elisha can raise the dead.  In Matthew, Mark and Luke, he raises from the dead a child of an official.  In Luke alone, he raises from the dead the only son of a widow.  The raising of Lazarus story is told only in John and culminates his book of signs.
Finally, in the first three gospels, there is a portrayal of Jesus engaging in numerous healing miracles. He seems to act out the signs of the coming of the Kingdom as enumerated by the prophet Isaiah.  He gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, wholeness to those who are lame or who possess withered limbs and the ability to speak to those who are mute.

Can we begin to see a pattern here?  Are the familiar stories found in the Hebrew Bible regarding Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha being dusted off, expanded and retold about Jesus in the New Testament?  Are the accounts of eyes being made to see, ears to hear, lameness being overcome and the mute breaking into song historical events or are they interpretive signs designed to convey the conviction that Jesus is the expected messiah, who will inaugurate the Kingdom of God?
The analysis raises some different questions and offers us a new way to look at miracles. We will continue this discussion when this series resumes.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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