How Empty Was the Tomb?

[Charles Wilson]

Mlinssen --

While I respect your abilities and attempts to deny my assertions of correlations here, I feel that they are misplaced.
Single use meanings may always be argued and I have already stated that Symbolic Assignments may also always be argued.
I'm simply not ready in this case to follow Kant in this case: "I grant the whole argument." No.

The important Section has been drawn from John and John is telling of 3 events here:

1. The head bandage(s) is separate from the rest of the body wrapping in the Tomb Sequence. I assert that this is linked to the death of Galba.

2. What of this?:

John 19: 32 - 34 (RSV):

[32] So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him;
[33] but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
[34] But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

It is the death of Otho that finds the greatest Assignment of Meaning:

Suetonius, 12 Caesars, "Otho":

"When he had thus made his preparations and was now resolved upon death, learning from a disturbance which meantime arose that those who were beginning to depart and leave the camp were being seized and detained as deserters, he said "Let us add this one more night to our life" (these were his very words), and he forbade the offering of violence to anyone. Leaving the door of his bedroom open until a late hour, he gave the privilege of speaking with him to all who wished to come in. After that, quenching his thirst with a draught of cold water, he caught up two daggers, and having tried the point of both of them, put one under his pillow. Then closing the doors, he slept very soundly. When he at last woke up at about daylight, he stabbed himself with a single stroke under the left breast; and now concealing the wound, and now showing it to those who rushed in at his first groan, he breathed his last and was hastily buried (for such were his orders) in the thirty-eighth year of his age and on the ninety-fifth day of his reign..."

3. Otho was the last Emperor that Vespasian swore Allegiance, binding his Legions in support. "Blood and water..." mark the death of Otho at the Po River. (BTW, I have verified that Otho dies on early Sunday Morning, for all you Sabbath Changers...). It is Vitellius that is given the most vicious treatment - and I mean VICIOUS:

John 19: 28 - 29 (RSV):

[28] After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfil the scripture), "I thirst."
[29] A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth.

How far are the Apologists willing to go to deny a Homosexual Motif to these Proceedings?

Suetonius, 12 Caesars, "Vitellius":

"Beginning in this way, he regulated the greater part of his rule wholly according to the advice and whims of the commonest of actors and chariot-drivers, and in particular of his freedman Asiaticus. This fellow had immoral relations with Vitellius in his youth, but later grew weary of him and ran away. When Vitellius came upon him selling posca​ ¹⁸ at Puteoli, he put him in irons, but at once freed him again and made him his favourite. His vexation was renewed by the man's excessive insolence and thievishness, and he sold him to an itinerant keeper of gladiators. When, however, he was once reserved for the end of a gladiatorial show, Vitellius suddenly spirited him away, and finally on getting his province set him free. On the first day of his reign he presented him with the golden ring at a banquet, although in the morning, when there was a general demand that Asiaticus be given that honour, he had deprecated in the strongest terms such a blot on the equestrian order..."

Note 18: "A drink made of sour wine or vinegar mixed with water."

There is much evidence that Vitellius is the Magician Simon-Magus. To say he was hated by the Flavians is an understatement.

There is a reason that "The Roman Thesis" is called such. The end of the Julio-Claudians and the ascension of the Flavians is given and has been mapped onto a Story found in the Debris of the Destruction of the Temple. The Priestly Story finds the Life of a Priest Transvalued into a Roman Loving savior-god of the Type familiar to Roman and Greek Sensibilities. The Abomination of Human Sacrifice is re-instated and forced on the surviving Jews:

John 11: 49 - 52 (RSV):

[49] But one of them, Ca'iaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all;
[50] you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish."
[51] He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation
[52] and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

Whether the Soudarion is a full head covering or a handkerchief placed over the face is of little consequence, though i believe the Full-Bandage would be implied for a beheaded Roman Emperor. It is in John that the story is properly given, in correction of Mark. It is part of the larger story. The Flavians are clearing out the accumulated Riff-Raff of the Julio-Claudians. Judea got in the way by time and circumstance. They were swept away in an argument over Empire vs. Culture.

It's there is you want to look.

Best,

CW

[mlinssen]

Dear Charles,

I wasn't refuting anything you said, I actuality thought I was supporting you - and adding to that. It was you who brought up the Latin loanword

But it would seem that you think differently, which is fine of course. But nothing that you now say is refuting anything that I said - which kind of makes it as closed a case as it was when you brought it up. I just nailed it tight, I think?

I am convinced of the Greco-Roman management of nascent Christianity, as well as I'm convinced of the complete absence of any and all religion in its true source. There are tons of connotations and references, sure

But John 19:32-34 only serves to fulfil Scripture, and couldn't possibly be native to John. And I can't locate your number 3.

[mlinssen]

These similarities between the Johannine Prologue and the Dionysian speech did not escape notice by Clement of Alexandria. In the following quotation he invites Dionysus to convert.
Here the line numbers from Dionysus’s opening speech in the Bacchae appear in square brackets.

Come [ἧκε; 1], O madman, not propped up by a thyrsus [25], not wreathed with ivy [25]! Throw off your headband! Throw off your fawn-skin [24]! Get sober! I will show you the Logos and the mysteries of the Logos, and I will describe them with your own imagery. This mountain [33] is beloved of God and is not subject to tragedies, like Cithaeron [a bacchic mountain prominent in the Bacchae], but exalted by dramas of truth, a sober mountain and shaded by chaste woods [cf. 38].
Reveling here are no maenads [52], daughters of “thunder-stricken” Semele [6], initiates in the disgusting distribution of raw flesh [139]; instead, they are the daughters of God, the beautiful lambs [ἀμνάδες, a pun on μαινάδες], who utter the solemn rites [ὄργια; 34] of the Logos and gather together a sober chorus.
This chorus consists of the righteous, and their song is a hymn to the King of all. Young girls pluck their instruments [cf. 58–59], angels sing praises, prophets speak, the sound of music carries. Quickly they follow the thiasos [56]; those who were called scurry off, longing to welcome the Father.

(Protrepticus 12.119.1–2)

[Charles Wilson]

I wasn't refuting anything you said, I actuality thought I was supporting you - and adding to that.

Apologies, then. Glad we're looking in similar directions.

I am convinced of the Greco-Roman management of nascent Christianity, as well as I'm convinced of the complete absence of any and all religion in its true source. There are tons of connotations and references, sure

Yep.

But John 19:32-34 only serves to fulfil Scripture

DISAGREE! "Fulfillment of Scripture" was a Created Device for the New Religion Believers to use as a club-to-the-head of Non-Believers. As you yourself state, there is no religion here. The entire Chapter 11 through 12-ish of John is a List of Things-to-Do by the Romans. Caiaphas is one of those EEEVIL High Priests and he has still been given the Power of Prophecy. Sure. OK... /s.

and couldn't possibly be native to John.

Teeple has these verses as composed by the Redactor, the last of the people writing the Book of John. He identifies the Redactor from these characteristics:

"33 But having come to [epi] Jesus [arthrous.], when they saw [eidon] him having already died, they did not break his legs."

Teeple's "Redactor" appears to have Special Knowledge, which I might be able to Reference if I can ever get to it.

And I can't locate your number 3.

Corrected and, again, Thank You.

CW

[neilgodfrey]

J. for the Study of the NT, pre-publication online, June 16 by Mark Goodacre

Is that a pre-publication or the published version? The link puts it behind a hefty paywall that bars it from most lay readers. I would expect a pre-publication version, if available, to be open access in an institutional repository. Is that the case with this article anywhere?

[mlinssen]

J. for the Study of the NT, pre-publication online, June 16 by Mark Goodacre

Is that a pre-publication or the published version? The link puts it behind a hefty paywall that bars it from most lay readers. I would expect a pre-publication version, if available, to be open access in an institutional repository. Is that the case with this article anywhere?

So you're one of most lay readers? Why then all the flirting with scholars and scholarship?

[Ken Olson]

I looks as if Ken has read the whole article.

Right. Goodacre is making a larger argument, not only that the three later canonical evangelists had apologetic anxiety as individuals, but that each (in the order Matthew, Luke, and John) knew the work of his predecessors and built on it.

On Matthew:

As often in Matthew, a minor redaction makes a major contribution. If the tomb
was new, then there could be no confusion about the absence of Jesus’ body.
Joseph has placed the body in his own new tomb, so that once Jesus’ body is
absent, there can be no other bodies or bones present. (Goodacre, Tomb, 7).

On Luke:

Luke’s redaction makes clear that the tomb was not just new, but so new that
Jesus was its first occupant.

The fresh note about the new tomb is soon embedded in the tradition, and as
often with agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark, this one is
taken over by John, with both Matthew’s wording that the tomb is ‘new’, and
Luke’s that no one had ever been laid in it. [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29] I am presupposing here that Luke is familiar with Matthew’s redaction of Mark, a position for which I have argued in several publications (e.g., Goodacre 2002). A similar point could be made on the Two-Source Theory, according to which Luke could have had the same apologetic anxiety about Mark’s tomb, though independently of Matthew, but given the cluster of other Matthew–Luke agreements against Mark in the Burial and Resurrection stories, this is unlikely. John further complicates any scenario where Luke is independent of Matthew, and John of all three.
(Goodacre, Tomb, 9).

On John:

As often, the agreement between Matthew and Luke appears also in John, and
the most straightforward explanation is that John has taken the detail over from
the Synoptics. (Goodacre, Tomb, 10).

Best,

Ken

[StephenGoranson]

Some ambivalence in gospels about the family of Jesus. Genealogies, yet actual family as those doers God’s will. A Qumran ms, 4Q pesher Psalms-a has a self-designation of doers of His will ‘osei retzono—Hebrew root ‘asah, from which Essenes and Ossenes name comes. And they buried in single tombs, not family ones, like fellow initiates, but in similar burials, so linked in that way.

Might Magdalene have been a relative of Jesus? And Joseph of A. an in-law by marriage? (cf. p.8 “Did Joseph have relatives…?” p. 5 “…clearly a family tomb.”) Burial being usually a family affair.

I wonder if anything in Origen might be relevant. (I missed a Caesarea dig zoom by Maren Niehoff on Origen on Jewish-Christian relations based on new fragments of Commentary on Matthew; I hope it was recorded.) Or Melito of Sardis, Jerusalem visitor, on Easter. Or Mishna or Tosefta. Without getting into synoptic directions, might one guess Matthew and John might know more about local burial practices than Mark and Luke? And other uses of "tomb" as a whole set and/or one placement.

Slightly related. Many prefer to imagine that weary Edwin Stanton said just after Lincoln died that he now belongs to the ages, as Hay reported 25 years later, maybe from a historical hindsight perspective. But just provisionally I prefer (without strong evidence so far) that he said, in the moment, that he belongs to the angels, like poor Lazarus in Luke.

[Ken Olson]

Some ambivalence in gospels about the family of Jesus. Genealogies, yet actual family as those doers God’s will. A Qumran ms, 4Q pesher Psalms-a has a self-designation of doers of His will ‘osei retzono—Hebrew root ‘asah, from which Essenes and Ossenes name comes. And they buried in single tombs, not family ones, like fellow initiates, but in similar burials, so linked in that way.

It's not clear to me what question you are asking or what thesis you are advocating. But granting (1) there are individual tombs of the shaft grave type found at Qumran and at Beth Zafafa in Jerusalem (and two other sites), (2) Jesus could have been buried in a tomb of this type (whether or not Qumran was an Essene site or whether or not the ellry Christians were closely linked to the Essenes described by Josephus, this theory would still face the problem that the tomb (at least the one described by Mark, does not appear to be of this type. I say this because Mark's tomb was large enough to contain three women and a young man and also had a door with an entrance in front of which a stone had been rolled to close it and through which the women entered. If I am understanding Hachlili's description of the shaft graves at Qumran/Beth Zafafa they are (1) too small to contain four people (unless they're pressed up against each other) and it would be question of lifting up the stone and climbing down into the grave, not rolling away the stone and walking in. Now I grant that the text does not actually say they walked in, but I think that's the implication. If the evangelist had meant something else, it would have been unusual enough to merit mention.

Also, I thought you held, or at least seriously entertained, that the tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was Jesus' tomb. Wouldn't the theory of an individual tomb like those at Qumran, contradict that?

Might Magdalene have been a relative of Jesus? And Joseph of A. an in-law by marriage? (cf. p.8 “Did Joseph have relatives…?” p. 5 “…clearly a family tomb.”) Burial being usually a family affair.

Is it possible? Yes, of course it's possible. Do we have good evidence that it is true? I do not think so. The theory also seems to require us to accept a peculiar presupposition about the evangelists. They might have suppressed particular information they did not want to mention for polemical reasons, but the details they do tell us are all true. This is a frequent presupposition among Christians who hold a high view of the inspiration of scripture, but not one historians commonly accept for other literature.

(I am for the moment setting aside as improbable the possibility that they did not mention that Magdalene and Joseph were relatives of Jesus because they did not think it was important to mention).

I wonder if anything in Origen might be relevant. (I missed a Caesarea dig zoom by Maren Niehoff on Origen on Jewish-Christian relations based on new fragments of Commentary on Matthew; I hope it was recorded.)

Maybe. As I don't know what question you're investigating or what thesis yo' are advocating (or what the new fragments of Origen contain), I can't say how they might or might not be relevant.

Or Melito of Sardis, Jerusalem visitor, on Easter.

We've discussed this one before. It can't be established that Melito visited Jerusalem, let alone on Easter, or had the location of the place of Jesus;' crucifixion or burial pointed out to him.

viewtopic.php?p=60854#p60854

Or Mishna or Tosefta. Without getting into synoptic directions, might one guess Matthew and John might know more about local burial practices than Mark and Luke? And other uses of "tomb" as a whole set and/or one placement.

Again, they possibly might. But what would make that theory preferable (i.e., have a more secure evidentiary basis) than the theory that they added the details they did out of apologetic anxiety (and the use of their predecessors).

Slightly related. Many prefer to imagine that weary Edwin Stanton said just after Lincoln died that he now belongs to the ages, as Hay reported 25 years later, maybe from a historical hindsight perspective. But just provisionally I prefer (without strong evidence so far) that he said, in the moment, that he belongs to the angels, like poor Lazarus in Luke.

I think you're using a different definition of prefer than I did above. What we prefer to imagine (for aesthetic or emotional reasons) is different from what we think can be demonstrated to be probable based on the evidence we have.

Best,

Ken

[StephenGoranson]

I was not suggesting that Jesus was buried in a Qumran-type tomb, but rather, commenting on differing views of burial practices vis-a-vis families and/or other types of associations.
But I'm too weary of this list to comment further today.