Summary Luke Chapter 23

The chapter begins with Jesus being tried before Pilate early(-ish?) in the morning. There are questions about the historicity of that trial, such as whether Jewish law or custom would have allowed such a gathering for an official action. This question threatens to pull us into a lengthy discourse on how credible any of this is. Mostly, I would say, not very. First, we have to ask if the audience reading/hearing this story would have known anything about the operations of the Jewish Temple authorities. This, in turn, requires us to examine the arguments for where and when the Passion Narrative was first composed. I just came across a passage from a book called The Death of the Messiah, by Raymond E Brown. It was quoted in Crossan’s book, The Birth of Christianity. I’ve now ordered the book. In it, Brown discusses how little anyone seems to know–or care–about any of the details of the trial, or crucifixion, or burial of Jesus. There are no purported eye-witness accounts. We have John insisting, perhaps protesting a bit too much, that he is reporting the accounts of such eye witnesses, but we have to assess the value of any such accounts seventy years later. Why is that? I will read the book and see what Brown has to say on the subject.

Then we have to inquire about the likelihood that Jesus was actually taken to Pilate, and that Pilate actually bothered to review the case in person. Again, it would be useful here if I knew more about Roman legal processes in occupied territories at the time. Did the governor really sit judgement on every case? Or perhaps at least every capital case that was raised? I don’t know that, but I don’t get the impression that anyone else does, either. Even worse, I’m not sure anyone has ever asked that question. Well, in 2000 years, it must have occurred to someone at some point. As it turns out, the question has been asked; not in the least surprisingly, the consensus has firmly come down on the side of the biblical tradition, that the course of events went pretty much as they were described in the gospels. And honestly, probability would favor the personal judgement by Pilate; after all sitting judgement was one of the primary roles of high-level officials throughout most of history. There is a legend of one of the mediaeval French kings sitting under an apple tree (?) offering judgement on cases and petitions brought to him by his subjects. So I’ve sort of convinced myself–for the moment– that the idea of Pilate pronouncing the verdict in person is probably more likely than not. Too, certain charges were more apt to receive the governor’s attention than others.

There is so much to say about the weighing the historicity of all this, but very little of it has much to do with Chapter 23. I will save it up for a Special Topic.

Looking back over the chapter two things struck me; or, perhaps it was one thing with two implications. There are numerous points at which there appears to be a “hole” in the narrative. Pilate, Jesus, and the Temple authorities are there, but suddenly there a lot of screaming or shouting people. Where did they come from? Answer: they came from the other gospels. We noticed this with the story of the Lord’s Supper, the events in Gethsemane, the arrest; IOW, pretty much the entire Passion Story. Luke has compressed the “standard” narrative, leaving out the names of the women looking on at the crucifixion and other such things. Why? Because they were supplied by both Mark and Matthew, and did not require a third mention. Yes, there are numerous times when Luke does repeat what both Mark and Matthew said, but he never quite matches what they said. Topics sufficiently handled by the other two are abridged in Luke; topics in which Matthew shortens Mark, Luke adds the “omitted” material back in. To use my favorite example, compare the three versions of the Gerasene Demoniac, which is a great example of the latter situation. So too, here. But Luke does not shorten where possible simply to provide a more succinct gospel; Mark had already done that. Luke shortened where he could in order to add his own unique material. So he does here. We get King Herod and Jesus warning of a coming apocalypse with the admonition that the Jewish women weep not for him, but for themselves and their children.

The King Herod sequence is rather a long piece relative to the Passion as a whole; thinking about it now, one should wonder just what it was trying to prove. Why is it there?  To show that Herod was also complicit in Jesus’ death? To what purpose? His tetrarchy was long, long gone by the time Luke wrote, so who cared about Herod? As of this writing I do not have a good feel for the question, largely because it had not occurred to me to ask it. That is the essence of good historical writing: ask the question, then determine if you can answer it to your satisfaction. If you can’t, then there is a problem. Has this question been asked? I’m not aware if it has been or not, but the depth and breadth of my knowledge on the topic is admittedly limited. A quick dash over t Wikipedia tells us that Theodor Mommsen, the great German historian of the 19th Century claims this was done because this was standard procedure in Rome: to let the locals try their own. However, IMO the fact that only Luke mentions this episode seriously cripples the case for historicity, and I share this opinion with Robin Lane Fox, whose work I very much admire. He is a Classicist rather than a Bible scholar, which may have bearing on my opinion. My initial suspicion is that Luke came across some antiquarian-type material tied to the career of Paul. Somehow knowledge of Paul had gone underground for several decades only to resurface in the late 80s/early 90s, at the time Luke was about to start writing. Indeed, it may be that the reappearance of Paul in the tradition helped spur Luke to write in the first place. Anyway, becoming aware of Paul, Luke was prompted to look into the historical situation, discovered Herod, and wrote him into the script. This is wildly speculative, but I get a strong sense that there is some sort of symbiosis between Luke and Josephus. I do not suggest that they knew each other; that would be on the order of believing that the grave of Jesus’ father Pantera has been found in Germany. It is just possible that they knew of each other’s writing. The only place that Josephus and the pagan historians could have gotten much information about Christianity and Jesus would have been in Christian writings. Who else cared? As such, Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius probably should not be counted as fully independent sources, IMO. This puts a decided damper on the level of confidence one can feel about what happened.

Let’s return to the abridgments. (Apologies, but that should be spelled “abridgements”; the soft “g” indicates that it was there. Like “judgement”, which I always spell with the “e” so the pronunciation follows.) In the commentary I mentioned how the crowd suddenly appears where the moment before it had just been Jesus and the authorities present in the scene, and Barabbas sort of pops in from left field, too. In the other direction, we have Luke putting Joseph back on the council, a detail Matthew omitted. Why did Matthew do that? Is there a redactionally consistent explanation for all the things Matthew leaves out of Mark? Like half of the story of the Gerasene Demonaic? Why is such an explanation not called for? Why do we not expect it from Matthew, but we have to account for every minor change Luke makes to Matthew? OK, a bit of rhetorical overstatement there, but you get the idea. Another detail that Luke leaves out is the women. Both the other two evangelists mention their names here; Luke does not. Why not? Because Luke often does this when the story is covered both by M&M. This is what happens when you stop asking questions about the text qua text, asking instead about the content of the text. Ask a different question, not only may you get a different answer, but you may get a different type of answer. We do here, and in all the other places Lukes puts back what Matthew left out, or leaves out what Mark & Matthew cover sufficiently. We already discussed Mary Magdalene as a possible financial backer, and we may do so again in the next chapter.

I went back to the previous section (23:44-49) where I had talked about the eclipse, or the apparent eclipse. The charts tell us of an eclipse occurring in 29 in in this part of Judea. At first I had stated that an eclipse occurring in 29 would have been six years before Pilate became governor. This is simply wrong. By most chronologies Pilate was governor from 26-36, and 29 obviously falls inside that range of dates. Now, here’s the problem. If we want to say that the account is factually accurate, and there was an eclipse, we have to adjust the year of Jesus’ death, moving it back in time by several years. Traditionally, Jesus was executed in 33, but this is pretty much impossible to square with either Matthew or Luke’s dating of Jesus’ birth. Herod the Great died in 4 BCE; Quirinius, whom Luke calls the governor Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth took office in 6 CE; that is, there is a ten year variance. Luke alone tells us that Jesus was about thirty when he began his ministry. By my reckoning, 6 CE + 30 years, has Jesus starting his ministry in 36. Pilate was only governor until 36, so unless Jesus’ career was very short and Pilate condemned Jesus on his way out the door, this doesn’t really work. OTOH, -4 (BCE) + 30 = 26 for the year Jesus was executed. Since Pilate was just getting there at that time, this chronology doesn’t really work, either. Josephus places his mention of Jesus after discussing some of the other things that Pilate had done first, a strong implication that this event took place later in Pilate’s tenure as governor. This is all by way of saying there are all sorts of problems with the chronology. There is no conflict with Jesus’ death taking place in 29 in relation to these other external events, but this date does clash with standard church chronology. It’s sort of a “pick your poison” sort of situation. Is the tradition wrong? And either Matthew or Luke–more likely both–are wrong about the date of Jesus’ birth, or Luke is wrong by placing Jesus at thirty. This smacks of a conventional age, tossed out when one is not really sure. No one did anything of note before age 30; the important works of a thinker are usually posited to have taken place when the individual was 40 or so. As such, Luke’s introductory age does not have to be taken entirely seriously. Regardless, both Matthew and Luke cannot be correct in the date they place Jesus’ birth.

The story of Jesus’ crucifixion is well-trodden ground, so this will likely suffice for commentary on the chapter.

Luke Chapter 23:50-55

We will conclude the chapter.

Text

50 Καὶ ἰδοὺ ἀνὴρ ὀνόματι Ἰωσὴφ βουλευτὴς ὑπάρχων [καὶ] ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς καὶ δίκαιος

51 οὗτος οὐκ ἦν συγκατατεθειμένος τῇ βουλῇ καὶ τῇ πράξει αὐτῶν ἀπὸ Ἁριμαθαίας πόλεως τῶν Ἰουδαίων, ὃς προσεδέχετο τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ,

52 οὗτος προσελθὼν τῷ Πιλάτῳ ᾐτήσατο τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ,

53 καὶ καθελὼν ἐνετύλιξεν αὐτὸ σινδόνι, καὶ ἔθηκεν αὐτὸν ἐν μνήματι λαξευτῷ οὗ οὐκ ἦν οὐδεὶς οὔπω κείμενος.

And behold, a man by name Joseph a subordinate member of the Council [and] a good man and just (51) he was not in agreement with the Council, and its actions from the city of Arimathea of Judea, who was waiting for the kingdom of God, (52) he approached Pilate asking for the body of Jesus, (53) and taking (it) down he wrapped it in linen, and placed it in a memorial/tomb having been hewn from rock, and in which no one had been laid.

Lots of interesting stuff packed into three verses. First, the word I have rendered as “subordinate member of the council”. The word is a genitive plural in case; it could be masculine, feminine, or neuter. It could be a participle form of a verb or a noun (and whether there is an actual difference is debatable). Luke uses it a lot, the other evangelists scarcely at all; three occurrences in Matthew is the extent of usage in other gospels. But it is almost always elsewhere to mean “possessions” if you follow the other modern translations; and BTW, the passage does not occur in the KJV. The NT lexicon attached to the excellent website 

https://thebible.org/gt/index

only provides definitions for the word as a verb. And yet, the word has a long history in pagan Greek usage. It is used by Herodotus to describe what we would call the vice-satraps of the Persian Empire, the undersecretaries of state or the deputy chair of a committee; IOW, a lieutenant as opposed to the actual leader. Luke alone uses the word here. Matthew doesn’t mention that Joseph was even a member of the council at all, and Mark refers to him as a “prominent” member of the council. So why does Luke like the word here? Well, once again, he corrects Matthew, restoring the “fact” that Joseph was on the Council as reported by Mark but omitted by Matthew. But, by lowering his status, Luke absolves Joseph of responsibility for the decision of the council to have Jesus crucified. In fact, Luke goes so far as to tell us flatly that he did not agree with the council in this decision. So Luke is obviously concerned about this, about any role that Joseph took in Jesus’ execution. Matthew took the coward’s way out, dodging the question completely by pretending that Joseph wasn’t even on the council. Interestingly, much is made of the way Matthew dodged the question of Jesus’ baptism, of how he “solved” the problem of Jesus being baptised by his inferior by having John demur but Jesus insist to fulfill “all righteousness”. This is used by Q people to “prove” Luke didn’t know about Matthew, because Matthew’s “solution” to the “problem” was so ingenious that Luke certainly would have copied it. Just like he copied Matthew here, I suppose. 

I’ve probably mentioned this before, and if I haven’t, shame on me. The idea of Joseph asking to take the body of Jesus down is ahistorical. One of the main points of crucifixion was specifically to leave the bodies hanging on the cross. The corpses became carrion, and they were eaten by birds and whatever else, and subject to decomposition live and in color and there for all to see. And not only was the decomposition disgusting (although probably not to the degree it is to our more delicate sensibilities), but it was also deliberately insulting and sacrilegious. The Greeks and Romans had an intense religious horror of unburied bodies; this is the mainspring of the play Antigone. The eponymous lead character wants to bury her dead brother, which Kreon, the new king of Thebes after the death of Oedipus, had specifically forbidden. Kreon had done this as an insult to Antigone’s brother who had rebelled, and as an object lesson to what happened to such people. Their soul could never find peace, which was considered a terrible fate. I do not know how Jews felt about this, but I’m sure it was something similar. At the very least, since Jews don’t embalm, the burial takes place quickly to prevent the sort of putrefaction that crucifixion was designed to display. So Jews found leaving the bodies to rot offensive as well as the pagans.

In one of the instances I agree with JD Crossan, he suggests that there simply was no tomb of Jesus; rather, the remains of his corpse would, eventually, have been thrown into a mass, common grave, the fate of those crucified. But of course this does not work with the idea of the empty tomb, so some mechanism had to be invented to have Jesus buried in a recognizable location that could later be found, and found to be empty. To solve the problem, enter Joseph. And incidentally, Luke is the only one to specifiy that Arimathea is in Judea. None of the other evangelists attempt to locate it. If he were a member of the council, then Arimathea would must needs have been in Judea since the council had no jurisdiction outside of Judea. And there is no modern consensus on where Arimathea is to be/was located.

The expression “hewn from rock” is captured by a single word. It is a very unusual word. It occurs here and in the LXX, in Deuteronomy. With one exception, it occurs nowhere in extant pagan literature. There is a cluster of words with the lax– root but these all seem to appear in the LXX and not elsewhere; perhaps this is a transliteration of a Hebrew word for ‘stone’ into Greek. 

The idea of “where no one else had been laid” certainly seems strange to us with our individualistic sensibilities. However, space was at a premium in and around Jerusalem, so putting multiple people inside one tomb was not an uncommon practice. Indeed, these tombs would periodically cleaned out, and the bones put into a box, usually made of stone, called an ossuary. You may recall a hullaballoo a few years back about one such ossuary that was, supposedly, inscribed with “James brother of Jesus”. (I don’t recall if the Greek or Aramaic alphabet was used.) Of course, the owner of the box was insisting that this had to be the ossuary of James, brother of Jesus of Mark Chapter 6. In fact, there was a trial about this. I honestly do not recall the results, but I believe it was judged to be a fake (there’s a surprise), but there are still people (IIRC) who insist it’s real. Also IIRC, a story about this was partially the reason I stopped reading Biblical Archaeology magazine; it was simply much to credulous, in the vein of all those 19th Century archaeologists who  dug up King Solomon’s tomb and the Death Mask of Agamemnon. 

50 Et ecce vir nomine Ioseph, qui erat decurio, vir bonus et iustus

51 Hic non consenserat consilio et actibus eorum — ab Arimathaea civitate Iudaeorum, qui exspectabat regnum Dei,

52 hic accessit ad Pilatum et petiit corpus Iesu

53 et depositum involvit sindone et posuit eum in monumento exciso, in quo nondum quisquam positus fuerat.

54 καὶ ἡμέρα ἦν παρασκευῆς, καὶ σάββατον ἐπέφωσκεν.

55 Κατακολουθήσασαι δὲ αἱ γυναῖκες, αἵτινες ἦσαν συνεληλυθυῖαι ἐκ τῆς Γαλιλαίας αὐτῷ, ἐθεάσαντο τὸ μνημεῖον καὶ ὡς ἐτέθη τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ,

56 ὑποστρέψασαι δὲ ἡτοίμασαν ἀρώματα καὶ μύρα. Καὶ τὸ μὲν σάββατον ἡσύχασαν κατὰ τὴν ἐντολήν,

And it was the Day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was dawning. (55) The women following, who came from Galilee with him, saw the tomb and as his body was placed, (56) they turned back and prepared aromatics and myrrh. And on the Sabbath, they rested according to the commandment. 

Just a quick note. “Day of Preparation”. This term is used in two different ways in the Passion Narrative. The first is as here and the corresponding sections of Matthew and Mark. Here it is pretty clearly meant as preparation for the Sabbath. Since no work could be done on the Sabbath, I believe it was customary to have things prepared the day before for the next day. This is also why we memorialize Jesus’ death on a  Friday, as the day of preparing for the Sabbath, which, of course, is on Saturday in Judaism. Christians moved theirs to Sunday, the first day of the week, because this is the day Jesus rose from the dead. However, in John’s gospel, he locates the day of the Crucifixion as the Day of Preparation for Passover; this is the day the Paschal lamb was slaughtered. Thus, by being executed on the Day of Preparation, Jesus is the symbolic Paschal Lamb, slaughtered for the good of all humanity. This would require that the Last Supper not be a Seder* as it so clearly seems to be in the other three gospels.

Let’s all note how I slipped into Christian thinking. The Sabbath wasn’t dawning; exactly the opposite. Rather than getting light, it was getting dark, since the day began at sunset on Friday, and Sabbath ended at sunrise on Sunday. In early April, it appears that sunset would have been 6:00 pm (18:00) local time. So if Jesus died at three, this leaves three hours for Joseph to request the body, to take the body down, to place it in the tomb, and for the women to follow, note the place, and then get back and prepare the spices, all before sunset. Having no idea how far outside of Jerusalem Calvary is situated, it’s hard to judge if this is credible or not. But Luke is being very conscious of the need to get this stuff done before sundown, so they could rest on the Sabbath, according to the commandment. 

Again, the note that these are the women who followed him from Galilee. Included in this group is Mary Magdalene. And it occurs to me that I did not note that these women were not named when they were introduced back in Verse 49. They will be named in Chapter 24, so I’ll reserve comment on the names until then.

*This term may be anachronistic for the era of Jesus’ life. If so, my apologies. I’m not thoroughly versed in the development of Judaism to know such things.

54 Et dies erat Parasceves, et sabbatum illucescebat.

55 Subsecutae autem mulieres, quae cum ipso venerant de Galilaea, viderunt monumentum et quemadmodum positum erat corpus eius;

56 et revertentes paraverunt aromata et unguenta et sabbato quidem siluerunt secundum mandatum.

Luke Chapter 23:44-49 — Corrected

So we come to the end of the chapter. Spoiler alert: he dies in the end. There’s really no need for an introduction, so we’ll just proceed.

Text

44 Καὶ ἦν ἤδη ὡσεὶ ὥρα ἕκτη καὶ σκότος ἐγένετο ἐφ’ ὅλην τὴν γῆν ἕως ὥρας ἐνάτης

45 τοῦ ἡλίου ἐκλιπόντος, ἐσχίσθη δὲ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ μέσον.

46 καὶ φωνήσας φωνῇ μεγάλῃ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν, Πάτερ, εἰς χεῖράς σου παρατίθεμαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου: τοῦτο δὲ εἰπὼν ἐξέπνευσεν.

And indeed it was about the sixth hour and darkness covered the whole land until the ninth hour. (45) The sun having departed, the curtain in the Temple was rent in half. (46) And crying out in a loud voice Jesus said, “Father, into your hand I give you charge (of) my spirit.” Having said this he breathed his last.

Let’s start with the obvious. The verb “ekleipō” doesn’t actually mean “eclipse”. It comes to mean “eclipse” but the sense of the root is pretty much “to leave (something) behind as you head out the door”. So this really doesn’t have to be understood as an eclipse. Which is a good thing. I looked it up, and the maximum that a solar eclipse can last is between seven and eight minutes. Another thing about eclipses is that the motions of the heavenly bodies are so well established that we can predict eclipses centuries in advance, and can figure out the date and time they occurred for millennia past. There was a famous battle between the Kingdom of Lydia and the Medes that was halted by an eclipse, so we know it occurred on 28 May, 585 BCE. Well, there is some contention (of course) but this date seems best to fit the description provided by Herodotus, in his Researches. More, Herodotus tells us that Thales of Miletus, generally recognized as the first of the Ionian philosophers (which included what we would call scientific inquiry as well) predicted the eclipse. No one is quite sure how he could have done this, so there is a sizable contingent that claims he didn’t; nor would it strain credulity that he did not. Given this ability to past-date these events, it has been determined that there was a solar eclipse in the area of Judea in 29 CE. [ Obviously, the date causes problems, since this was six years before Pilate became Prefect of Judea.*] More, in Jerusalem the eclipse would have lasted something less than two minutes. Not exactly three hours.

[* editor: this statement I made is simply wrong. Pilate was prefect of Judea for about ten years, according to Josephus and others. The usual dates are approximately 26 – 36 CE, which obviously includes 29 in the range. The traditional date for the crucifixion has been set at 33 CE. This mainly based on Luke’s chronology. We are told that the Baptist began preaching in the fifteenth year of Tiberius’ reign. This is approximately the year 29 CE. Then, at some point after that, Jesus began his ministry. But how much after that? How much, if any, overlap was there between the ministries of John and Jesus? Luke implies very little, if any. And indeed, Mark says Jesus began his ministry upon hearing that John had been arrested. So how long did John preach before this? A year? Two? This conventional chronology would put the crucifixion well past the date of the eclipse. However, there is a certain amount of slippage in the dates; it is well known that Herod the Great died in 4 BCE whereas Quirinius, who held the census, became governor in 6 CE. So it is not necessary to rule out the possibility that Jesus was executed in 29. However, to move mountains to get the chronologies to match up is a fool’s errand. Neither Matthew nor Luke had any firm dates for Jesus’ life. An execution in 29 is no more or less probable than one in 33.  ]

The sixth hour would have been noon; the ninth about 3:00 pm local time. So yes, three hours.

But there are other reasons the sky could have darkened. Some sort of dust cloud from a volcanic eruption at some distance (Etna? Vesuvius?) could have kicked up enough debris to darken the sun for an extended period. Or even a very slow-moving storm. The problem we run into is that no one else seems to mention such an event. Josephus seems unaware of it. And people did note such things. I’m currently working through the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a primary source document compiled by monks over many centuries. Most of the entries are short, a paragraph, maybe two, a few that run even to three or four. But one thing that has struck me is the number of times the “sun was darkened”; i.e., there was an eclipse. People took note of these things. So, the conclusion is that this falls into the same category as Pilate having a customary obligation to release a prisoner. Nice story, not much more.

I really struggled with the verb used to describe Jesus dying. Although, “expire” is probably a much better choice that the way I rendered it. The idea is that the pneuma (“spirit/breath) is leaving (ek) Jesus. He breathed his last. His breath/spirit (spiro) in Latin, left him (the prefix ex-, as in “to go out of”). I bring this up because it’s an unusual word. However, I just noticed that Mark used it too and in this context. The KJV renders the passage as “gave up the ghost”. Now “ghost” is derived from the German Geist, which apparently can and does mean “spirit” and/or “mind” as well as “ghost”, so the linguistic field in German covers considerably more ground that the English “ghost”. Although the expression, “ghost of a chance” does maintain a bit of the range as it means something like “there’s still breath in the body”. And I suspect that the English “ghost” maintained that range for several centuries, which is why the term “Holy Ghost” lasted into my lifetime. I want to say I’ve encountered (probably) Catholic churches named Church of the Holy Ghost, or something such. That the term became archaic, replaced by “spirit” (which can also mean “ghost”) is the result of the narrowing of the linguistic field of the word in English, to the point that “ghost” is almost exclusively something one sees around Hallowe’en.    

44 Et erat iam fere hora sexta, et tenebrae factae sunt in universa terra usque in horam nonam,

45 et obscuratus est sol, et velum templi scissum est medium.

46 Et clamans voce magna Iesus ait: “ Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum ”; et haec dicens exspiravit.

47Ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ ἑκατοντάρχης τὸ γενόμενον ἐδόξαζεν τὸν θεὸν λέγων, Ὄντως ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὗτος δίκαιος ἦν.

48 καὶ πάντες οἱ συμπαραγενόμενοι ὄχλοι ἐπὶ τὴν θεωρίαν ταύτην, θεωρήσαντες τὰ γενόμενα, τύπτοντες τὰ στήθη ὑπέστρεφον.

49 εἱστήκεισαν δὲ πάντες οἱ γνωστοὶ αὐτῷ ἀπὸ μακρόθεν, καὶ γυναῖκες αἱ συνακολουθοῦσαι αὐτῷ ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας, ὁρῶσαι ταῦτα.

The ruler of one hundred [Latin = centurion] (witnessing) the happening/event praised God saying, “This man was indeed (a) just (man) [Had to add some words there for this to make sense in English]. (48) And all the crowd being around together upon seeing this, seeing the event(s), beat their breasts returning. (49) All those known by him from afar, and the women having followed him from Galilee, saw these things.

The last verse is a tad tricky. The subject, nominative plural, is “those known” with “him” in the dative, usually an indirect object. Hence I’m giving this as “those known by him”. Most of the other translations render as “those who knew him”, and with the “from afar” this makes a certain amount of sense; indeed, it seems more sensible than my reading. However, the Latin also agrees with me. Noti eius, “known of him”, the “of” being a possessive in the genitive case. For us, “known by him”. Honestly, I don’t think it really matters, because I don’t think Luke truly put a lot of thought into this. It’s a bit sloppy, or imprecise. But either way, these were people acquainted with Jesus. Of more concern to me are the women. Luke alone introduces “those known by him”, which is a nominative masculine plural, so it includes at least some men, even if the majority of the crowd was female. If it were just women, it would be a feminine adjective ai gnostai rather than oi gnostoi. Matthew has them as all women. Nor does Luke name any of them even though Mark and Matthew do. So again, we have Luke cutting out some bits that are sufficiently covered by his predecessors. One of the women was named as Mary Magdalene; significantly this is the first time she is introduced in the first two gospels. Luke names her in the next chapter, in conjunction with the Resurrection Story– which is also significant–but Luke actually named her the first time back in Chapter 8, when he said Jesus had cured her of seven demons. That is unique to Luke, and probably another instance of the legend growing as people began to fill in the backstory of who these people are. But let it be known that nowhere in the NT is Mary Magdalene described as a prostitute. That bit of calumny was introduced later. Why?

I mentioned this in discussing Mark’s version, but it bears repeating. Mark stated, and Matthew and Luke repeated, that she had followed Jesus from Galilee. My suspicion is that Magdalene was a financial supporter of Jesus, probably a widow who had inherited a certain amount of money and so could provide the cash backing Jesus needed to roam around the countryside and talk. It’s not like Jesus plied a trade; we don’t even know that he was a craftsman (the term in Greek is ambiguous, and cannot be assumed to mean “carpenter” although that is a likely meaning) like his father. That would be a normal thing, to learn his dad’s trade as he grew, but we don’t know this, and we don’t even know that Jesus’ father (whoever he was; but decidedly not Pantera) was a craftsman. Not sure how I dealt with that back in Mark Chapter 6, but let’s move on. Anyway, there is no sense that Jesus worked, so he needed money from somewhere to maintain his entourage. Sure, they probably received hospitality (that is a whole other issue), or begged for money, or whatever, but having a well-to-do patroness was a paradigm that carried through into the new movement. Cynically, it’s perhaps part of the reason–perhaps a large part–that Paul admonished widows not to remarry. Doing so would put their money into the hands of their new husband, who may not be willing to support the nascent church as the wife did. It also seems significant that she only shows up in the Passion Narrative. I wonder if she didn’t in fact commission the writing of the Passion Narrative. She’s also a big part of the Resurrection story; why?

Answering the second question will probably help answer the first. As a financial backer, she would have had a certain amount of influence on the narrative. This would explain why she, a person unknown up to this point, is the first to see Jesus  after the Resurrection. She suddenly becomes important to the story. And that, I would suggest, is why she was slandered as a prostitute by the “fathers” of the early church; the men who did not like the idea of a woman taking a significant, let alone a leading, role in the establishment of said church. Better to denigrate her reputation by turning her into a prostitute. This was done with other women; they’ve all been airbrushed out of the history of the church. We know from Paul that a number of women played significant roles in some of the communities. What happened to them?

There is one other possibility. Jesus may have, indeed, practiced a trade as he toured the countryside. He may very well have sold his services as a healer and a wonder-worker. He would not have been the only one doing that. But let’s let that dangle as a teaser.

As a final word, some of you youngsters might be unfamiliar with the concept of “beating one’s breast”. This was an action of regret and/or penance. I’m old and it was rather old-fashioned already when I was a kid. As a family there was a stretch of years when we said the rosary after dinner during Lent, and it seems like there was a prayer at the end when my mother would use her fist to tap her breast, palm inward three times. And if you’ve ever heard the term mea culpa, which means “my fault/sin/guilt”, it was repeated twice and then the third time was mea maxime culpa, “my maximum sin”, and each time one struck one’s breast as a sign of repentance. Ah, pre-Vatican II Catholicism. I’m reasonably sure it was a Jewish custom, whence the Christians got it. The point, of course, is that suddenly everyone realized the mistake they had made in executing Jesus.

47 Videns autem centurio, quod factum fuerat, glorificavit Deum dicens: “Vere hic homo iustus erat!”.

48 Et omnis turba eorum, qui simul aderant ad spectaculum istud et videbant, quae fiebant, percutientes pectora sua revertebantur.

49 Stabant autem omnes noti eius a longe et mulieres, quae secutae erant eum a Galilaea, haec videntes.