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The interpretive task became even more complicated when the first gospel was written. The resurrected Jesus is never seen in Mark's narrative. All Mark gives us in his Easter morning story is an announcement made to the women at the tomb in which it is stated: "He is not here, he has been raised." This announcement was made by a messenger, Mark says, who is not yet regarded or pictured as an angel. So what do these words mean? Was Jesus raised back into the physical life of this world or was he raised into the life of God? That is a question that Mark does not answer. The messenger goes on to direct the women to go tell "Peter and the disciples" that the raised Christ will go before them into Galilee and there they will see him. If the disciples are still in Jerusalem when this announcement was first made, as this text suggests, we need to know that Galilee was a seven to ten day journey, so the promised "appearance" in Galilee of the raised Jesus would fall outside the three day time measure. So in this earliest gospel the promise of a future appearance is made, but.. the raised Christ appears to no one after the crucifixion. That is to many a startling reality, but it is also a biblical fact. (21:10) When Matthew writes the second gospel a decade or so after Mark, he has Mark in front of him and he incorporates most of Mark directly into his account. He also changes, heightens and adds to Mark's text.. First the messenger in Mark has become in Matthew a clearly identified, supernatural angel. Second the raised Christ actually does appear to the women in the garden.. in a form physical enough for them to "grasp his feet." Matthew then adds a second appearance story designed to give content to the messenger's promise in Mark that the disciples would see the raised Christ in Galilee. It occurred, said Matthew, on top of a mountain. The disciples presumably trudged up the mountain, but the raised Jesus came mysteriously out of the sky.. He is transformed and clothed in the garments of the Son of Man, who, in Jewish mythology, was to come at the end of the age.. (21:11) When Luke, the author of the third gospel, written about a decade after Matthew, pens his version of the story, the angelic messenger in Mark, who became an angel in Matthew, has now become two angels and the physicality of the raised Jesus has been enhanced to the place where we are told that he walks, talks, eats, offers his flesh to be felt and interprets scripture. Luke also says that all of the resurrection appearances occurred in the Jerusalem area, dropping all references to a return to Galilee. Then Luke introduces the story of Jesus' ascension. Having made the resurrection into the physical resuscitation of a deceased body, he has to provide a way to get this physical body out of the world without dying again. The ascension was his answer. (21:12) Finally, when the Fourth Gospel is written near the end of the first century [95-100], its author offers new and sometimes contradictory material. There are four apparently separate vignettes that the Fourth Gospel has woven together, sometimes rather awkwardly. The first one stars Mary Magdalene alone at the tomb and the focus of this story is that one cannot cling to the idea of Jesus as a physical body. The second vignette focuses on Peter and the "beloved disciple" coming to an empty tomb and we are told that the "beloved disciple" believes without ever seeing a physical body. The third focuses on the disciples in a secured upper room on the evening of the first day of the week and that is the time for this gospel when the disciples receive the Holy Spirit.. the Pentecost transformational experience for the disciples. The fourth episode stars Thomas and its message is "Blessed are those who do not see (a resuscitated body) and yet who still believe..." (21:13) Part XVIX: "Behind the narratives of Easter contained in the gospel tradition was an experience that was undeniable, powerful and true to the followers of Jesus... their lives were changed from being fearful people in hiding to being heroic people willing to die for the reality of their new vision. That experience transformed the way they envisioned God so dramatically that the person of Jesus was incorporated into their understanding of God.. (21:14) Whatever this experience was it occurred around the year 30 C. E. The gospels were not written for two to three generations after that [70-100 C. E. ].. By the time the gospels came to be written, the experience had been explained, told and retold, countless numbers of times and it had evolved into a kind of creedal or liturgical formula.. The phrase "three days" became part of the liturgy not, I suspect, because it was three days after the crucifixion .. but because the Christians gathered on the first day of the week.. and the first day of the week was the third day after the Friday on which the crucifixion was remembered. So three days became the symbol, not the measure of the time between the first Good Friday and the first Easter celebration. (21:15) ..Who was it who stood in the center of whatever the Easter experience was and who then opened the eyes of the others to see what he had seen? There is no question, but that the gospels portray Simon, who was nicknamed Peter.. [many Bahá'ís would say that this distinction belongs more properly to Mary Magdalene -ed] (21:16) In the Epilogue to John's gospel, Peter is the star as he is reconstituted into the band of disciples after being the one who denied and who was then commissioned to feed the sheep of God.. (21:17) Where were the disciples when this experience called resurrection occurred in a particular individual or in their collective minds.. when their lives were transformed? The earliest gospel tradition asserts that it was in Galilee. That was their home. That is where the messenger in Mark asserts that they will see him. Even Paul hints at.. Galilee. Matthew says that the only time the disciples saw the raised and glorified Jesus was in Galilee on top of a mountain. In the Epilogue to the Fourth Gospel, a very primitive resurrection tradition is recorded as occurring in Galilee, where they had returned to the fishing trade after Jesus' crucifixion. On the other hand both Luke and John assert a primary Jerusalem setting for the resurrection experience, denying the Galilean location totally. Everything about these Jerusalem appearances, however, looks contrived and developed, while the Galilee stories look fresh and original..
(21:18)
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