Doubting Doubt
(Table of Contents - Click This Link)
The Process
Step
3 – He is Beside Himself
1. The Women
During an adult
Sunday School lesson on the Gospel of Mark, we were focusing on the section
from chapter 15 verse 40 through chapter 16 verse 8, which talks about the
presence of the women who were present during Jesus’ crucifixion and who went
to the tomb after the Sabbath. The Bible
Study teacher for the day, a woman with a distinguished Bible teaching
background, described the women as “unflinching,” and having “steadfast
loyalty.” She said, “These women really
were devoted to Jesus.” Some of the
other words describing those women that came up in the course of the class were
“love,” “faith,” “commitment” and “courage.”
Pastor Charles Glidewell, author of the lesson in the Bible Study Guide
that we were using, described the women whom we are told were “watching from a
distance” in Mark 15:40:
These seemingly peripheral women were not so
peripheral here at the end. They stood
at a distance as their Savior died, and their faith did not falter. As heart wrenching as it was, the women
looked on and did not abandon their Lord.
After Jesus took his last breath, the ordeal
was not over. A number of matters still
had to be handled. Although the
spectacle of the crucifixion was over, it seems the women could not tear
themselves away from the scene.[1]
Glidewell later goes on to say,
We must not forget the women who were
faithfully present at Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection.
He
continues further on, saying,
Does your faith reflect the unassuming and
steady faithfulness of these women?
The point could scarcely be stressed more strongly. These women’s faith, loyalty, devotion and
steadfastness are the defining features of their characters. I must certainly say that I share that
perception about them.
However, not attempting to be incredulous and cynical myself, I must
recognize that it is conceivable that a different case could be attempted by
someone who is incredulous and
cynical. A passage such as the
following, from the book The Jewish
People in the First Century, might be used to press just such a case:
In addition to preparation of shrouds and a coffin, burial
arrangements included the acquisition of keeners and pipers. A halakhah informs us that, as a minimum, a
husband was expected to provide one keening woman and two pipers for his wife’s
funeral, and this was required even of the poorest Jew.[2]
Incidentally, does the reference to this practice pertain only in the
case of a husband for his wife? I have
not been able to verify that. However,
when considered in combination with other descriptions elsewhere in the book of
customary behaviors by first century Jews during mourning periods, it appears
that similar practices occurred whoever the deceased was.
Regarding the entourage described, the book goes on to say,
Keening women probably received wages for
their work. In most towns if not in all
there existed charitable societies whose purpose was to care for the dead and
aid the mourners thus doing works of righteousness for both; a sage of the
Jabneh period referred to such groups in Jerusalem. These charitable groups also took care of the
preparation of the corpse for burial:
there was a fixed tradition regulating the preparation of the corpses,
and certainly not everyone knew how to care for the corpse and perform such
required functions as bathing it and wrapping it in shrouds.[3]
With statements such as these it would be expected that the incredulous
and cynical person would attempt to make the case that the women who attended
to Jesus were not faithful and devoted and steadfast at all, but rather they
were simply paid caregivers or perhaps people who were the first century
equivalents of hospice workers.
I
do not think that such a case would be successful, however, for two reasons:
(1) It would have to be established that at least some if not all of the
women spoken of in the Bible accounts of the death and burial of Jesus were
strictly involved occupationally.
Considering that in the first place the Bible does not say that they
were working for wages and secondly that some of them are referenced at other
times in the life of Jesus, it is doubtful that such a claim could be
successfully established.
(2) It is necessary to remember not only what the information in the
Gospels is but also its intent. There is
a very high degree of probability that persons mentioned anywhere in the Bible
are included deliberately for a purpose and not simply as collateral artifacts
as one might see “extras” in a movie. So
then it is also possible that the women spoken of in these accounts are
included for a purposeful reason and,
simultaneously, there could have been assistance from the charitable groups.
The incredulous cynical person may then attempt a different tactic. Again, from the book The Jewish People in the First Century we read this:
Our literature stresses the fact that it was
customary to assign someone to attend the corpse continuously …[4] … The beginning of the eighth chapter of Semahoth states: ‘One should go to the cemetery to check the
dead within three days and not fear that such smacks of pagan practices; it
once happened that a [buried] man was visited and went on to live another
twenty-five years.’ This baraita shows
that it was customary to go and verify that the buried person was really dead,
for as burial followed death so quickly, errors might sometimes occur. The baraita bolsters its ruling with the
story of a man who was in fact discovered to be alive after his burial, which
we should understand in view of the fact that graves were not filled with dirt,
but only blocked with movable boulders.
The women who came to visit Jesus’ grave were following the Jewish
custom of rolling back the entrance boulder in order to make sure that he was
really dead. It is not impossible that
the practices became customary even when the fact of death was known with
complete certainty, although, as our baraita testifies, the practice of visiting
graves within the first three days after burial originated in the need to allay
all doubt that there had not been only apparent death, and that the buried
person in the meantime had not returned to life.[5]
‘Baraita’ is a word for a class of Jewish instruction or traditional
teaching. The person who is skeptical
that the women were truly devoted and faithful might attempt to say that the
women were only
doing what they were told to do, that they did it out of obligation. They were assigned to tend to the
corpse. They went to the tomb in a
prescribed manner and they went there to make prudent verification of death.
Again, that scenario would probably be impossible to establish for many
reasons. Consider Matthew 28:8-9 –
8
So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell
his disciples. 9 And behold,
Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!”
And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. (ESV)
This is describing women who have a far greater interest in Jesus than
women who were detached attendants, whether paid or unpaid. Consider too the objective of these women at
the time. They were en route to the
disciples. The disciples were in hiding
and the women were part of their conspicuous group. If these women were just disinterested
attendants they would have just gone back to their families and said, “It’s
been a strange day on the job.”
It
has been necessary to show that it could be perfectly possible for someone to
pose some fairly plausible objections to the claim about the faithfulness of
the women mentioned in the Bible who were present at Jesus’ death and
burial. What we have done is that we
have answered those objections by establishing rather indisputably that the
women were indeed faithful beyond fear, unflinchingly devoted and maintained
steadfast loyalty right to the end. And
we established this without any subjectivity.
We got the material from the Bible itself and reinforced it with other
historically reliable data. We have not
had to resort to ungrounded suppositions.
So
what?
[1] Charles Glidewell,
The Gospel of Mark: People Responding to Jesus – BaptistWay Adult
Bible Study Guide, Lesson 13 – ‘Women at the Cross and the Tomb: Serving Jesus to the End (U.S., BaptistWay
Press, 2012), pp. 119-126
[2] S. Safrai, M.
Stern, The Jewish People in the First
Century: Historical Geography, Political
History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, series Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum
Testamentum, (pub. Assen, NL, Royal Van Gorcum 1974, Minneapolis, MN, U.S,
Fortress Press 1975), pp. 774-775.
[3] Ibid, p. 775
[4] Ibid, p. 774
[5] Ibid, pp. 784-785
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