The harrowing of hell.

According to the creeds, when Jesus died he descendit ad inferos. Inferos is the plural accusative form of inferus, which properly means “places of the dead,” the afterlife. When Jesus died, he didn’t bypass the afterlife and go straight to heaven, to the Father’s throne room. He went where the dead go. He went to paradise, as he told the thief crucified next to him:

Luke 23.43 KJV

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.

But popular Christian mythology says Jesus went to the other part of the afterlife. He died, they argue, with all humanity’s sin on his soul; with every single wicked thing every human has ever done. (And have yet to do. Trillions more sins have yet to be committed before the end of the world. That’s a whole lot of human depravity!) So where does such a wicked being go? Well, if you believe in karma not grace, where do you think they go?—the bad part of the afterlife. The place Dives went in the Lazarus story. The place we call hell.

This is a long, old Christian myth. It’s been around since the fourth century. Christians ever since that time have been casually swapping out infernos, “hellfire,” for inferos—and some of ’em think it means the same thing, and some think infernos is correct. It’s why they spread the idea that on Holy Saturday, the day after Jesus died, the day his body was resting in the sepulcher, he did go to hell. Not to be tormented though; to bring salvation to the Old Testament saints who’d been there since the beginning of death.

Seems none of these saints had been to paradise; certainly not heaven. Instead they were in some form of limbo, “border”—a shadowy place wedged between heaven, where they didn’t deserve to go; and hell, where they also didn’t deserve to go. (“Deserve” is the operative word here—again, grace isn’t part of this story.) Supposedly these “fathers” of our faith—nothing about the mothers—sat around at the border of hell, waiting for Messiah to die for their sins and free them from this limbus patrum, “limbo of the fathers.” As opposed to the limbus infantum, “limbo of infants”—where unbaptized babies go ’cause they neither merit heaven nor hell—a myth the Roman Catholics formally rejected in 2007 as inconsistent with God’s grace. Really all supposed “limbos” are inconsistent with grace, and not biblical; hence mythological.

As the myth goes, after Jesus died he went straight to hell and proclaimed the gospel to these saints. As is implied in 1 Peter:

1 Peter 4.6 KJV

For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

I firmly believe “them that are dead” is a metaphor, about sinners who are as good as dead in their sins, whom God can still save. But obviously Christians have been using this as a proof text for this myth. Jesus shared the gospel with them, and if they believed and followed Jesus, he led ’em to heaven. If they rejected Jesus, hell was right there, and off they went. And that is how all the Old Testament saints are now in heaven.

“My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mark 15.33-36, Matthew 27.45-49.

Just before he died, Jesus shouted out something in a language his bystanders didn’t recognize. And a lot of present-day commentators don’t recognize it either. We know it was Psalm 22.1, but some of us say Jesus quoted it in Aramaic; some say Hebrew. Which was it?

The reason for the confusion is Mark and Matthew don’t match. Both of ’em recorded Jesus’s words as best they could—but they transliterated them into the Greek alphabet, which doesn’t correspond to Hebrew and Syriac sounds as neatly as you’d think. (And if your web browser is so old it doesn’t do Unicode, you won’t be able to read ’em either.)

VERSE	ORIGINAL	TRANSLITERATION
Ps 22.1, Hebrew	אֵלִ֣י אֵלִ֣י לָמָ֣ה עֲזַבְתָּ֑נִי	Elí Elí, lamá azavettáni?
Ps 22.1, Syriac	ܐܰܠܳܗܝ ܐܰܠܳܗܝ ܠܡܳܢܳܐ ܫܒ݂ܰܩܬ݁ܳܢܝ	Elahí Elahí, lamaná šavaqtaní?
Mk 15.34, Greek	ἐλωΐ ἐλωΐ, λεμᾶ σαβαχθανί;	Elo’í Elo’í, lemá savahthaní? (or σαβακτανεί/savaktaneí in the Codex Sinaiticus.)
Mt 27.46, Greek	ἠλί ἠλί, λεμὰ σαβαχθανί;	Ilí ilí, lemá savahthaní?

Just based on how the gospels’ authors wrote the word for “my God,” Elí in Hebrew or Elahí in Syriac, it kinda looks like Mark was quoting a Syriac translation of the psalms, and Matthew the Hebrew original.

There are three reasons I feel Jesus is most likely to have quoted bible in Hebrew:

1. It is the language King David wrote his psalm in.
2. It’d explain why the people who heard Jesus quote it, didn’t understand him. First-century Israelis spoke Syriac; that’s what the New Testament meant by Ἑβραϊστί/Evrahistí and Ἑβραΐδι/Evra’ídi, “Hebraic.” Jn 5.2, Ac 22.2, 26.14, Rv 9.11 In the first century Hebrew was a dead language, only spoken by scribes like Jesus.
3. It’s way easier to confuse Elí with Ἡλίας/Ilías, the Greek version of אֵלִיָּה/Eliyyáhu, “Elijah,” than it is Elahí.

Regardless, in my translation the words in Jesus’s mouth are Syriac in Mark, and Hebrew in Matthew. ’Cause that’s what the authors were apparently going for.

Mark 15.33-36 KWL

33Upon the coming of the sixth hour since sunrise—noon—

darkness comes over all the land till the ninth hour.

34In the ninth hour Jesus cries out with a loud voice,

“?ܐܰܠܳܗܝ ܐܰܠܳܗܝ ܠܡܳܢܳܐ ܫܒ݂ܰܩܬ݁ܳܢܝ”

which is translated,

“My God my God, for what reason have you left me behind?” Ps 22.1

35Hearing this, some bystanders said, “Look, he calls Elijah.”

36One of the runners, filling a sponge of vinegar,

putting it on a reed, gives Jesus a drink,

saying, “Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him.”

Matthew 27.45-49 KWL

45From the sixth hour since sunrise—noon—

darkness comes over all the land till the ninth hour.

46Around the ninth hour Jesus cries out with a loud voice,

saying, “?אִיל אִיל למֹנֹא שׁבַֽקתֹ֗ני”

that is,

“My God my God, why did you leave me behind?” Ps 22.1

47Some of the bystanders, hearing, are saying this:

“This man calls Elijah.”

48Quickly a runner, one of them, leaves them.

Taking a sponge full of vinegar,

putting it on a reed, he gives Jesus a drink.

49The others say,

“Let’s see if Elijah comes, and will save him.”

Awright, now that we have the language sorta squared away, let’s get to what was going on here.

The top two commands. [Mk 12.29-31]

Mark 12.29-31 KJV

29And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: Dt 6.4-5 this is the first commandment. 31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Lv 19.18 There is none other commandment greater than these.

 

Jesus was asked by a scribe what the greatest command is, and this is the Gospel of Mark’s version of his answer. He quotes two bible passages—and it’s not a bad idea to memorize these passages as well. The reason I suggest memorizing Jesus’s whole Mark statement is to include his endorsement: “There is none other commandment greater than these.”

(Or whatever other translation you wanna know it in. I present memory verses in King James Version because it’s the version I memorized, plus whenever I quote KJV, people immediately recognize it as “bible language.” But if your favorite is ESV or NASB or NLT—or even The PIrate Bible—go for it.)

Mark also includes the whole text from Deuteronomy. Jews memorize this passage as the שְׁמַ֖ע/šemá, “the Shema,” taken from the very first word of the verse, which means “listen” but we often translate it as “hear.”

Deuteronomy 6.4-5 KJV

4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Other gospels skip verse 4, and go right to the “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Mark includes the “Listen, Israel” part because it’s important: Before we start loving God, we gotta identify which God we mean, and that’d be YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and Moses; the Father of Jesus. He’s not a new god whom Jesus is introducing for the very first time through his teachings. Same God the first-century Israelis already knew. Same God most monotheists know, whether we call him our Higher Power, the Almighty, God, Lord, Ha-Shem, Elohim, Allah, Deus, Dios, Dieu, Theos, or whatever other language you like to get religious in. But if you’re gonna follow Jesus, you need to get to know him and follow him as Jesus teaches him, because only Jesus explains him. Jn 1.18

Then, loving neighbors:

Leviticus 19.18 KJV

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Whenever God commanded something that particularly reflects his character—something he particularly wanted the Hebrews to pay attention to, ’cause he means it—he’d cap it with “I am the LORD.” He doesn’t want his people to take petty revenge, nor hold grudges, nor hate the people of their homeland. And if you’re one of those people who insist God was only speaking about fellows of the same ethnic background, Jesus overtly taught otherwise in his Good Samaritan Story. Which, not coincidentally, follows Jesus’s top two commandments in the Gospel of Luke. Lk 10.25-29

Passover: When God saved the Hebrews.

Back when I once taught on this topic, one of my students asked, “Why don’t we celebrate Passover?”—meaning we Christians. And it just so happens we do. We call it Pascha, Pascua, Páques; most languages use some form of the original Hebrew word פֶּסַח/pesákh, “skipping or passing over.”

It’s just English-speakers use the word Easter. And obviously we do it way different than we see in the scriptures—so different, English-speaking people routinely assume Easter and Passover are two entirely different holidays.

I can’t argue with this assumption. Christians don’t bother to purge our homes of yeast or leavening. Don’t cook lamb. (Nor practice the modern Jewish custom of not having lamb, since there’s no temple in Jerusalem to ritually sacrifice a lamb in.) Don’t put out the seder plate. Don’t tell the Exodus story. Don’t have the kids ask the Four Questions (what’s with the matzot, why are bitter herbs part of the meal, why roasted meat in particular, and why does the food gets dipped twice?). Don’t hide the afikomen and have the kids search for it; we do that with the eggs though.

And some English-speaking Christians do observe Passover as a separate holiday. Some of us celebrate it Hebrew-style, as spelled out in the scriptures, as in Exodus and Deuteronomy. But more often, Christians follow the lead of our Messianic Jewish sisters and brothers, figuring they’re Jews so they know how to do it. Thing is, Messianic Jews borrow their traditions from the Conservative Judaism movement. (Which, contrary to their name, ain’t all that conservative.) Their haggadah—their order of service—is nearly always adapted from Orthodox or Conservative prayer books, which means it dates from the 10th century or later.

Some Jewish customs come from the Mishna, so they do date back to the third century, and maybe go as far back as the first. But they might not have. It’s entirely likely most of them originated after the temple was destroyed, ’cause now you can’t do the religious portion of Passover at temple, so you gotta do it somewhere, so now it’s made part of the seder, the ritual Passover dinner. Jesus and his students may have simply eaten dinner, quoted the Exodus story, thanked God for his salvation, drank, sang, and that’s about all. No haggadah; no seder plate, no afikomen, no Four Questions, no Airing of the Grievances… oh wait, that’s Festivus.

And not all these customs are part of everyone’s Passover. Just as Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter every which way, Jews then and now got to select their own customs. Hence families have unique customs, and various synagogues emphasize various things. Medieval Jewish communities in eastern Europe, north Africa, Spain, and the middle east, all came up with their individual haggadahs. So did Samaritans.

The point of the haggadah is to teach the Exodus story to those who don’t know it, usually children. And remember, Jesus’s students were teenagers, not children: Legal adults who already knew the Exodus story. If they hadn’t heard it in enough detail at home, Jesus would’ve taught it to them personally, and they’d’ve celebrated several Passovers together by the time of his last Passover supper. So, just as some families don’t tell the nativity story every Christmas once the kids get older, don’t be surprised if Jesus supper skipped the Exodus story as redundant.

Christians usually know very little about Jewish culture, and mistakenly think that’s how Jews and Pharisees behaved in Jesus’s day too. In my experience Messianic Jews think this too—and regularly make a big, big point of how Jesus would’ve behaved exactly like the Jews they know… when the gospels make it really clear Jesus didn’t behave at all like his fellow Jews, and it really annoyed them. In either case when they attend a Passover seder and listen to whatever haggadah the leader borrowed or wrote, they routinely think it’s so profound how Jesus did all these rituals (even though he likely didn’t) and how his life and teachings “fulfilled” all these rituals.

Er, no. Of course we can see similarities between Jesus’s life and teachings, and Passover rituals… and Christian rituals, and really any rituals if you wanna connect the dots hard enough. But today’s Passover customs might entirely postdate Jesus. So let’s not read too much into what Jesus “brought meaning into”—he may not have. Especially when your haggadah was put together by Christians.

The “Not what I want” prayer.

The “Not what I want” prayer isn’t a popular prayer. Downright rare sometimes. Because when we pray, we’re intentionally asking God for what we want. Why would we tell him to not give us what we want? Did we suddenly forget the point of prayer?

Why pray “Not what I want”? ’Cause we’re mimicking Jesus. When he has us pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done,” Mt 6.10 and when he himself prayed this at Gethsemane:

Mark 14.35-36 KWL

35Going a little further,

Jesus is falling to the ground and is praying

that the hour might pass him by,

if it’s possible.

36Jesus is saying, “Abba! Father!

For you¹, everything is possible!

Take this cup away from me!

But it’s not what I will,

but what you¹ will.”

Y’notice Jesus did tell the Father what he wanted: He didn’t want to suffer. He wanted “the cup” to pass him by. He didn’t wanna be crucified; what kind of madman would wanna be crucified? Yet at the same time he knew his purpose in this world was to do as the Father sent him to do. Jn 5.19, 8.28 At the time his will didn’t match the Father’s, but he determined he would make his will match the Father’s. Even if it meant suffering.

There’s our example.

That’s why it’s not a popular prayer. Few of us Christians are willing to commit ourselves to God so radically. Of the few who do, we’re totally willing to die for God… not realizing when it really does come time to die for him, perfect fear will cast out zeal. Note Simon Peter. At 9 p.m., totally ready to die for Jesus; Lk 22.23 and 3 a.m., totally lying about him to slave girls. Lk 22.56 Who, as slaves and as girls in that culture, couldn’t even testify against him in court! A few hours can change an awful lot.

But this is why our willingness to follow God absolutely anywhere, can’t be based on zeal. It’s gotta be based on our regular surrender and submission to God’s will. We gotta regularly pray, along with Jesus, “Not what I want. Not my desires, wishes, and will. Your will.”

Jesus gets abused by his guards.

Mark 14.65, Matthew 26.67-68, Luke 22.63-65, John 18.22-23.

Historically, people have always abused prisioners. They figure there was good reason you were arrested and imprisoned, whether you’d been tried and convicted or not. Heck, maybe you even weren’t guilty of the charges brought against you… but you were in prison because you’d done wrong in some other way, and either the gods or the universe were punishing you for it in this way. Or whatever other justification bullies could come up with for smacking you around.

Our laws have since made prisioner abuse illegal. Not that these laws have stopped anything. Cops and guards will still smack a prisioner around if they don’t respect the law and think they can get away with it. Lynchings used to happen all the time in the United States. Not just during the Jim Crow era, when white terrorists did it to blacks to promote white supremacy, but whenever any angry citizens took the law into their own hands and tarred and feathered, or shot or hung, anybody they saw as troublemakers… or competition. Not for nothing do police body cameras need to stay constantly on. But let me get off that tangent and get to when Jesus was slapped by his guards. Happened during his pre-trial trial:

John 18.22-23 KWL

22Once he says this, one of the bystanding police

gives Jesus a slap, saying,

“This you answer the head priest?”

23Jesus answers him, “If I speak evil, testify about the evil.

If good, why beat me?”

In Mark, Jesus isn’t beaten till after the Judean senate found him guilty, but in both Matthew and Luke the guards didn’t care to wait for any trial; they made up their own minds about him.

Mark 14.65 KWL

Certain people begin to spit on Jesus,

to cover his face and punch him,

to tell him, “Prophesy!

Which underling gave you that punch?”

Matthew 26.67-68 KWL

67Then they spit in Jesus’s face and punch him.

with those slapping him

68saying, “Prophesy to us, ‘Messiah’!

Which of us hit you?”

Luke 22.63-65 KWL

63The men holding Jesus are mocking him,

beating him,

64and covering Jesus’s face,

{punching him in the face,

and} saying, “Prophesy!

Which of us hit you?”

65Many other slanderers

are saying likewise to Jesus.

This behavior offends Christians nowadays, because we know Jesus did nothing wrong. And yet all too often, these very same Christians don’t mind if another prisioner gets roughed up by police or prison guards, because those folks must be guilty, right? They can’t possibly have caught the wrong guy. Can’t possibly be hassling another innocent victim like Jesus. Right?

I’ve heard fellow Christians take perverse glee about convicts experiencing abuse in prision. Even jokes about prison rape, which are way too commonplace considering this is a crime which needs to be exterminated. But these folks love the idea of rough treatment in prison. Serves ’em right, they figure.

But of course violence is not a legal punishment, and doesn’t fit the crime. Somebody incarcerated for a lesser crime, like fraud or theft, can be attacked same as a murderer or rapist. Someone can be assaulted for their race, or because they’re gay, or because they’re mentally ill, or any number of other factors which have nothing to do with why they should be in prison. But even if they are in prison for murder: If that’s a beloved family member of yours, you’re not gonna appreciate those prison-rape jokes. And God forbid there’s some mixup which puts you in a holding cell with some angry, rapey thugs.

To hear these jokesters talk, if it were up to them we’d go right back to the bad old days of beating confessions out of suspects. And they claim to be Christian! So how is it Jesus’s experience at the hands of his accusers, haven’t made ’em realize “innocent till proven guilty” is always the way to treat suspects?

Well, lots of reasons. But most of them have their origin in gracelessness.

Holy Week: When Jesus died.

Today is Palm Sunday, the start of what we Christians call Holy Week. Various Christians also call it Great Week, Greater Week, Holy and Great Week, Passion Week, and Easter Week (particularly by those people who consider Easter the end of the week). It remembers the week Jesus died, which took place 9–15 Nisan 3793 in the Hebrew calendar. In the Julian calendar that’d be 29 March to 4 April of the year 33. Here, have a handy infograph:

Of course Jesus rose on 16 Nisan (or Sunday the 5th), the day Christians now designate as Easter.

Different Christians observe Holy Week in different ways, depending on church and local custom. The churches I grew up in, usually had a somber service on Good Friday, and a just-as-somber service on Easter Sunday, ’cause they usually held some sort of passion play where most of the service was focused on Jesus getting killed. Lots of weeping. Lots of repentance and conversions. Happy ending, ’cause Jesus is alive, but the focus was more on him dying for our sins. Lots of churches tend to focus on the sad bits, ’cause we humans get depressing like that.

But many churches—properly—spend Holy Week on the sad bits, and Easter Sunday and the weeks thereafter rejoicing. Because Jesus is alive.