Chapter 7 THE CRUCI-FICTION?

Chapter 7

THE CRUCI-FICTION?

n chapter 1, I showed how, thanks to Koester, Robinson, and Talbert, the gospels' similarity to and probable dependence upon the aretalogy genre are being more and more recognized. But something seldom noticed is the striking fact that the gospels also match certain features often found in a related genre, that of the ancient romance novels. This should not surprise us, since these genres (like all genres) are not airtight. The ancient romances and the aretalogies tend to shade over into one another. For example, The Alexander Romance and Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana have equal elements of both types. In the present chapter, the similarity of the gospels to the ancient novels will take on striking relevance, for their plot devices mirror at crucial points some of the gospel episodes considered by almost all scholars of whatever theological stripe to be bedrock history. And you know what that means.

Three major plot devices recur like clockwork in the ancient novels, which were usually about the adventures of star-crossed lovers, somewhat like modern soap operas. First, the heroine, a princess, collapses into a coma and is taken for dead. Prematurely buried, she awakens later in the darkness of the tomb. Ironically, she is discovered in the nick of time by grave robbers who have broken into the opulent mausoleum, looking for rich funerary tokens (as in King Tut's treasure-lined tomb). The crooks save her life but also kidnap her, since they can't afford to leave a witness behind. When her fiance or husband comes to the tomb to mourn, he is stunned to find the tomb empty and first guesses that his beloved has been taken up to heaven because the gods envied her beauty. In one tale, the man sees the shroud left behind, just as in John 20:6-7.

The second stock plot device is that the hero, finally realizing what has happened, goes in search of the heroine and eventually runs afoul of a governor or king who wants her and, to get him out of the way, has the hero crucified. Of course, the hero always manages to get a last-minute pardon, even once affixed to the cross, or he survives crucifixion by some stroke of luck. Sometimes the heroine, too, appears to have been killed but winds up alive after all.

Third, we eventually have a joyous reunion of the two lovers, each of whom has despaired of ever seeing the other again. They at first cannot believe they are not seeing a ghost come to comfort them. Finally, disbelieving for joy, they are convinced that their loved one has survived in the flesh. Anyone who professes not to see major similarities between these novels, long ignored by scholars because of their supposed frivolity, and the gospels either has never read the gospels or does not want to admit the disturbing parallels.

ESCAPING CROSSES, EMPTYING TOMBS

In Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe, Chaereas is falsely incited to rage against his wife Callirhoe and delivers a kick which seems to kill her. She is entombed alive. Soon pirates (who are virtually ubiquitous in these novels) appear, intent on robbing the tomb. They discover Callirhoe alive, now having revived in the cool of the mausoleum, and they kidnap her to sell her as a slave. In her captivity, Callirhoe pities her doubly vexed husband in terms strikingly reminiscent of the New Testament empty tomb accounts: "You are mourning for me and repenting and sitting by an empty tomb...."' But the resemblance to the gospel accounts only grows stronger a little later when in fact poor Chaereas discovers the tomb to be empty.

When he reached the tomb, he found that the stones had been moved and the entrance was open. [Cf. John 20:1) He was astonished at the sight and overcome by fearful perplexity at what had happened. [Cf. Mark 16:51 Rumor-a swift messenger-told the Syracusans this amazing news. They all quickly crowded round the tomb, but no one dared go inside until Her- mocrates gave an order to do so. [Cf. John 20:4-61 The man who went in reported the whole situation accurately. [Cf. John 19:35; 21:241 It seemed incredible that even the corpse was not lying there. Then Chaereas himself determined to go in, in his desire to see Callirhoe again even dead; but though he hunted through the tomb, he could find nothing. Many people could not believe it and went in after him. They were all seized by help lessness. One of those standing there said, "The funeral offerings have been carried off [Cartlidge's translation reads: "The shroud has been stripped off'-cf. John 20:6-71-it is tomb robbers who have done that; but what about the corpse-where is it?" Many different suggestions circulated in the crowd. Chaereas looked towards the heavens, stretched up his arms, and cried: "Which of the gods is it, then, who has become my rival in love and carried off Callirhoe and is now keeping her with him ... ?"2

The parallels to the empty-tomb accounts, especially to John 20:1-10, are abundant and close. Chaereas even suggests that Callirhoe has been (like Jesus) translated to heaven. An almost identical scene is found in Photius' summary of lamblichus' Babylonian Story (all we have left of this romance):

The grave of the young woman is left empty, and there are left behind several robes that were to be burned on the grave, and food and drink. Rhodanes and his companion feast on the food and drink, take some of the clothing, and lie down to sleep in the young woman's grave. As daylight comes, those who set fire to the robber's house realize that they have been tricked and follow the footprints of Rhodanes and Sinonis, supposing that they are henchmen of the robber. They follow the footprints right up to the grave and look in at the motionless, sleeping, wine-sodden bodies lying in the grave. They suppose that they are looking at corpses and leave, puzzled that the tracks led there. [Cf. Luke 24:12]'

Back to Chaereas and Callirhoe: Later on, Callirhoe, reflecting on her vicissitudes, says, "I have died and come to life again."4 Later still, she laments, "I have died and been buried; I have been stolen from my tomb." Note the parallel to 1 Cor. 15:3-4, "that Christ died ... , that he was buried, that he was raised...." Scholars debate whether the "buried" reference in 1 Corinthians means to imply a tomb emptied by the Resurrection. I would venture that the parallel with Chaereas and Callirhoe does suggest such an implication, since in the latter, disappearing from the tomb is equal to rising from the dead. Again, towards the end of the novel Callirhoe recounts, not simply her regaining of consciousness, but "how she had come back to life in the tomb."'

In Miletus, Callirhoe comes to believe that Chaereas perished while searching for her. To console her and to lay her fond memory of his rival to rest, Dionysius, her new husband, erects a tomb for Chaereas. It lacks his body, but this is not, as all think, because the corpse is irrecoverable, but rather in fact because he is still alive elsewhere. His tomb is empty because he is still alive. Why seek the living among the dead?

But elsewhere poor Chaereas is condemned to the cross!

Without even seeing them or hearing their defense the master at once ordered the crucifixion of the sixteen men in the hut. They were brought out chained together at foot and neck, each carrying his cross.... Now Chaereas said nothing when he was led off with the others, but [his friend] Polycharmus, as he carried his cross, said: "Callirhoe, it is because of you that we are suffering like this! You are the cause of all our troubles!"'

At the last minute Chaereas' sentence is commuted.

Mithridates sent everybody off to reach Chaereas before he died. They found the rest nailed up on their crosses; Chaereas was just ascending his. So the executioner checked his gesture, and Chaereas climbed down from his cross....'

As he later recalls, "Mithridates at once ordered that I be taken down from the cross-I was practically finished by then." Here, then, is a hero who went to the cross for his beloved and returned alive. In the same story, a villain is likewise crucified, though since he is gaining his just deserts, he is not reprieved. This is Theron, the pirate who carried poor Callirhoe into slavery. "He was crucified in front of Callirhoe's tomb."8 We find another instance of a crucifixion adjacent to the tomb of the righteous in The Alexander Romance, when Alexander arrests the assassins of his worthy foe Darius. He commanded them "to be crucified at Darius's grave."9 We cannot help being reminded of the location of Jesus' burial "in the place where he was crucified" (John 19:4 1).

We meet with the familiar pattern again in the Ephesian Tale of Xenophon. The beautiful Anthia seems to have died from a dose of poison but has in fact merely been placed in a deathlike coma. She awakens from it in the tomb.

Meanwhile some pirates had found that a girl had been given a sumptuous burial and that a great store of women's finery was buried with her, and a great horde of gold and silver. After nightfall they came to the tomb, burst open the doors, came in and took away the finery, and saw that Anthia was still alive. They thought that this too would turn out very profitable for them, raised her up, and wanted to take her.'°

Later on, her beloved Habrocomes goes in search of her and winds up being condemned to death through a series of misadventures too long to recount here. "They set up the cross and attached him to it, tying his hands and feet tight with ropes; that is the way the Egyptians crucify. Then they went away and left him hanging there, thinking that the victim was securely in place." But Habrocomes prays that he may yet be spared such an undeserved death. He is heard for his loud cries and tears. "A sudden gust of wind arose and struck the cross, sweeping away the subsoil on the cliff where it had been fixed. Habrocomes fell into the torrent and was swept away; the water did him no harm; his fetters did not get in his way....""

At length Habrocomes returns to a temple where, in happier days, he and Anthia had erected images of themselves as an offering to Aphrodite. Still deprived of Anthia and thinking her to be dead, he sits there and weeps. He is discovered by old friends Leucon and Rhode.

They did not recognize him [Cf. Luke 24:16; John 20:14], but wondered who would stay beside someone else's offerings. And so Leucon spoke to him. "Why are you sitting weeping, young man ... ?" [Cf. John 20:13-14; Luke 24:38] Habrocomes replied, "I am ... the unfortunate Habrocomes!" When Leucon and Rhode heard this they were immediately dumfounded, but gradually recovered and recognized him by his appearance and voice, from what he said, and from his mention of Anthia.12

Here I see a striking resemblance to the New Testament empty tomb accounts, where Jesus or an angel accosts a weeping mourner, and a dramatic recognition results; cf. John 20:11-16, where we also have the question "Why are you weeping?" the initial failure of recognition, and the recognition being sparked by the mention of a woman's name. Luke 24:13 is only slightly less close.

In Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon, the heroine twice appears to be disemboweled in climactic scenes worthy of a Saturday afternoon movie serial. But both times it was sleight-of-hand or mistaken identity. On the former occasion Leucippe had to lie in a coffin until her faked sacrifice. She is warned by her confederate to "stay inside the coffin as long as it was daylight and not try to come out even if she woke up early."" And of course she does eventually emerge alive from the coffin, giving us another resurrection scene. Referring later to this scene in a letter to Clitophon, she recalls "For your sake I have been a sacrificial victim, an expiatory offering, and twice have died."14 Another character marvels over Leucippe's many adventures, including "those sham deaths": "Hasn't she died many times before? Hasn't she often been resurrected?""

Eventually Leucippe must prove her virginity by means of an old local ritual, described thusly:

If she has lied about her virginity, the syrinx is silent, and instead of music, a scream is heard from the cave. At once the populace quits that place, leaving the woman in the cave. On the third day a virgin priestess of the place enters and finds the syrinx lying on the ground, with no trace of the woman."

On the third day a woman comes to cave in which someone was entombed but now finds no trace of a body!

In Longus' Daphnis and Chloe we find only traces of the pattern, but they are worth noting. "He ran down to the plain, threw his arms around Chloe, and fell down in a faint. When he was, with difficulty, brought back to life by Chloe's kisses and the warmth of her embraces. ..."17 Later in the tale we hear that in the bleak midwinter Daphnis, deprived of the sight of his beloved Chloe, "waited for spring as if it were a rebirth from death."" Later, when some vandalism mars the garden tended by the happy pastoral folk of the story, there is fear of harsh reprisal: " `There's an old man [the master will] string up on one of the pines, like Marsyas; and perhaps he'll ... string up Daphnis, too!' ... Chloe mourned ... at the thought that Daphnis would be strung up.... When night was already falling, Eudromus brought them the news that the old master would arrive in three days' time ..."'' but all ends well.

The pattern comes into sharper focus again in Heliodorus' Ethiopian Story, where Knemon hides Charikleia, lover of Theagenes, in a cave for safekeeping.

"Put her in, my friend, close the entrance with the stone in the normal way, and then come back...." This stone dropped effortlessly into place and could be opened just as easily.... Not a sound passed Charikleia's lips; this new misfortune was like a deathblow to her, separation from Theagenes tantamount to the loss of her own life. Leaving her numbed and silent, Knemon climbed out of the cave, and as he replaced the threshold stone, he shed a tear in sorrow for himself at the necessity that constrained him, and for her at the fate that afflicted her; he had virtually entombed her alive. ...20

There are two more cases of apparent death and resurrection in The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre. The king's wife seems to expire during childbirth while on a sea voyage, though the text baldly says, "she suddenly died."" They secure her body in a carefully sealed coffin and commit her to the sea. "Three days later waves cast up the coffin."22 A medical student examines the body and is able to tell from subtle indications that she still lives. He manages to revive her, though it will be years before her loved ones learn she is not dead after all.

The baby daughter grows up and is committed to the care of foster parents by the grief-stricken Apollonius. Out of envy for her royal possessions, her foster mother conspires to have young Tarsia assassinated. The hired killer cannot bring himself to commit the crime, but instead sells her into a brothel as a slave. Meanwhile, the wicked foster mother, thinking Tarsia dead, trumps up a false story of how she died and builds an "empty tomb"23 to honor her memory. Tarsia contrives to maintain her virginity even in the midst of a brothel and is eventually hired to visit a despairing old man (Apollonius, of course) to cheer him up. This she tries to do with nothing more salacious than moral exhortations, bidding him to "come out of the darkness and into the light."24 When the two recognize one another, he says, "my hope has been brought back to life."25 The townspeople, learning of Tarsia's identity, avenge the outrage perpetrated upon royalty, killing the pimp whose slave Tarsia was. Apollonius responds, "Thanks to you, death and grief have been shown to be false."26 Once he has also been reunited with his wife, who has in the meantime become a priestess of Diana, Apollonius prays to Diana, thanking her that "you restored me to life."27

lamblichus, in his Babylonian Story, features not only an empty tomb story, as we saw above, but yet another apparent death. The maid Sinonis is missing. Her father discovers a half-devoured female corpse and hastens to the conclusion that it is that of his lost daughter. He hangs himself on the spot, but not before inscribing in blood, "Lovely Sinonis lies buried here." Arriving on the scene not long afterwards, Sinonis' lover Rhodanes despairs and is about to stab himself, but another woman appears and shouts, "It is not Sinonis lying these, Rhodanes."28

A friend of the two lovers, Soraechus, "is condemned to be crucified," but while "being led away to be crucified," Soraechus is rescued by a band of soldiers who drive away his guards. But in the meantime, Rhodanes, too,

was being led to and hoisted onto the cross that had been designated for him by a dancing and garlanded Garmus, who was drunk and dancing round the cross with the flute players and reveling with abandon. While this is happening, Sacas informs Garmus by letter that Sinonis is marrying the youthful king of Syria. Rhodanes rejoices high up on the cross, but Garmus makes to kill himself. He checks himself, however, and brings down Rhodanes from the cross against the latter's will (for he prefers to die [seeing that his beloved is to marry another])"

Apuleius' The Golden Ass contains two scenes which bear an uncanny resemblance to the gospels' scenes at the empty tomb of Jesus, though neither is exactly analogous to them. First is a scene of forbidden necromancy. Those assembled seek to interrogate the shade of a murdered man in order to discover the identity of his slayer.

"Behold here is one Zatchlas, an Egyptian, who is the most principal prophesier in all this country, and who was hired of me long since to bring back the soul of this man from hell for a short season, and to revive his body from the threshold of death for the trial hereof," and therewithal he brought forth a certain young man clothed in linen raiment .... 30

The dead man is briefly reanimated and supplies the desired information. I have thus far omitted the occasional scenes of actual raising of corpses for purposes of necromancy. We find it occasionally in the novels, but I include this one because of the association with a resurrection of a young man in white as in Mark 16:5.

Second, in the romance of Cupid and Psyche, interpolated into the larger unit of The Golden Ass, we find a scene in which Psyche's sisters seek her out, fearing her dead.

After a long search made, the sisters of Psyche came unto the hill where she had been set on the rock, and cried with a loud voice and beat their breasts, in such sort that the rocks and stones answered again their frequent howlings: and when they called their sister by her name, so that their lamentable cries came down the mountain unto her ears, she came forth, very anxious and now almost out of her mind, and said: "Behold, here is she for whom you weep; I pray you torment yourself no more, and dry those tears with which you have so long wetted your cheeks, for now may you embrace her for whom you mourned. "31

A typical sham death and resurrection due to poisoning meets us later in the novel. An evil stepmother has sought from a doctor poison with which she intends to dispatch her stepson, who has rebuffed her illicit advances. But the doctor, suspecting some chicanery, sells her only a potent knockout formula. So in the midst of the inquest, he leads everyone to the coffin where a surprise awaits them (though by now we know full well what to expect).

Every man had a desire to go to the sepulchre where the child was laid: there was none of the justices, none of any reputation of the town, nor any indeed of the common people, but went to see this strange sight. Amongst them all the father of the child removed with his own hands the cover of the coffin, and found his son rising up after his dead and soporiferous sleep: and when he beheld him as one risen from the dead he embraced him in his arms; and he could speak never a word for his present gladness, but presented him before the people [cf. Luke 7:151 with great joy and consolation, and as he was wrapped and bound in the clothes of the grave [cf. John 11:441, so he brought him before the judges."

The stepmother is exiled, her henchman "hanged on a gallows," or literally, crucified. Again we have the immediate association of crucifixion with an empty tomb.

Petronius's Satyricon repeats a widely disseminated tale which juxtaposes the same two features again, and in a striking fashion. A woman of Ephesus is so devoted to her late husband that she resolves to enter the tomb with him, there to starve herself to death and so join him in the great beyond. A servant keeps vigil with her. Meanwhile a company of thieves is crucified nearby.

Next night the soldier who was guarding the crosses to prevent anyone removing one of the corpses for burial noticed a light shining among the tombs and, hearing the sound of someone mourning, he was eager to know ... who it was and what was going on. Naturally he went down into the vault and seeing a beautiful woman, at first stood rooted to the spot as though terrified by some strange sight."

The soldier brings some food and urges her to eat. He seeks to comfort her in her loss. The servant accepts the food and begins to join in the soldier's urgings. "What good is it ... for you to drop dead of starvation, or bury yourself alive ... ? ... Won't you come back to life?" This counsel proves persuasive. In fact, not only does the widow refresh herself with the food, but she is so infused with the joi de vivre that she fornicates with the soldier right there in the tomb. The doors of the vault were of course closed, so if a friend or a stranger came to the tomb, he thought that the blameless widow had expired over her husband's body."34

While all this is going on, the family of one of the crucified thieves, noticing that the crosses are unattended, "took down the hanging body in the dark and gave it the final rites." The soldier finds one cross empty and knows what must become of him for failing his post. [Cf. Matt. 28:11-141 He is about to kill himself when his new lover suggests he "take the body of her husband from the coffin and fix it to the empty cross." This is what he does.35

Here a dead man exits his tomb only to be crucified and thus save the life of the soldier and to bring a new lease on life to his no longer grieving widow! Here the elements of the story of the crucified and resurrected savior in the gospels are reshuffled but all present. There is even the element of a crucified dead man disappearing despite the posting of guards, somewhat recalling Matthew's empty tomb account!

Another Matthean peculiarity finds its parallel in an account in book 4 of Philostratus' The Life of Apollonius of Tyana. In chapter 16, the divine sage makes a pilgrimage to the tomb of Achilles. He calls out, like Jesus to Lazarus,

"0 Achilles, . . . most of mankind declare you are dead, but I cannot agree with them ... show ... yourself to my eyes, if you should be able to use them to attest your existence." Thereupon a slight earthquake shook the neighborhood of the barrow [cf. Matt. 28:1-2I, and a youth issued forth five cubits high, wearing a cloak of Thessalian fashion ... but he grew bigger, till he was twice as large and even more than that; at any rate he appeared ... to be twelve cubits high just at that moment when he reached his complete stature, and his beauty grew apace with his length. [Cf. the gigantic risen Jesus in the Gospel of Peter] (Book IV, XVI, Loeb)

THE STUMBLING BLOCK OF THE CROSS?

As Charles H. Talbert has shown, the canonical gospels, even in their present form, would not have been hard for an ancient reader to recognize as official (and fictive) hero biographies compiled by a philosophical movement to glorify their founder.36 It seems to me that Mack, Koester, and Robinson would all shy away from such a conclusion, given the prominence of the Passion story in the canonical gospels. The notion of an atoning death does not seem to fit the picture of the philosophical aretalogy. But it is hardly clear, at least in Mark and Luke, that the idea of an atonement has much to do with it. It may be Helmut Koester's Lutheran background that tempts him to read a theology of the cross into Mark, when only two brief texts could even possibly be read that way (Mark 10:45 and 14:24), and Luke chops even these (compare his versions, Luke 22:27 and 22:18)!

As Mack notes (in company with John Dominic Crossan and others), the story of Jesus' arrest, humiliation, and crucifixion seems to be derived from a whole different cluster of ideas than that of an atonement theology. Rather, the story is probably intended as a typical story of the wise man who endures all the depredations of the wicked, to whose sin he is a living rebuke. Such a righteous one is always either saved in the nick of time or glorified after death.37 It is easy to see Jesus' crucifixion account in these terms. And this is the sort of thing we would expect to find in a community like the Q partisans, as Mack understands them. The Q community could easily have produced such a hero biography, such a novelistic aretalogy, issuing in the persecution and deliverance of their hero, the wise man/sophist Jesus, without actually knowing what had happened to the historical Jesus, a question the Q sayings, after all, leave wide open.

But didn't the story of the persecuted wise one usually end with the rescue of the hero (Joseph, Daniel, Aniqar, and so forth)? Yes, though Mack and Crossan apparently feel that a posthumous reward would not violate the logic of the story. It would be a natural variation on the theme. But would it? The notion of the wise man having the last laugh at the expense of his enemies boils down to the fundamental idea that "wisdom is the best policy," that "nice guys finish first." Wisdom is implicitly enlightened self-interest, the Socratic dictum that if people knew better, they would always do the virtuous thing-because they would see that it is always in their own best interests. Not, "Do the right, and let the chips fall where they may," but rather, "Here's how to succeed." The Book of Proverbs wasn't asking anybody to be a martyr. No, the idea was, if you were wise you would ultimately escape the fowler's snare of the wicked.

But maybe the aretalogy of Jesus did fit the pattern anyway. Remember, the literary devices of the ancient novel included people surviving crucifixions and people getting entombed alive! What if an earlier version of the Passion narrative pursued the logic of the tale of the wise sufferer to the letter-and had Jesus survive crucifixion, appearing still alive, not alive again? Even in the canonical gospels there are striking hints of a barely erased precanonical version that must have read precisely this way. Muslim interpreters of the gospels have seen some of these hints, but it is only with the advent of modern narrative criticism that the clues have become visible to any of the rest of us.

For instance, why does Mark 14:35-36 show Jesus asking his father to allow him to escape death on the cross in Gethsemane? This is an exceedingly odd, even an offensive, thing to write if the goal of this narrative is to have Jesus die after all. But I suspect the writer is planting a seed that will blossom rather differently later in the story. Likewise, for Mark 15:34 to have Jesus repeating Psalm 22, a prayer anticipating final deliverance even at the last moment (Ps. 22:22-24), creates all manner of problems unless this prayer, too, is to be answered by story's end. Did Jesus think his God had forsaken him? No, of course not. As Heb. 5:7 says, his loud cries and tears were heard, his prayer for deliverance from death answered. The irony of the bystanders' taunt, "Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe" (Mark 15:32), lies in the fact that this is precisely what is about to happen, though they will not recognize it. And, otherwise, what is the point of the strange detail of Pilate marveling that Jesus was dead after a mere six hours (Mark 15:44), when it ought to take days for the cross to kill? As Chekov said, if a writer says somebody drove a nail into the wall, he'd better make sure to hang something from it later in the story! And, obviously, the payoff would have been that Jesus had fallen into a coma, which ironically, providentially, resulted in his being removed from the cross in time for him to survive.

And why does Matthew have Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus in Joseph's own tomb (Matt. 27:57-60)? And why does Matthew add the note that Joseph was rich (27:57)? Why, simply to provide narrative motivation for tomb robbers to come and open the tomb, as in the ancient romances, and find Jesus alive! The fainting of Matthew's guards (27:4) probably reflects the terror of the superstitious tomb robbers, finding a living man but no treasure. And then, in Luke 24:36-43, when Jesus appears to his bereaved disciples who assume he is dead and cannot believe their eyes, what does he say to reassure them? Like Apollonius of Tyana says in a similar scene, after a miraculous escape from the treacherous designs of Domitian, he bids his friends to behold his living physical body, to convince themselves that he has not risen from the realm of the dead, he is no ghost, but rather, as his solid corporeality attests, he is still alive.

Damis' grief had just broken out afresh, and he had made some such exclamation as the following: "Shall we ever behold, 0 ye gods, our noble and good companion?" When Apollonius, who had heard him-or as a matter of fact he was already present in the chamber . . . -answered: "Ye shall see him, nay, ye have already seen him." "Alive?" said Demetrius, "for if you are dead, we have anyhow never ceased to lament you." Whereupon Apollonius stretched out his hand and said: "Take hold of me, and if I evade you, then I am indeed a ghost come to you from the realm of Persephone, such as the gods of the under-world reveal to those who are dejected with much mourning. But if I resist your touch, then you shall persuade Damis also that I am both alive and that I have not abandoned my body." They were no longer able to disbelieve, but rose up and threw themselves on his neck and kissed him, and asked him about his defense. (Life of Apollonius, VIII, XII)

John knew that people understood the story of Jesus' passion, this way, which is why he adds two items unprecedented in any other gospel: the nailing of Jesus to the cross (often people were simply tied to the cross), not narrated but assumed in John 20:25, and the spear-thrust in John 19:34. He protests too much (John 19:35), in the style of the writers of apocrypha (cf. 2 Pet. 1:16-18), that he was there and saw the blood flow. In his version, Jesus shows not his solid hands and feet (as in Luke 24:39), but rather his wounded hands and side (John 20:20). John doesn't want anyone thinking Jesus survived the cross and went to preach among the Greeks (John 7:35).

But the original tellers of the aretalogical tale had no concern for an atoning death. And Q, remember, does not even say that Jesus died! In the conspicuous absence of any statement that he died, one can well imagine that the Q-sophists or the communities that revered them would make Jesus shrewdly avoid death. Once a belief in the martyr death of Jesus entered the picture from another quarter of the patchwork quilt of Jesus movements, the aretalogy was reedited to make Jesus good and dead. The Passion predictions in Mark (8:31; 9:12, 31; 10:33-34) are obviously artificial "prolepses" (flash-forwards)" ruining the narrative tension of the original, pre-Markan version, which craftily dropped hints of what would happen to Jesus and kept the reader guessing. The result, in the gospels as we now read them, is a wooden "plot of predesti- nation,"39 whereby narrative suspense is exorcised and each successive episode is a redundant rehearsal of the one before, as all alike seek to drive home a single monotonous point to the reader viewed as a catechumen. "Did you get it last time? Just in case, here it is again: Jesus died in Jerusalem; everything was leading up to that, nothing else matters much." The so-called Narrative Critics, New Testament scholars like Jack Dean Kingsbury, Werner Kelber, and Mark Allan Powell,"' for all their self-professed expertise in narratology, fail to perceive that the narrative of the gospels works best only when one uncovers its original, theologically obscured outlines. But it is no surprise, because in the hands of these churchmen-scholars, the "literary" study of the gospels has served from the first as a diversionary route of escape from engagement with the troubling questions of genuine historical criticism.

NOTES

1. Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe, trans. B. P. Reardon, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. B. P. Reardon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 37.

2. Ibid., p. 53; as far as I know, the first one to recognize the relevance of this ancient text as a parallel to the gospel resurrection accounts was Johannes Leipoldt in 1948. An English translation of his seminal article appeared nearly fifty years later: Johannes Leipoldt, "The Resurrection Stories," Journal of Higher Criticism 4, no. 1 (spring 1997): 138-49, trans. Darrell J. Doughty.

3. lamblichus, Babylonian Story, trans. Gerald N. Sandy, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, p. 787.

4. Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe, p. 62.

5. Ibid., p. 111.

6. Ibid., p. 67.

7. Ibid., p. 69.

8. Ibid., p. 57.

9. The Alexander Romance, trans. Ken Dowden, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, p. 703.

10. Xenophon, Ephesian Tale, trans. Graham Anderson, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, pp. 151-52.

11. Ibid., p. 155.

12. Ibid., p. 67.

13. Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon, trans. John J. Winkler, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, p. 220.

14. Ibid., p. 242.

15. Ibid., p. 262.

16. Ibid., p. 273.

17. Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, trans. Christopher Gill, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, p. 315.

18. Ibid., p. 319.

19. Ibid., p. 336.

20. Heliodorus, Ethiopian Story, trans. J. R. Morgan, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, p. 375.

21. The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre, trans. Gerald N. Sandy, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, p. 752.

22. Ibid., p. 753.

23. Ibid., p. 758.

24. Ibid., p. 763.

25. Ibid., p. 767.

26. Ibid., p. 769.

27. Ibid., p. 770.

28. Ibid., p. 791.

29. Ibid., p. 793.

30. Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass, trans. William Adlington, rev. Harry C. Schnur (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 62.

31. Ibid., p. 118.

32. Ibid., p. 241.

33. Petronius, The Satyricon, and Seneca, The Apocolocyntosis, trans. J. P. Sullivan (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 120.

34. Ibid., p. 121.

35. Ibid., pp. 120-22.

36. Charles H. Talbert, What Is a Gospel? The Genre of Canonical Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).

37. George W. E. Nickelsburg, "The Genre and Function of the Markan Passion Narrative," Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 153-84.

38. Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 40.

39. Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose, trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 53-65, 120-42.

40. Mark Allan Powell, What Is Narrative Criticism? Fortress Guides to Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Series (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990).

<