Loading...Did the curtain in the temple really rip in half when Jesus died? That’s what the Gospels say. But can it be true?
[[RECALL, in case you haven’t been reading each of the posts in this thread: I’ve been trying to show how experts in the phenomenon of “memory” can help us reflect on the Gospel traditions about Jesus. Memory is a much wider and more expansive phenomenon than most people imagine. Memories involve what we’ve done, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve learned, what we’ve heard, and what we simply recall about the past whether we ourselves experienced it and whether our recollections are just personal or collectively shared by a broader swath of our community (e.g., our “memories” of the Clinton presidency or of the Civil War) .
When seen in this broader sense, the Gospels contain some “historically true” memories of Jesus but also some distorted or fake memories. In the current thread of posts I’ve been discussing key passages of the Passion narratives of the Gospels. All these are taken from my book that discusses such things in large, Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016).]]
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The Ripping of the Curtain in the Temple
I will end this chapter by giving just one final example of what appears to be a distorted memory from the Passion narratives. Again, I have not intended to give an exhaustive account but simply to point out some of the striking instances.
In the Synoptic Gospels, though not in John, when Jesus dies, the curtain in the temple is ripped in half, from top to bottom. There are some differences between the three recollections of this event. One of them appears to be irreconcilable. In our earliest account, Mark, the curtain rips the moment after Jesus dies (Mark 15:38); in Luke’s version it rips while he is still living (Luke 23:45). They both obviously can’t be right.
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I always loved Matthew’s zombies. The visual of them dancing down to the city to the tune and choreography of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ makes me smile, yes with Vincent Price cackling in the background.
The other thing that strikes me about this account is when people went to Jesus’ tomb they were shocked that it was open, when many (maybe all) of the other tombs were open too!
Ha! Interesting point.
Ha! Interesting point.
It seems to me the ripping of the curtain was not intended to be a factual statement but an allegory of how the relationship between God and his people is to be changed by the death of Jesus.
You may be right. For my part I’d say that it’s impossible to know what an author was thinking when he wrote something; if he *means* to be saying something allegorical, we hope he’s left us some clue of it! (Otherwise one could say that he thought the resurrection was allegorical; or the crucifixion; or … anything else. It’s hard to know where to stop….). My sense is that most interpreters think that he meant the curtain both allegorically and literally. (A literal event ith a very deep meaning)
Seems obvious this is allegory. The curtain separates God from man, so when “God” is crucified and dies violently the curtain is symbolically torn open. However, it is known to the more spiritual people (like pre-Mao Chinese) that great earthquakes signify a change in Leadership, and other natural weather phenomena are known to result from the mental stability of the people — Mind the foundation of everything. So it is possible perhaps even likely that such event happened, at least a major earthquake, but it could also be mere myth. In any event the story of the torn curtain is of a symbolic nature whether or not it physically happened.
Is “curtain” a literal cloth curtain? I was wondering if there was another translation. Might it have been more like a “partition” – in which case it could be made of something other than cloth. Just wondering…
It was thickly woven, apparently. In later Christian tradition, the young Mary (later mother of Jesus) was one of the virgins who helped weave it.
This is a good post and has me wondering if there is the fiction-nonfiction mix of the Aeneid and the Illiad here, like I definitely believe for the stories of Legion and Barabbas. . “It is possible in fact that some of these stories were invented by the Gospel writers themselves.”
I’ve so far leaned to the temple veil tearing because of normal stuffs – tunnel warfare (earthquake, rocks splitting). There are known tunnels found underneath.
In an aniconic society, how would folks know the identity of saints?
Mark 9:2-8, actually all synoptics, we have appearances of saints Moses and Elijah. Josephus coincidentally recounts a ‘Moses reincarnate” who wants to lead people to a mountain cave in Samaria where his objects were stashed as proof. We also have texts written in first-person saint with the Qumran Essenes. That could be like being in the “spirit and power of” saints like Elijah in Luke 1:17.
So if the entire scenario isn’t an underappreciated Illiad gilding, it could be tunneling (undermining) by religious enthusiasts “in the spirit and power of” saints. Or something else.
Is there anywhere else where Mark asserts or implies that Jesus’s death acts as an atonement for sins? And, according to Mark, for whom exactly does Jesus give his life as a ransom?
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A little side issue: I think we would mostly agree that God did NOT dwell behind that curtain, unless there was some sort of idol or artifact back there. So I wonder in what sense Jews of that time understood “the presence of God in the temple”. And what did the high priest actually DO back there? Have a good laugh at the expense of people he was conning? In other words, I find it hard to believe that the temple priests, the initiates as it were, weren’t running a conscious and deliberate con. One thing we can be sure of, is that they were not encountering anything substantial, visible, audible, etc. Maybe they hallucinated?
Oh, I think they took it very seriously. The priest performed sacrifices in there, as instructed in the Torah itself.
1. This belief in the Presence behind the curtain is not unlike the belief held by hundreds of millions of sincere intelligent worshippers today that Jesus or God is present in reality at the celebration of the Eucharist. Many earnest honest priests and pastors sincerely hold this belief.
2. Since the atonement was the central issue for “Mark”, would it not have been better for him to have the death of Jesus occur on Yum Kippur? Why set it at passover time instead?
Right! Your second point shows that Mark almost certainly didn’t make up the dating.
The persistent 33 A.D. seismite indicates the biggest 33 A.D. earthquake was M~6.0. This biggest earthquake was likely April 3, 33 A.D. that startled city residents and caused moderate damage, especially to the western side of Temple Mount. Pivots of two, 20-m-high, metal doors of the Temple appear to have been damaged, and the 20-m-high curtain in front of the doors was torn, likely by displacement of the lintel of the Temple during the earthquake.
JERUSALEM EARTHQUAKE OF 33 A.D.: EVIDENCE WITHIN LAMINATED MUD OF THE DEAD SEA, ISRAEL
AUSTIN, Steven A., Cedarville University, Cedarville, OH 45314, [email protected]
The specific detail that the curtain was ripped from “top to bottom” I think is meant to be proof that this was not performed by a person who would have grasped it at the bottom and ripped it from “bottom to top”. Only miraculously, i.e. by divine intervention, could it be ripped from top to bottom. I always thought this was rather cute. A subtle way of saying that God himself was just a little angry at Jesus being crucified although surely he had planned that all along? Maybe he was just emphasising the event as momentous.