If You Like Murder Stories with Unique Twists and Turns, This Is For You. Holy Week and Murder.

             This blog is about Bible things, so how about a beginning? Look to Jesus, in four gospels, as the centerpiece of the Bible. How about from the point of view of murder? Through the eyes of multiple witnesses?

          The Japanese move “Rashomon” did it, Law and Order tried a series based on this idea, Star Trek: The Next Generation used this to profound effect.  What are the points of view of varying witnesses? What did each person see and how was it different, in detail if not in the main points? How does one find the ‘truth’ in and amongst these different ways of looking?

          Such are the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Four people writing four accounts of the gospel of Jesus, the Good News of Jesus. Why four? Why not? According to how the New Testament was assembled into an ‘official’ form, one key convention was that the gospels included needed to be in wide circulation among the congregations of the time, telling this story of murder.

          There is something of a bitter irony, now that we are in Holy Week, that the Gospels are of a similar nature to the modern media use of multiple perspectives.  The centerpiece of each gospel too is a death, but strangely, we do not usually call it ‘murder’, although it fits the criteria.

          Murder is a human planned, intentional (if in the first degree) process to kill another human being.  Which is exactly what was done to Jesus.  The Leadership planned his death, dragging him up on false charges for a “conviction” and then using the threat of political unrest to manipulate the Romans into carrying out his execution.

          Unlike a ‘typical’ murder portrayed in the media, this one did not end in the arrest and conviction of the murderers, but their forgiveness. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Jesus, on the cross). But if they were somehow tried and convicted, how do you sentence murderers when the victim is resurrected to new life?

          Another question to ask is if the victim knows they are going to die, and they share that information generally in their circle of acquaintances, knowing full well they will rise again, do they have some kind of conspiratorial involvement in this murder? (Or is it attempted murder? Or maybe failed murder? Or murder reversed?)

          A significant story arc in each gospel is how Jesus gets to that point, the point of the conspiracy that is carried out to murder him. It is about the power of authority and who wields it, a combined religious and political authority that the conspirators-who held the power-felt threatened by Jesus and his agenda. It might be shown from the gospels that Jesus, the victim, did not only have foreknowledge of his impending murder, but that he acted out in a way that premeditated his death. Normally, a murder fits into the plans of the murderer (often sick and twisted though the plans may be). In this case, the victim, Jesus, drove the story to the point where they had him killed. But again, that was not the end point. The end came in Jesus’ resurrection.

          That is why the key to understanding the bible, for me, comes in seeking out Jesus. In particular, seeking out what is happening in the conspiracy of His murder, which ends not in his death, but his restoration to new life. There are four witness accounts, four gospels, to be considered for their testimony about Jesus. Read the accounts with an eye to consider why Jesus died. And, even more significantly, why Jesus rose again.