According to the gospel of Luke, as Jesus hung on the cross, the two criminals crucified on either side of him both commented on his condition. One, usually depicted in Christian art on Jesus' left, taunted him. He seems to have been contemptuous, delighted that someone who claimed to be the righteous Son of God should now hang where he hung. He was delighted that the 'goodness' of Jesus, had apparently achieved nothing, that the world of evil and violence which his own life represented, had proved bigger and stronger than the claims of a man like Jesus. The other criminal, usually depicted on Jesus' right, seems to have recognised that the cross was not a symbol of the failure of divine love but a symbol of the extent of it, the depth of it. This was indeed Goodness, a goodness that reached down into the very depths of human suffering and wickedness, a goodness which could embrace even his history of failure and rebellion against the Divine Law. One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ Luke 23.39-43 NRSV In Christian art, the two criminals came to represent the two destinies of mankind, salvation and damnation. In many pictures the links are made explicit by the sight of their souls being taken to their respective destinations - paradise and hell. The picture above, the crucifixion scene by Altichiero da Zevio, is one such picture as the details below reveal. It's easy to miss when you look at the main picture! This is evident in both the western and eastern christian traditions, as the details from this 16th century Russian Icon below show: The penitent criminal, the one who asked or forgiveness became a celebrated character in christian tradition. For some, Christ's promise to him that he would join Jesus in paradise 'today', meant that he became, officially, the first saint of the church! And so, as with any saint, he had to have some kind of identity and 'back-story' so that the proper devotion could be offered to him. Saints were powerful characters and it was believed that if you could develop a meaningful relationship with one they would help you on your spiritual journey to heaven. In the fourth century apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus he is identified as Dismas and the other criminal as Gestas. And when Jesus was scourged, he delivered Him to the Jews to be crucified, and two robbers with Him; one by name Dismas, and the other by name Gestas. And when they came to the place, they stripped Him of His garments, and girt Him about with a linen cloth, and put a crown of thorns upon His head. Likewise also they hanged the two robbers with Him, Dismas on the right and Gestas on the left. [Gospel of Nicodemus 10.2 Translation M.R. James] As St Dismas (as he is usually known the western tradition) he became the patron saint of prisoners and criminals. Below is a sculpture of St Dismas which adorns the outside of the Church of St Dismas in Kingston in Canada. The church was built by convicts. You can discover more about the church and its origins in the Canadian penal system here. According to an apocryphal infancy story, he had once been a murderous robber, part of a gang who had encountered the holy family as they escaped from Bethlehem to Egypt, fleeing from Herod. The story says that the penitent thief (here called Titus) paid his fellow bandit (here named Dumachis) 40 drachmas not to attack the family. In other words he protected the Holy Family at great cost to himself. The story relates how the grateful infant Jesus predicts to his mother, Mary, that one day the two robbers will be crucified with him, one on either side, and that Titus will go before him into paradise. In this legendary tale, the penitent thief actually becomes the saviour of the Saviour! And turning away from this place, they came to a desert; and hearing that it was infested by robbers, Joseph and the Lady Mary resolved to cross this region by night. But as they go along, behold, they see two robbers lying in the way, and along with them a great number of robbers, who were their associates, sleeping. Now those two robbers, into whose hands they had fallen, were Titus and Dumachus. Titus therefore said to Dumachus: I beseech thee to let these persons go freely, and so that our comrades may not see them. And as Dumachus refused, Titus said to him again: Take to thyself forty drachmas from me, and hold this as a pledge. At the same time he held out to him the belt which he had about his waist, to keep him from opening his mouth or speaking. And the Lady Mary, seeing that the robber had done them a kindness, said to him: The Lord God will sustain thee by His right hand, and will grant thee remission of thy sins. And the Lord Jesus answered, and said to His mother: Thirty years hence, O my mother, the Jews will crucify me at Jerusalem, and these two robbers will be raised upon the cross along with me, Titus on my right hand and Dumachus on my left; and after that day Titus shall go before me into Paradise. And she said: God keep this from thee, my son. And they went thence towards a city of idols, which, as they came near it, was changed into sand-hills. Arabic Infancy Gospel of the Saviour 23 While such attempts to write the story of the penitent are understandable (we all create back stories for our favourite characters) it nevertheless rather misses the point. The penitent was not a lovely man who had saved Jesus' life (i.e. he was easy to save) but a wicked criminal who, within the terms of the story in the gospel, deserved to be crucified (i.e he was hard to save). We would all argue, I hope, that no-one ever deserves to be crucified, but the point is clear. He was a really bad man and yet he found the forgiveness of Christ on the cross. The addition of stories about his essential goodness diminish the wonder of the salvation he finds. The point of the story as told by Luke of course is that Jesus is the source of endless, unlimited salvation. Even at the point of his own deepest need, even as he bears the agony of crucifixion, he can still offer salvation to someone totally undeserving, the lowest of the low, a human being as far away from God as it is possible to get. The Promise of ParadiseJesus promised the thief entrance to paradise. "Today", he says, "you will be with me in paradise". What and where was (or is) paradise, and when did Jesus (and the penitent) expect to be there? Paradise was the garden of Eden. In the second chapter of the book of Genesis in the Hebrew bible the writer relates that God created a garden in the East of the world, in Eden, planted it with the most fruitful, beautiful plants and trees and filled it with the animals. And when we hear the word 'garden' we should think of something very different from a domestic garden, even a large one. The word 'paradise' really meant a royal park, so we should imagine a huge park with walls and gates. The story goes on to tell how the man and woman God created in his 'park' to look after it and nurture it, disobeyed his instructions and had to be expelled. We usually refer to this in Christian theology as 'the fall', but the story in Genesis doesn't invest the expulsion with any such significance. They didn't 'fall'; they 'moved'. What is remarkable about the story and the way it was developed in Hebrew/Jewish tradition was that the garden never went away. The royal 'park' of God was still there . . . . . somewhere. In Genesis It is described as a real, geographical place with a specific location in space and time, even if that space and time are rather on the edge of everyday experience i.e. in a land 'far, far away and long, long ago'. The real problem was (apart from the fact that no-one had left directions about how to get there) that since the expulsion of Adam and Eve it was now 'closed to the public'. There was no access to the garden anymore. Ever since that catastrophic event humanity had had to exist flourish and grow in the world we all know, a world where survival comes from struggle, where hope and achievement are mixed with tragedy and disappointment and where, as the very first story about humanity outside the garden reveals, brother can turn in violent hostility against brother. There was no way back for mankind and just in case someone suddenly remembered where it was or stumbled across it by accident, there was a very fierce sword-wielding angel there, to stop us getting back in! So when Jesus told the criminal that he would join him in paradise, the readers would probably have understood that Jesus was promising that he would take him back to that same beautiful, perfect park where Adam and Eve once walked. Jesus was letting the criminal know that the angel with the sword had gone, that the gates were unlocked and he was welcome to return to that wonderful, legendary place, a place where his life could only flourish. Jesus was inviting the penitent to join him in a return to the very origin of mankind, the place where God Himself was known walk in the 'time of the evening breeze'. But although the main focus of the promise is clear, it is much less clear how, when and where readers of the gospel (or indeed the penitent himself) would have imagined he would reach paradise. The paradise garden is hardly ever mentioned again in the Hebrew Bible, not least because there was no clear cut hope of post-mortem survival in Hebrew thought. It seems that most people believed that when they died they descended to the land of the dead, Sheol (the Hebrew equivalent of Hades) where their lives basically came to an end. The Hebrews had a much more physical concept of human life than e.g. the Greeks did. The Hebrew Bible nowhere teaches that a human being has an immortal soul that survives death. Instead it speaks of human beings as creatures of flesh and blood (or clay!) animated, inspired by the Spirit of God. When God withdraws his spirit, the human being dies. He or she doesn't exist without the creative power of God. Human beings are not immortal. So the hope in the Hebrew Bible was for a good, long life followed by a good death surrounded by family and burial with the ancestors. Later, when foreign occupation and control seem to make a good, long life and a good death impossible, some writers seem to speak of a hope of resurrection of the dead at the Last Day, when God was expected to bring an end this age of cosmic history and build a new heaven and new earth. But by the time the books of the New Testament were being written in the 1st century A.D., Greek thought about the immortality of the soul had become a powerful influence in Jewish thinking and it seems that many Jews hoped that when they died their souls would survive in a much fuller and more meaningful way than the saints of the Hebrew Bible ever imagined. Of course this meant that they had to go somewhere after they died, preferably somewhere that reflected the kind of lives they had lived. In some Jewish texts written after the close of the canon of the Hebrew bible, writers begin to describe the places where they thought the dead went. Some of them suggested that the righteous would return to the garden of paradise and that the unrighteous would find themselves in a place of torment and punishment. Some texts suggest that this sorting would be immediate, i.e. after death, and there seems to have been a widespread belief that after death godly Jews would find rest 'in the bosom of Abraham'. It is not always clear if that referred to paradise or some part of Sheol/Hades. Other texts speak of the division of the godly and the ungodly as an event that awaits the Day of the Lord, i.e. an eschatological event. Some texts locate paradise (future or immediate) in one of the heavens (usually the third) and some seem to locate it still on earth. In other words ideas about paradise were diverse and varied. No one seems sure where paradise is or when paradise is. In the next post I will try to describe more fully the way the idea of paradise developed in the different Jewish and Christian texts to try to get closer to what Jesus meant when he offered the penitent thief his direct passage to paradise. Whatever he originally meant, later Christian tradition took that promise as a sign that the ultimate hope for all believers was a 'return to the garden', which of course came to be identified with 'heaven'. But the Jewish background should help us to remember that the garden of paradise and heaven are not one and the same place, and that the promise of a 'return to the garden' was not necessarily a promise of leaving the earth behind! You might also be interested in . . . .
6 Comments
Ulrika Fridborg Doyle
3/26/2016 06:53:27 am
Very impressed by this website are the Viby teenagers
Reply
hugh doyle
3/26/2016 11:32:07 pm
Thank you. Good to know someone's looking at it!
Reply
Ann Westblom
3/26/2016 07:45:08 am
Har bara skummat ännu, men blev fascinerad av kopplingen till konsten. Mer!!!
Reply
hugh doyle
3/26/2016 11:36:50 pm
Tack Ann. Det finns mycket mer! Det kommer.
Reply
Kjerstin Fridborg
3/26/2016 09:46:27 am
Mycket intressant. En bild säger mer än ord.
Reply
hugh doyle
3/26/2016 11:44:28 pm
Tack Svärmor! Kul att du tyckte om. Kanske ska jag skriva en post på svenska och sedan få du att läsa också!
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
Categories
All
|