Rereading Josef Ratzinger’s (Benedict XVI’s) Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2 (Holy Week) for Lent, I am struck all over again by his steadfast refusal to ask, or at least to insist upon, a historian’s questions. Those of us who were trained as historians, even literary historians, generally have a detective‘s mindset. We want to find out, as Leopold von Ranke famously put it in the nineteenth century, Wie es eigentlich gewesen, “what actually happened”. And since the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are presented in the form of historiæ, (hi)stories, we want to know what actually happened, there in Galilee, there in Jerusalem. Moreover, we are encouraged in this viewpoint by the evangelists’, and St Paul’s, insistence that the Resurrection was a historical fact, something that “really” happened, just as the Ever Given’s beaching in the Suez Canal happened: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.” I Cor. 15:16-17).
And yet Ratzinger regularly refuses the attitude that looks for a “Jesus novel” and reminds us of all the theological and ecclesiastical dimensions of each incident in each of the Gospels: their interweaving of occurrences in Jesus’ life and career with passages from the Prophets and the Psalms, or the parallels between certain actions of the disciples and some of Isaiah’s prophecies.
To take a particularly striking example: he points out the way in which the soldiers on duty at the crucifixion divide up Jesus’ garments and toss for the robe or tunic, which was woven as one piece and thus too good to split. This, he rightly says, corresponds exactly to Psalm 22:18: “They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” Our historian’s question in such a case is: is this true? is this what happened? And if so, is the parallel happenstance, is it a conscious re-enactment of the psalm by the soldiers, one of whom might know the psalm, or is it the invention of the story’s author who thought of it as a detail that would increase the recounted event’s weight of Scriptural importance?
Ratzinger refuses even to ask the question and accepts that it “fulfils the Scripture”. As far as I can tell, that means, Yes, it happened; No, they were not consciously re-enacting the psalm; God made it happen that way to “fulfil”, i.e. validate, the psalm as Scripture; and No, the soldiers did not know that. I, on the other hand, want to know how and why Yeshua at his crucifixion was wearing sufficient garments for a guard detail to think them worth dividing up, and what those were.
Another, and much more dramatic, case: upon Jesus’ death, the veil of the Temple split in two, from top to bottom. Ratzinger, completely convincingly, expounds the meaning of this: Jesus is himself the new Temple that replaces the old, and with his self-sacrifice the Temple sacrifices have become obsolete. Moreover, the veil that split was doubtless that which obscured the Holy of Holies and screened the Deity from profane eyes (only the High Priest could enter, once a year); and in Jesus, and even more in the Eucharist that continues his death and resurrection, God has made himself visible and available to men, “unveiled” himself.
All this is not only true, but beautiful and profound. But something in me naggingly wants to know: all right, but did that great curtain spontaneously rip in two? And if not, what went on in the author’s mind when he wrote Καὶ ἰδοὺ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ ἐσχίσθη εἰς δύο ἀπ᾽ ἄνωθεν ἕως κάτω: “And at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. “ (Mk 15:38) For the verb, eschisthè, he used the aorist tense, which parallels the French passé simple, indicating that such-and-such a thing happened.
Now Mark wrote sometime between 30 and 70 AD, which means he was still able to talk to people who had been there. Is he then recounting a story that with retelling had become a legend, sprouting much extraneous detail, or did it actually happen? Ratzinger is surely right to say that the symbolism, not the actual torn fabric, is what matters; but that aorist bothers me. Later authors who created techniques of meditation, such as Ignatius of Loyola and François de Sales, encourage the devout to begin by vividly imagining the scene they will meditate upon, seeing themselves as being among the characters present and, as it were, seeing the events occur. To do so, we should like to know if the scene we are entering upon is a poiesis from a lovely tale or one that happened in the nitty-gritty.
And yet, there is no answer. We have no way of checking most of the details. Moreover, we know that ancient historians often put into the mouths of historical characters words, reported in direct speech, which they felt the character should have said, or probably said, and may well have taken similar liberties with details of events. So, as the French say, “on reste sur notre faim”, we are left hungry, unfed. Perhaps the meditation masters have the best answer. For in our imagination we are allowed to reflect the details and even add to them; but only if they are succeeded, enriched, by interpretation – analyzing and learning the meaning of the scene – and resolution – figuring out what we, here and now, can, should, and will do about it.
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