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Did Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple stand at the foot of the cross?

A guest post by Timothy McGrew

In this post, I continue my critical examination of three points in V. J. Torley’s lengthy review essay, wherein Torley summarizes Michael Alter’s even more lengthy book on the resurrection. The previous post is here.

When I asked Torley to select three test cases for examination, the second of his choices was the question of whether Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple stood at the foot of the cross, a description (allowing for some latitude in expression) drawn from the narrative of John 19. Torley finds this detail highly doubtful. Here is his objection, in his own words:

John’s Gospel records the presence of Jesus’ mother at the foot of the Cross, along with the beloved disciple (who is generally presumed to have been the apostle John, although about 20 other individuals have been proposed as candidates), but this, too, is probably fictional: Jesus was crucified as an enemy of the State (“King of the Jews”), and as such, the Romans would have shown him no quarter -- and they certainly would not have allowed him to enjoy a final conversation with his mother. To quote the words of the late Dr. Maurice Casey (1942-2014), author of Is John’s Gospel True? (1996, London: Routledge, p. 188) and a former Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the Department of Theology at the University of Nottingham: “The fourth Gospel’s group of people beside the Cross includes Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple. It is most unlikely that these people would have been allowed this close to a Roman crucifixion.” As Dr. Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has pointed out in an online essay titled, Why Romans crucified people, the whole aim of crucifixion was to humiliate the victim as much as possible. And when political criminals like Jesus were crucified, the warning to the public was unmistakably clear: this is what happens to you if you mess with Rome. No niceties were observed and no courtesies allowed.

Here is Maurice Casey’s comment in a fuller context:

The fourth Gospel’s group of people beside the cross includes Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple. It is most unlikely that these people would be allowed this close to a Roman crucifixion. If they had been, and they included people central to Jesus’ life and ministry, it is most unlikely that Mark would merely have women watching from a distance. If a major male disciple had approached this close, it is likely that he would have been arrested.

Torley objects for the following reasons, which are not really independent of one another:

1. Jesus would not have been allowed “a final conversation with his mother,” since he was crucified as an “enemy of the state.”

2. It is unlikely that the Romans would have allowed Jesus’ mother and one of his disciples to get this close to a Roman crucifixion, since Jesus was crucified as “a political criminal.”

Casey, in the portion not quoted by Torley, adds a third argument:

3. Mark would not have failed to mention the presence of one of Jesus' disciples and his mother close to the cross if they had actually been there.

The first and most important thing to notice about these objections is that Torley presents them with no evidence whatsoever. He hands off the evidential burden to Casey and Ehrman. And neither Casey nor Ehrman substantiates these claims with a single reference to the primary sources, either Christian or non-Christian.

Let’s look into this problem in detail, starting with the claim that Jesus was crucified as an “enemy of the state.”

Individual Romans regarded particular people at certain times as enemies of the state, but that did not mean that these people were crucified or even brought to trial. (Cicero thought Mark Antony was an enemy of the state. It didn’t get him very far.) Those who were charged with majestas -- high crimes against the Roman state or the person of the Emperor -- could, if convicted, be punished by death, though that was by no means always the sentence handed down. Sometimes they lost their property but not their lives; sometimes they merely had to petition for clemency in order to suffer no long-term penalty at all.

The more specific charge of treason (perduellio) covered a cluster of particular offenses: stirring up an enemy against the state (as in the case of Vitruvius Vaccus), surrendering a citizen to the enemy (as Popilius Laenas), or (as in the case of Fulvius) losing a Roman army through what was considered to be criminal negligence in the defense of the state. None of these offenses is even close to anything ever asserted about Jesus of Nazareth.

Suppose, for a moment, that Jesus had indeed been crucified as an enemy of the state, in the sense of majestas. What would this have to do with the question of whether some of Jesus’ family or followers would have been allowed close enough to the cross to speak with him?

Not much. Neither Casey nor Ehrman produces a single case where people not themselves criminals were forbidden to come close to a crucifixion. There are no legal protocols for where people may stand to watch a crucifixion, much less special protocols for special classes of crucifixions. As far as common practice, crucifixion was in general a public spectacle designed to horrify the onlookers. A Roman governor had, to say the least, no obvious motive for restraining people from seeing up close what happened to those who fell under the condemnation of Roman law. Casey’s description of the situation -- that allowing Mary to stand near enough to her son to speak with him would be allowing him to “enjoy a final conversation with his mother” -- is risible on its face. Jesus was being brutally tortured to death in one of the most humiliating, terrifying ways ever devised by man. There is nothing enjoyable for either mother or son here.

But was Jesus crucified “as an enemy of the state”? The only reason anyone might have for characterizing Jesus as an “enemy of the state” or a “political criminal” is the accusation, reported in the Gospels themselves, that Jesus made himself to be “Christ, a king.” But according to those same narratives (Luke 23, John 18), Pilate questioned Jesus particularly on this very point and decided that the charge was spurious -- so much so that he repeatedly attempted to induce the Jewish rulers to relent on their demand for crucifixion and be content with a flogging. Mark 15:10 specifically states that Pilate knew the charges were trumped up and that Jesus was being delivered to him, not because he was really a political enemy of Rome, but “out of envy” (διὰ φθόνον).

Since it is Pilate’s judgment, as provincial governor, that matters in such a case, the picture afforded by the narratives is consistent with his allowing the crucifixion to take place but not insisting on any specially harsh circumstances in its being carried out. The Jewish rulers did not really believe that Jesus was an enemy of the Roman state, and Pilate did not believe it either. That was merely the pretense by which they induced him, under threat of a complaint to Caesar, to carry out the execution. So far as our first-century sources tell us, not a single person involved believed that Jesus was guilty of majestas -- not Pilate, not the Jewish leaders, not even the thieves crucified on either side of him.

Pilate was doing a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, the Jewish rulers were insistent that Jesus be crucified, and they were implicitly threatening to complain to Caesar -- something they did with regard to some of Pilate’s other actions. On the other, even a rather calloused Roman governor might naturally scruple at crucifying a man he himself believed to be innocent and harmless simply to pacify the locals. The Gospel narratives give us an account of how events unfolded that is consistent with what we know of human nature. If we start picking and choosing which bits of the narrative we will take seriously with no better ground than our desire to make the facts fit a particular theory, we have abandoned all proper historical methodology. By such means, one can “prove” virtually anything from any texts whatsoever.

What of the second objection? The claim appears to be that there was a more general practice of keeping people far away from the crucifixion of political criminals. But this objection, too, is fabricated out of whole cloth. There is not one historical source named as evidence that people who were not themselves considered to be criminals were always or even commonly kept at a distance from a Roman crucifixion outside the context of a military campaign. There is no reference -- in Torley’s piece, in Ehrman’s blog post, or in Casey’s entire book -- to even one occasion where anyone not already in trouble with the law is arrested, turned away, or even verbally warned for standing too near to the foot of a cross at a public crucifixion in a time of peace. Again, one might even argue to the contrary that the Romans were all too willing to let the public see the agony of crucifixion up close as a deterrent. Crucifixion was supposed to be terrifying to the public.

It is no objection to point out that John 19 records two brief sentences (totaling nine words in Greek) that Jesus spoke to Mary and the beloved disciple. Ordinary conversations of much greater length take place at a distance of four or five yards constantly. There is no reason to suppose that the presence of a few unarmed peasants within that radius, able to hear a few words that Jesus said, would pose any difficulties for the quaternion of armed soldiers carrying out their duties.

Casey's argument from silence (point 3) is as bad as such arguments generally are. Those who would like more examples of the argument's general weakness in historical work are welcome to search through the references in my paper “The Argument from Silence,” Acta Analytica 29 (2014), 215-28.

In short, the objection to the presence of Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple near the cross during the crucifixion is entirely bereft of evidential support. When the supposed exclusion of non-crimnial bystanders from the scene of crucifixion, even very close up, is advanced as if it were an established fact by those who should know better, it is nothing more than a scholarly bluff.

Comments (15)

I wondered the same thing. I had never heard such bollocks about the crucifixtion until I read Alter’s section and Torley’s summation. I am not sure I have even read a commentary that deals with this claim. I don’t remember Bock or anyone doing so (though my memory could be faulty).

Part of Alter’s case in the book is that John says that the women were near but the Synoptics claim they were at a distance. Here is Alter in the book:

“Finally, John 19:25 contradicted the synoptic Gospels by reporting that the women were positioned close to the cross when Jesus died: “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.” Yet the synoptic narrative reports that the women were positioned far away.”

He claims that the attempt to say that either the attempt to say that the women moved closer, and John is reporting that point in the events is speculation. I also imagine he would say it is speculative if we wonder whether “standing by” and “from afar” aren’t somewhat vague terms. What does it mean to stand from afar? Especially in Greek? Does standing from afar mean I am unable to have a conversation with someone? How far does one have to be to stand from afar or be considered to stand “by”?

The ESV translates “from afar” as “from a distance”. Would 15 yards be from a distance? I guess I’m curious what the terms mean before I claim they are contradictory. Maybe Mr. Alter can fill us in .

One final thing, John says this:

Εἱστήκεισαν δὲ παρὰ τῷ σταυρῷ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἡ ἀδελφὴ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ, Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Κλωπᾶ καὶ Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνή.

“para” is used. It usually means to stand beside or parallel too. Does “para” have any connotations of nearness?

Also, Bill Mounces lexicon (https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/para) says that para with a dative as we have in Jn. 19:25 can mean “in the sight of”, this would be consistent with standing “at a distance” whatever that means. So we could have, the women standing close enough for them to see and be seen and hear and be heard without them being “close”, close being “at the foot of the cross” something no gospel claims.

For goodness' sake. He's on the cross for six hours. Nobody ever moves around during that time??? This is "speculative"??? You've got to be kidding. People move around *constantly* in real life. Not to mention the fact that "the women" could mean various women, not all the same women. Sometimes, I swear, the people who make such objections don't seem to live in the actual world. They live in a world of statues or something.

Thanks for this Tim, I've really enjoyed this mini series.

I'm trying to pull some vague information out of my memory, but wasn't there a German scholar (Strauss?) Back in the 19th century that compiled a thousand page book of every criticism he could think of?

For goodness' sake. He's on the cross for six hours. Nobody ever moves around during that time??? This is "speculative"??? You've got to be kidding. People move around *constantly* in real life. Not to mention the fact that "the women" could mean various women, not all the same women. Sometimes, I swear, the people who make such objections don't seem to live in the actual world. They live in a world of statues or something.

Lydia McGrew, defender of common sense.

Enjoying the mini-series of Tim articles so far too!

Hello Lydia:

Once again, thank you for your input.

You wrote:" For goodness' sake. He's on the cross for six hours. Nobody ever moves around during that time??? This is "speculative"??? You've got to be kidding. People move around *constantly* in real life."

RESPONSE: Unfortunately, I assume that since you nor Tim have not read my text (The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry p. 169), you failed to mention that I specifically discussed the actual point that you raise above. I literally wrote:

Marsh (1908, 44; also see Grassmick 1983, 190; MacArthur 2005, 1259) offers a Christian apologetic that it is possible that some of the women, or even all of them, initially, watched or stood by the cross for a moment as reported in the synoptic Gospels. However, later the women moved far away from the cross as detailed by John."

In my opinion, I was intellectually honest presenting both sides of the topic... However, in the following paragraph, I offer several speculated objections.

Unfortunately, I am pressed for time. Recently, I failed a stress test (BOO!), and a week later I also failed a CAT scan examine of my heart (lev). No demerit or after school detention. So, excuse me if I cannot respond for the next few days. I will be visiting a plumber in the hospital to take care of necessary coronary defects. So much for exercising six days a week, being gluten free, eating virtually no treif, no smoking, no drugs, etc.

Take care and do not forget to hug your soulmate.

Mike

Sorry to hear about your condition Mr. Alter. You will be in my prayers.

Hello Everyone,
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Just want to add my two cents—albeit two long cents—to this discussion.
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But before I do, let me mention that I am a former military infantry officer and police officer, who is now seeking to become a philosopher (I am literally just finishing my master’s thesis on how Hume’s argument against miracles actually undermines atheism and supports miracles). The reason I mention my professional background is because it is relevant/pertinent to my post (as shall be seen).
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Additionally, let me make it clear that I am responding to VJ Torley’s objections in this post, not to what is in Mr. Alter’s book.
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With those points stated, let’s examine the objections to the issue of whether Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple were close to the cross.
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1. First, before we even consider the additional issues with this objection, note that a good case can be made that this objection undermines itself. Consider this portion:
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As Dr. Bart Ehrman…has pointed out in an online essay titled, Why Romans crucified people, the whole aim of crucifixion was to humiliate the victim as much as possible. And when political criminals like Jesus were crucified, the warning to the public was unmistakably clear: this is what happens to you if you mess with Rome. No niceties were observed and no courtesies allowed.
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The reason that this objection can be seen as undermining itself is because if you want to both humiliate someone, and also make your message clear that you are not to be messed with, then you don’t necessarily restrict access or proximity to the event in question. Rather, you publicize it. You let people see it up close and personal. You let them be close enough to hear the gasps, the dying breaths, the spurting blood, etc. of your victims. And you let them be close enough to smell the filth, blood and terror emanating from your prisoners. After all, the terror of a crucifixion is not nearly as traumatizing or brutal if you are looking at it from a block away, but it is downright horrible if you are ten feet from it.
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As an analogy, consider that if we, as police officers, were facing a group of four or five trouble-makers, we would take down the leader hard, but we would make sure the others could see and hear the take-down and arrest of the leader. That is because the whole point was for the arrest of the leader to be so viscerally real—the sights, smells, yells, etc.—that the others would be dissuaded from any further misbehavior. But that sort of dissuasion would not happen if we affected the hard arrest a block away from the other members of the group. It only works when they are close, so that they can almost feel the pain of their colleague. The same applies in the case of Christ. If the Romans were really interested in humiliating the victim and spreading their message, proximity is better, not worse. After all, why did the Romans crucify slaves along the main Appian Way? Because the crucifixions would be seen, smelt, and almost felt by thousands of Romans. It was the close proximity that got the message across, not the distance.
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So, this is the first point to note.
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Continued…

Continued…
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2) Second, Torley mentions this objection:
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Jesus was crucified as an enemy of the State (“King of the Jews”), and as such, the Romans would have shown him no quarter…[and]… And when political criminals like Jesus were crucified, the warning to the public was unmistakably clear: this is what happens to you if you mess with Rome. No niceties were observed and no courtesies allowed.
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The problem with this objection is that even if it is true, it still fallaciously treats soldiers like automatons; as if they merely follow orders in an exact and literal way without any thought or initiative of their own. But, of course, this is completely false. Let me give you an example. In the police jurisdiction that I worked in, we had a mandated government policy. In any instance of domestic (spousal) violence, if we had the reasonable grounds to arrest one party or the other (or both) for domestic violence, we were mandated to arrest them. If we did not, we could face punishments, up to and including the loss of our jobs or imprisonment. And you know what, even with that being the case, nearly every cop you spoke to had some instance where they investigated a minor but still legitimate case of domestic violence and yet they did not charge anyone. Why? Because cops aren’t robots. They’re human. They understand that destroying a family and arresting a mother in front of her kids may not be the best course of action for society or the spirit of the law even if the mother pushed her husband (or vis versa) in a fit of anger. The same is true with soldiers. They follow orders, but they also sometimes change those orders, or give leeway here or there, so long as the main mission gets accomplished.
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At the same time, there have been many instances where I or my police colleagues may have given an arrested person a few extra minutes with their family before taking them away. Or let a brother talk to his sibling for a few minutes before taking the sibling to jail. Or giving a guy a break and driving him home instead of to the drunk-tank. These sorts of small mercies and bending of the rules happen all the time. There is nothing usually about them.
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The point is that individuals such as soldiers and police officers routinely bend the rules for a variety of reasons. And soldiers have arguably not changed in this respect from the time of the Romans. Thus, in my judgement, to say that it is unlikely that the soldiers at Jesus’ crucifixion would have allowed the mother and disciple to approach is too strong of a statement. At best, it is as likely as not. But more realistically, an a priori probability likely cannot even be given to how likely or not this would have been.
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However, this objection must also be considered:
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If a major male disciple had approached this close, it is likely that he would have been arrested.
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But again, everything depends on the context. Did the male disciple appear unthreatening? Did he ask permission to approach? Was it clear that he was just accompanying Jesus’ mother? Was he a small and physically unimpressive man? After all, one unarmed man is not much of a concern to a trained and armed Roman soldier, especially if it is clear that Jesus is almost dead, that the disciple is non-threatening, etc. The point is that all these factors matter. And again, from personal experience, it is true that when we were arresting someone, it was SOP not to let anyone approach us. But at the same time, there were plenty of times that exceptions were made to this rule. In fact, ironically, and as mentioned above, there would be cases where we would let family members approach one of our arrested people and say goodbye. Why? Because again, we are not stupid. We could tell when someone was a threat and when they were not. We could tell if a situation allowed for some additional mercy and if it did not. And note that the Roman soldiers most likely weren’t stupid either.

Furthermore, there may be a semi-undesigned coincidence here, in that a Roman centurion who, at Jesus’ death, praised God and called Jesus innocent (Luke 23:47, ESV) could be seen as the very type of soldier who might be sympathetic to allowing someone like the women or one male disciple to get closer to Jesus during his last moments. Again, there was no risk that Jesus would live or be freed by one disciple and a woman, so some empathy may have been shown.
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Additionally, it is not at all clear from John 19 that the male disciple is that close to the cross. It says that the women were by the cross (John 19:25), but that the disciple was “standing nearby” (john 19:26). Yet this is consistent with the women being closer to the cross, and the male disciple being further away from the cross—and hence no threat to the soldiers—but still nearby to the women. For example, the women could be three or so meters from the cross and the disciple five or so meters from the women (eight or so meters from the cross), and this would still account for the narrative. And someone that far from the cross would be no threat to the Roman soldiers. So again, it is not clear that the disciple was close enough to the cross to be a threat or to be “arrestable”. Note as well that this idea is supported by the fact that John 19:26-27 (ESV) also has Jesus shouting to his mother and the beloved disciple when he addresses them. But this supports the idea that they were not extremely close to Jesus, but rather were far enough away that they had to be yelled at.
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The latter point also undermines Torley’s claim that they were having a “final conversation” at the foot of the cross. Rather, this was Jesus yelling a few words at his mother and the disciple, and that’s it. It’s not like the text has them engaging in witty and sustained banter in Jesus’ final moments. So we should not make the text appear more extensive than it actually is.
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Continued…

Continued…
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3) Third, even with all of the above stated, there is also the issue of the subjective perception of distance. After all, what is close? And how close is ‘close’? For instance, a man viewing a car accident from a whole block away would say that another witness was ‘close’ to the accident, even if that witness was actually five to ten meters away from the incident. Why? Because the way that the distance is being perceived is relative to the observer. And note that the witness who was five to ten meters from the accident might say that he was near to it, but not necessarily close to it. For again, these are subjective words with meanings that are relative to the observer. And anyone dealing in testimony knows of these issues, which must be taken into account when considering with any sort of testimony. And this also brings us back to the point made above: which is that there is nothing in the text that forces us to read it as meaning that the women or the disciple were right at the foot of the cross. After all, consider that a person may be “standing by” (John 19:25, ESV) a crime scene, but that does not mean that he is three inches away from the dead body. Rather, it means that he is as close to the crime scene as allowed. And if the person’s friend is “standing nearby” (John 19:26, ESV), this does not mean that he is one foot away from his friend, but it could be some distance.
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4) Fourth, this objection is raised:
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It is most unlikely that these people would be allowed this close to a Roman crucifixion. If they had been, and they included people central to Jesus’ life and ministry, it is most unlikely that Mark would merely have women watching from a distance.
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Except that doing so is what we would expect if the Gospels are recording the truth of what people actually saw. Namely, there is nothing to indicate that the other disciples were close to the cross. Plus, their cowardice makes it consistent to believe that they would be away from the cross and even trying to hide themselves in the crowd. Furthermore, there is also some evidence in the text that the other disciples were indeed at a distance from the cross (Luke 23:49). Thus, in a crowd, it is quite reasonable that people at the back of a crowd or in the midst of a crowd would not see or even hear what is going on with people at the front of the crowd. And if such people were accurately describing only what they saw, then they would not have recorded the incident with the mother and disciple, since they did not actually see it (especially since there is nothing to indicate that it was a long incident). And yet John recorded it because it happened to John!
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Furthermore, there is the additional point that since the incident with the mother and the disciple by the cross was short—at least as described by the text—then perhaps the witness in Mark simply wasn’t paying attention at that time that it happened. After all, witnesses are rarely focused on one area for extended periods of time, so it could have just been missed. Again, this happens all the time: one witness sees something and another does not.
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Of course, this does not even include the obvious fact that people move around. At times they are close to an event, and then they move away from it. So the mother and disciple could have been close to the cross at some point for a short period of time, then moved to being a distance away. And if that is where they were for the majority of the time, it is little surprise that Mark and the others did not focus on the short period of time when they were close to the cross.
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In the end, note that none of my points are ad hoc or merely the answers of an “apologist”—as if there is anything wrong with being an apologist. Rather, these ideas are all grounded in personal experience and in the reality of how real people act in real situations. All these explanations are plausible and readily address the objections raised.
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So, to conclude: in my view, this particular objection to the Gospel of John is extremely weak and easily answerable. And if this is one of the three best objections that Torley could pick out of Alter’s book, then, in my view, that does not bode well for the case against the Gospels (again, with the caveat that I have not read Alter’s book in this case).
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So, like I said, just my two cents.
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Sincerely,
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Rad Miksa

Sorry to hear about your heart condition, Mr. Alter.

If you presented the point that people do naturally move around over such a long period of time, it's a shame that you did not see that it is a completely decisive answer to the objection--i.e., the attempt to create a contradiction between John and the Synoptics about whether the women are far away or close up. One doesn't have to read your book to see that that really is a decisive answer and that the objection is a non-starter. I was aware that you had mentioned the obvious answer, because the reader above says that you did.

To be clear, I'm not saying this to prompt a response. I very much hope that you get better and completely respect your busyness in this health crisis. I am merely pointing out that saying, "You should have read my book, because I talk about the response that you give to this objection" is not argumentatively dispositive. In fact, it doesn't have any argumentative force, especially when the response really does fully take care of the objection. If there is some highly specialized knowledge that the obvious point about people moving around overlooks and that you have come upon in your research, it would not take long to say what that is. Perhaps published rules from the time of Jesus saying that nobody is allowed to come close to a cross or that no bystanders are allowed to move around near a crucifixion? Of course there isn't.

These objections are just incredibly weak on their face.

Rad, good points, and very consonant with the main post. I would also mention that there would be no slightest point in a male disciple's assaulting the soldiers. That would be ridiculous. The soldiers are armed and trained, and there are at least four of them. (A quaternion would be a usual size of a group to carry this out, and in this case we're told that one was even a centurion.) They hold all the cards. A lone male could not have gotten Jesus down off the cross even if he had knocked down one of the soldiers. It would have been pointless madness to try. Bystanders at a crucifixion were quite helpless. Indeed, watching helplessly, unable to do anything to stop it, while someone you love is being killed in a torturous fashion was no doubt part of the deterrent effect of crucifixions. The idea that the soldiers would have perceived a disciple as a threat just because he was male is really, really dubious.

Good Day Lydia,

Precisely. There is also the fact that if the disciples had not even tried to free Jesus throughout the start of the whole process, it is doubtful they would have done so at the end, when he was close to death. And the soldiers would have realized this and perceived that the crowd was largely passive.

Add to this point the additional fact that police and soldiers (and people in general) can read crowds and people--in the sense that there are multiple verbal and non-verbal cues which indicate if a crowd/person is getting violent or not--and that would have factored into the assessment of the types of crowd/men they were dealing with.

All the best,

Rad

Precisely. There is also the fact that if the disciples had not even tried to free Jesus throughout the start of the whole process, it is doubtful they would have done so at the end, when he was close to death. And the soldiers would have realized this and perceived that the crowd was largely passive.

Yeah, at the start, when Jesus was arrested, the disciples only had Temple guards to deal with. Here it was the Romans - professionals with the might of Rome behind them. If they weren't going to stand up to Temple guards, they sure weren't going to stand up to Roman soldiers.

And the temperature of the crowd was no help: this was (more or less, with some variation) the same sort of people who had gone along with the priests in calling for Jesus' blood. By the time Christ was dying, some of them might have changed their tune and regretted the whole affair, but there were still those heckling Christ. So, the disciples had no hope of help from the crowd.

And this was all evident to the soldiers. They had nothing to fear from disciples.

It would take evidence of actual rules and set policy about how crucifixions were to be carried out to even begin to overturn the evidence of the Gospels, not mere surmises based on how we would treat the same situation. And even then, as Rad indicates, we would also need evidence of how actual practice dealt with rules like that, whether they bent them or even broke them routinely.

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