Lucifer's True History of Everything
Jan 16, 07 03:01 PM
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***
True Life of Jesus, cont.
By the time Joseph of Arimathaea reached Golgotha, the malefactor on the left was already gone, pried from his cross and carted off to Gehenna. Jesus had gone nowhere. Joseph breathed a sigh of relief.
Joseph gave the soldiers his signed decree from the governor. "First," he said, "I will need to make sure that Jesus is really dead." (Joe had brought along a flask of water, just on the outside chance...)
A Roman soldier, named Felix Fabius, silently faced the cross. He addressed a few words to Jesus, who did not reply: he just hung there, with a sad expression on his face. Felix then hurled his spear, with great force, into Jesus' belly. The sword pierced Jesus' abdomen and ka-chunked into the wood of the cross on the other side.
(This was not customary procedure – Fabius was not going by the book.)
Jesus did not flinch.
"Yup. Dead," said Felix Fabius. He then turned around and said: "Anyone for chin-ups?" – which was a very Roman thing to say, but it was not funny. (That is one thing that the ancient Romans and Yahveh had in common – their inexplicable pleasure in cruelty.)
Disturbingly, when Felix stabbed Jesus with the spear, a streaming geyser of water and blood suddenly squirted out all over the place like warm cola from a punctured soda can – which cannot happen to a dead person (corpses don't bleed or leak water, not even when stabbed); so Jesus was not quite dead when the spear first hit ¬– but he was certainly dead by the time Felix Fabius got done with him.
In a sense, Jesus still had the last laugh, however, because the unlooked-for geyser totally soaked Felix's army uniform. Felix cursed like a sailor, when that happened, but the other Roman soldiers just laughed at him (John19:34).
(Come Judgment Day, do not stand too close to Felix Fabius. The Lord has some special surprises in store for that man.)
The malefactor on the right was still breathing. He had a pulse. The Roman soldiers, who were supposed to have gotten off work at sundown, were anxious to get home to dinner.
So they took turns breaking the malefactor's legs with a wooden bat.
(For these particular Roman soldiers, that was their favourite part of a crucifixion, when they took turns smashing the victim's shins and knees with a wooden bat, to finish him off. If these men had been born a thousand years earlier, and Jewish, they could have been Old Testament heroes. Seriously: these Roman soldiers were not just tough on crime: these guys were LAPD material.)
Pulling Jesus down from the cross was a bigger job than Joseph of Arimathaea had expected. Such tools as the cat's-paw and the claw hammer had not yet been invented whereby to extract nails gently. When the Roman guards removed a corpse from a cross, they usually just set a ladder against the dead man's chest, and grabbed the wrists, and yanked; or if that didn't work, they wedged a board between the forearm and the crossbeam, and pried. Joe refused to do that. The soldiers were disappointed – they were typical Roman sadists – but Joe had that signed decree from Pontius Pilate. So they said, "Okay, pal, what the Hades! – do it your way."
Joseph fell to work getting the Lord down off the cross. Working alone, it took him a while just to design a strategy which nail or spear to pull first, and which one to pull last, thereby to minimize the risk of an awkward mishap, because rigor mortis had not yet set in, and Jesus was still sort of (and I quote) "floppy." The Roman soldiers loaned Joe their ladder, which was a help; but then they just sat around drinking ale and playing at dice; getting up only now and then, to take a turn hitting that other fellow's legs with the wooden bat, even though he, too, was now dead.
When he finally had Jesus down from the cross, Joseph proceeded to wrap the Lord's body in swaddling cloth, mummy style – and that is when he made what was (for Joe) a dark discovery – a sight so disturbing that I would not have mentioned it here, were it not that Mel Gibson has already disclosed the information....
Someone – probably Roman guards, the night before, at central booking – had evidently (in the words of Joseph of Arimathaea) "whupped Jesus' ass" (John 19:1).
With a heavy heart, Joe finished wrapping Jesus in ointment and swaddling cloths, and transported him by donkey to the tomb, two blocks away. He laid him to rest on the marble bench in there (face-down, so he'd be more comfortable), and shut the stone door. He then sailed home to Cornwall, taking a keepsake souvenir: the tin chalice, or "grail," from the Last Supper. He was never heard from again (Matt. 27:57-61).
On Saturday (though it was not usually a workday), Caiaphas the Chief Priest sent his security guards to the Jerusalem cemetery, to seal the door of Jesus' tomb with bitumen, so it could not be opened again, and to stand watch outside. After Malchus's ear, and the solar blackout, and the earthquakes, Caiaphas felt it was only prudent to be prepared for more of Yahveh's supernatural tricks: if something weird should happen inside the tomb, such as a resurrection from the dead, Caiaphas did not want the Messiah to escape (Matt. 27:62-66).
The Eleven disciples, meanwhile, remained at "Mary's Place" in Bethany, sleeping and eating and arguing about "What next?" On two points there was universal agreement: 1. all of the Lord's followers, male and female, wanted to go to Heaven after they died; and 2. not one of them wanted to be arrested, tried, mocked, whipped, spat on, crucified, stabbed, bashed, and cremated in a garbage dump.
Jesus on Friday night was guarded only by his mother, 44, and by her new friend, Mary Magdalene, 19. The two women slept beside the stone door of the tomb (Matt. 28:5; Acts 1:18). Meanwhile, the Eleven disciples, who objected to sleeping overnight in a cemetery on the Sabbath (or any other night), stayed at Mary's Place; for Jesus had taught them that sleeping in graveyards was behavior associated with demoniacs (Matt. 8:28).
On Saturday, with the crypt being guarded by Caiaphas's men, the two Marys kept their distance. But on Sunday morning, before dawn, they returned.
Jesus' Mom carried some flowers; and Magdalene, an alabaster jug of spikenard with which she hoped to anoint Jesus' body. When they reached the tomb, however, Magdalene realised a problem: "Who will move the stone for us?" she asked (Matt. 28:1). The guards lay about, sound asleep. Jesus' mother said it was probably best not to wake them: Mary Magadalene was easily distracted.
That's when the two women spotted a handsome fellow in shining white raiment. The Virgin Mary blushed: it was Gabriel, whom she had not seen in thirty years.
Magdalene, who did not know him, which was surprising, was about to introduce herself when Gabriel said, "Hark – "
Tune in tomorrow, and I'll tell you what happened next. You're not going to believe it!
– L.
Posted by Lucifer at 03:01 PM
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