Paul and Jesus

2. Tertullian, De Spectaculis 30. The gospel of John mentions that the tomb of Jesus was in a garden and presupposes an unnamed gardener, most likely giving rise to this apocryphal story (John 19:41; 20:15). In a fanciful seventh-century text, pseudonymously attributed to the apostle Bartholomew, the gardener’s name is Philogenes. See J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 669–70. A medieval Jewish text, The Toledot Yeshu, elaborates the tale with even further embellishments.

3. Hugh J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1965). Michael Baigent most recently published this theory in new dress; see The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006).

4. See John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), pp. 354–94.

5. Geza Vermes, The Resurrection: History and Myth (New York: Doubleday, 2008), pp. 141–48.

6. Though Mark, followed by Matthew and Luke, seem to put the crucifixion on the afternoon following a Passover meal the night before (Mark 14:12–16; Matthew 26:17–19; Luke 22:7–13), it remains unclear that the “Last Supper” was in fact a Passover meal. John’s chronology is more precise and he notes explicitly that this final meal was “before the Passover” and that the Jewish authorities were rushing to crucify Jesus before sundown on the day of preparation for Passover so as to observe the meal that evening (John 13:1; 18:28; 19:14). See my more detailed discussion in The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 198–204.

7. Josephus, Jewish War 4.317, and the Mishnah Sanhedrin 6.4.

8. Matthew is the only gospel that says the tomb belonged to Joseph (Matthew 27:60). This is unlikely since the other gospels make no such connection and Mark and John specify this burial spot was temporary, chosen for its proximity to the place where the Romans crucified Jesus. Matthew is interested in showing how Jesus fulfilled prophecies of the Hebrew Bible and there is a text in Isaiah that predicts a messianic figure would be buried “with a rich man,” so most scholars are convinced that he likely added this detail for that reason (Isaiah 53:9).

9. For the possibility that such a Jesus family tomb has been discovered in Jerusalem see The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 22–33 (also the Epilogue in the paperback edition published in 2007, pp. 319–30), as well as Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb: The Evidence Behind the Discovery No One Wanted to Find (New York: HarperOne, 2008), and James D. Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici, The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012).

10. For reasons to identify the woman called “Mary the mother of James” as Jesus’ mother see my arguments in The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 73–81.

11. For a more detailed discussion of these additional endings of Mark see The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 230–31.

12. See the discussion in Raymond Brown, The Virginal Conception and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), pp. 120–23.

13. See chapter 14, “Dead but Twice Buried,” pp. 223–40.

14. An edited e-mail response from Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, professor of New Testament, Ecole Biblique, Jerusalem, quoted with his permission.

15. Jane Schaberg and others have argued that this special appearance to Mary Magdalene narrated by John preserves for us an early tradition that Mary Magdalene was the first witness to Jesus’ resurrection. See The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (New York: Continuum, 2002). Matthew says that Jesus met the “women,” including Mary Magdalene, as they were running from the tomb. The longer ending of Mark, though not likely original to Mark, nonetheless echoes the tradition that “he appeared first to Mary Magdalene” (Matthew 28:9–10; Mark 16:9–12).

16. Eusebius, Church History 4.12.

17. Gospel of Peter 14 [58], translation from J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 157–58.

18. See R. H. Stein, “Is the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2–8) a Misplaced Resurrection Account?,” Journal of Biblical Literature 95 (1976): 79–96.