Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§17.1 Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato
In terms of the traditioning process, if I am right, the evidence points to
two important corollaries. One is the implication that (one of) the earliest disciple
responses to the shock of Jesus' execution was to turn to Scripture to see what
sense could be made of it. For a people to whom Scripture was life and light, the
reaction is wholly understandable. It would be equally understandable that the
great 'suffering psalms', including, not least, Psalms 22 and 69, should have become
luminous at that time. No wonder, then, that the first attempts to speak
about the event in a tradition-forming way drew on just these psalms to incorporate
the disciples' perspective on what had happened. 84
If the account was based even partially on eyewitness memory, then it is not
unimportant to recall that the only eyewitnesses that all the Evangelists agree on
were women disciples (Mark 15.40 pars.). 85 There is a strong possibility, therefore,
that these women played a significant role in forming the tradition of Jesus' death.
At least one other point should be raised — that is, regarding Jesus' last
words from the cross, which have provided the basis for generations of Christian
meditation. In the light of which, and given the character of the tradition just adduced,
it is somewhat disturbing to have to acknowledge how weakly rooted
these last words are in the tradition.
1. Father forgive them, for they don't know what they're
doing.
2. Woman, here is your son.
Here is your mother.
3. Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in
paradise.
4. Eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani.
5. I thirst.
6. It is finished.
7. Father, into your hands I place my spirit.
Matthew
27.46
Mark
15.34
Luke
23.34 (v.l.)
23.43
23.46
John
19.26
19.27
19.28
19.30
A stunning feature immediately becomes apparent: that only one of the
'last words' is attested by more than one author. And since Matthew's Passion
ture — the women watching 'afar off, Simon of Cyrene, the name 'Golgotha', the time (the
third hour), the title 'king of the Jews'. He suggests that between the polarized alternatives of
'history remembered' and 'prophecy historicized' (as posed by Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? xxi,
1-13, against Brown, Death) a third is more plausible: 'history scripturized'. Crossan confuses
rather than clarifies this particular issue by tying it so closely to the issue of anti-Semitism
in the accounts of Jesus' death.
84. See also A. Yarbro Collins, 'From Noble Death to Crucified Messiah', NTS 40
(1994) 481-503. See again Koester's claim that 'the different versions of the passion narrative
in the gospel literature' derive from 'the oral performances of the story in the ritual celebrations,
ever enriched by new references to the scriptures of Israel' (above, n. 16).
85. But see also n. 55 above.
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