The Third Day
The immovable stone tossed aside,
The collapsed linens,
The blinding angel and the chalky guards: All today like an old wood-cut.The earthquake on the third day,
The awakened sleeper,
The ubiquitous stranger, gardener, fisherman:
Faded frescoes from a buried world.Retell, renew the event
In these planetary years,
For we were there and he is here:
It is always the third day.Our world-prison is split;
An elder charity
Breaks through these modern fates.
Publish it by Telstar,
Diffuse it by mundovision.He passes through the shattered concrete slabs,
The vaporized vanadium vaults,
The twisted barbed-wire trestles.A charity coeval with the suns
Dispels the deep obsessions of the age
And opens heart-room in our sterile dream:
A new space within space to celebrate
With mobiles and new choreographies,
A new time within time to set to music.
— Amos Niven Wilder
(NT Scholar and brother of Thornton Wilder)
Patron Saint for 2013
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Earthquake? What earthquake? There are absolutely no contemporary accounts of earthquakes at that time.
KA
Literalist! Where’s your poetic soul?
KA
KA
….But surely the earthquake is an integral part of the story, signifying the descent to and return from Hades?….
I’m not sure if it is supposed to signify that, you might be right, but I think the descent into Hades is a later part of the tradition.
Either way, don’t be so relentlessly literal
KA, the earthquake only appears in Matthew, and only once – when Jesus dies. Mark and Luke say that the temple veil was rent in two when Jesus dies, but they don’t mention an earthquake. John doesn’t mention an earthquake or the veil. None of the Gospels say that there was an earthquake on the third day.
I think the poet means it as a poetic description of what happened on the spiritual plane when Jesus rose from the dead. It isn’t biblical and it isn’t literal.
So no, I don’t think the earthquake is an integral part of the story.
JJS, I think the tradition is that He descended into Limbo, where those who had not heard Christianity preached (including all who came before Him) had the opportunity to hear and believe.
Fair point J.P, though the reference is from 1 Peter I think? I remember he says either ‘hades’ or ‘tarsus’, which is the underworld but not quite gehenna (hell) or limbo as we know them. Some have argued that when Jesus talked about ‘gehenna’ he was envisaging a place more akin to purgatory than what we think of as hell, but I don’t know enough to have an opinon
Please read Tartarus, sorry, Paul’s birth place isn’t the place of ultimate punishment
But I say again, if the story of the earthquake isn’t real, how are we supposed to believe the rest of the story. We talked about cherry picking the other day – this seems like a particular case in point, where because the earthquake is highly unlikely to have happened, you dismiss it and call it ‘poetical’. Well I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t cut it.
Now if you said that the resurrection was ‘poetical’, together with all the ‘miracles’ then maybe I’d be with you on this, but you don’t, so I’m not
KA
I didn’t say the earthquake at the time of the death wasn’t real – I just said that only Matthew mentioned it. But there is no biblical record of an earthquake on the third day – that is just the poet’s fancy.
I accept that there was an earthquake at the time of Jesus’ death. I don’t think it was ‘poetical’ – I believe it was real. I don’t know whether it was a physical one – though the lack of a historical record (given the sparcity of the historical record) doesn’t bother me at all. Until I have evidence to the contrary, I accept that it was a physical earthquake. But things don’t need to be physical to be real.
JJS, 1 Peter says he went to preach to the spirits in prison, which is translated as Hades in some bibles.
In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter quotes from Psalm 16, saying that Jesus’ soul was not left in Hades nor did his body see corruption – but the word used in Psalm 16 is Sheol, and presumably Peter was speaking Aramaic or Hebrew at the time he quoted the Psalm. Sheol is not Hell, but just ‘the Realm of the Dead’.
The Catholic tradition is that Jesus preached in the Limbo of the Fathers.