Theological WI: No First Coming

Happy Easter Sunday, everyone!

A rather heretical WI: Assuming the Gospel of Mark in some way or other represents reality, what if it actually did end at Mark 16:8 with Mary Magdalene and her friends finding an empty tomb and a white-clothed youth telling them that Christ had left the sepulchre and risen up to heaven, with no actual return to Earth?

What sort of Christianity would arise from this theological change? Would it be more easily reconciled with Judaism? Would we see many more false Messiahs than in OTL?
 
Last edited:

Ryan

Donor
blasmeme-png.14331
 
I love the original ending of Mark, because it was made so that there would be a sense of anticipation allowing for the priest/pastor to then end the story speaking from his heart. There are certainly enough indications earlier in the Gospel where Jesus says He will raise from the dead on the third day where the original ending leaves no sense of true mystery as to what happened.

Now, going with the OP, I do not think Christianity would catch on. There is a chance it becomes a Gnostic mystery religion, Jesus perhaps is a spirutal Mani from a couple centuries before.

There's a reason why I say this. Christian creeds emphasize that Jesus was dead, buried, and resurrected and the flesh. All pertain to His true humanity, and that He is the firstborn from the dead--He conquered death. And if He conquered death, though being really dead in the sense all men die, then all men can conquer death through the One that did it first.

Hence, the Christian message, as divisive as it is, offers real hope to regular people. The Gnostic Jesus offers hope to the spiritually initiated snobs that normally patronized the eastern mystery religions and Greek philosophical schools. None of the snobbery really lasted, though Neo-Platonism lasted surprisingly long and its vestiges strangely live on in Talmudic Judaism and Kabballah.
 
Christianity remains one of the many Jewish sects trying to rebel against Rome and failing because it's Rome.
 
Happy Easter Sunday, everyone!

A rather heretical WI: Assuming the Gospel of Mark in some way or other represents reality, what if it actually did end at Mark 16:8 with Mary Magdalene and her friends finding an empty tomb and a white-clothed youth telling them that Christ had left the sepulchre and risen up to heaven, with no actual return to Earth?

To clarify, in Mark 16:6-7, the young man in white doesn't say Jesus has risen to heaven; he says he is headed to Galilee, and that they will see him if they go there.

I'm not sure that the final twelve verses change the spiritual message that much - they describe the encounters between Jesus and the Apostles that verses 6-7 anticipate. They do serve to end the narrative on a more upbeat note than the curious verse 16:8, though ("Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.").
 
Last edited:
Top