TODAY is Palm Sunday. It commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem atop a donkey as crowds greet him with palm branches, shouting “Hosanna!”
It’s a sin to “sin” during the Holy Week. Thieves and robbers rest. No job for hired killers. No “putang ina,” please…
If it’s not hypocrisy in Christ’s name, then I don’t know what is.
Frankly, the world would be safer if it we sin for only one week and act “holy” the rest of the year.
The day I learned to be “holy” was when an old woman scolded us small boys for playing at the plaza on a Good Friday: “Don’t you know that God is dead today?”
How God could die on a “good day”?
I have many times read the Holy Week story in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, only to end up confused by their discrepancies.
Amazingly, the Christian churches have intentionally ignored them.
Did Jesus Christ die on a Friday noon and return to life on a Sunday?
The Bible does not say that Jesus was crucified on a Friday.
Instead, Jesus predicted, “I, the Messiah, am going to be betrayed and killed and three days later I will return to life” (Mark 9:31).
While the apostles Matthew, Mark and Luke agreed that Jesus Christ was crucified on the “day before the Sabbath” or Friday (see Mark 15:42), John put it “about noon of the day before the Passover” or Thursday (John 19:14).
The Jews argue that “Jesus’ last meal was Wednesday night, and he was crucified on Thursday.
The four apostles reported that the resurrection was on Sunday sunrise.
If true, shouldn’t Jesus have died on a Thursday?
Why did the Jewish multitude demand for Jesus’ crucifixion when they had earlier glorified in his “triumphant entry”?
Matthew, Mark and Luke thought it was Jesus’ act of driving money changers and merchants out of the Jewish temple that infuriated the high priests.
John, however, wrote that Jesus’ raising of his friend Lazarus from the dead (after four days in tomb) forced the chief priests led by Caiphas to plot Jesus’ assassination.
“For this man certainly does miracles,” said one of the priests. “If we let him alone, the whole nation will follow him. And then the Roman army will come and kill us and take over the Jewish government” (John 11:47-48).
While John said nothing about the two thieves who were crucified on either side of Jesus, Matthew and Mark wrote that the “two robbers dying with him cursed him”( Mark 15:32).
The “minority” version of Luke, on the other hand, said that one of the robbers begged
Not one of the four gospels quote the “seven last words” that are traditionally echoed in church re-enactments of the crucifixion. The books of Matthew (27:46) and Mark (15:34) quoted only one: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Luke has three: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing” (23:34); “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (23:43); and “Father, I commit my spirit to you” (23:46).
John has another three: “Woman, behold your son” (19:26); “I thirst” (19:28); and “It is finished” (19:30).
Two resurrection tales are contradictory. Mark said that Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary (the mother of James) visited Jesus’ tomb on Sunday morning and found it empty.
In the book of Matthew, the same women find it closed until an angel appeared to roll the stone cover away, revealing an empty tomb.
Oh, well, no historian is perfect. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
