[Previous: lines 68-98]
Jesus's dead body has been laid in its tomb.
At Solymos penitus nondum omnis cura reliquit------------
sollicitos; sed adhuc timor acer corda premebat. [100]
Saepe etenim audierant, sociis mœrentibus hostem
sese olim superas rediturum lucis ad auras
promisisse, palamque sacros id prodere vates.
Id veriti armatos subitò misere viros, qui
noctes atque dies servarent flebile bustum; [105]
ne forte auferret furto quis nocte sepultum,
et totam impleret falsis rumoribus urbem,
defunctum vitâ rediisse ad luminis oras,
vitalesque auras haurire, atque aethere vesci.
Aura veni afflanti Patris omnipotentis ab ore, [110]
aura potens cœli numen, superumque voluptas,
quicquid adhuc superat mihi dira è caede dolorum
mente fuga, laetosque animi nunc reffice sensus,
et placidos per membra riga mihi numine motus.
Sit fas laetitiae sentire in pectore lapsus, [115]
laetitiae, qua gens fruitur felicis Olympi;
larga ubi latifluo passim torrente redundant
gaudia, nec fines novit diffusa voluptas.
Vertitur hïc rerum facies; hïc gaudia nostra
incipiunt: longè in melius versa omnia cerno. [120]
But the Jerusalemites were still oppressed------------
by worry, and fear was keen in their heart. [100]
Often they’d heard their enemy tell his disciples
he would overcome death and return to daylight
as had been predicted by the prophets.
Alarmed, they sent troops of armed men to stand
near the tomb night and day—to stop the bereaved [105]
from stealing away the dead body, and so
spread false reports around the entire city
that he had returned again to the shores of light
and was breathing heaven’s life-giving air.
Come, breath of heaven, from the Almighty’s [110]
numinous mouth, joy of the high angels:
whatever pain remains mine at this slaughter—
banish it! restore joy to my soul and
fill all my limbs with divine tranquillity.
May I be allowed the joy in my heart, that [115]
joy known to all the race of glad Olympus;
a wide and everywhere joy flowing strong
in praise and pleasure, delight without end!
For now the face of things is changed; delight
begins! I see all things changed for the better. [120]
Happy, happy happy: gaudium (delight) is repeated twice in consecutive lines (118 and 119) and laetus (joy) thrice (in lines 115, 116 and 117). A tad stylistically egregous maybe; rather puts me in mind of Keats's ‘Grecian Urn’: ‘Ah, happy, happy boughs! ... And, happy melodist, unwearied ... More happy love! more happy, happy love!’ Not that I'm suggesting Keats read Vida, although he might have come across Cranwell's 1768 translation of the poem into English heroic couplets, which renders this passage thuswise:
Come, heav'nly Spirit! from th' eternal God,Vida needs, here, to signal the shift in mood, from tragic to joyful, of the last movement in his epic, and I suppose this is as good a way of doing that as any. Copious torrents of delight, indeed.
Thou joy, and pleasure of the bright abode!
Within my breast whatever griefs remain,
What anxious sorrows for a Saviour slain,
Disperse at once; and thro' my senses pour,
The grateful blessings of thy healing show'r!
Oh! give my heart that mighty bliss to prove,
Those joys, peculiar to the realms above;
Where copious torrents of delight abound,
And Pleasures circle in eternal round.
Here sorrows vanish; here our joys arise;
And brighter scenes unfold to human eyes.
Clearly, the positioning of Jesus's body in a tomb is a needful prelude to his resurrection. Were his body (say) tossed into an unmarked mass grave, it gets tricky picturing his subsequent return to life (struggling through a tangle of corpses, digging his way out like a character in a Tarantino movie. Not dignified).
The actual tomb, assuming there was one, has occasioned a great deal of scholarly and archeological interest. According to Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino's The Jesus Family Tomb (2007) the so-called ‘Talpiot tomb’, discovered in 1980 in the neighbourhood of Talpiot outside of Jerusalem, is actually the family tomb of Jesus. Their evidence is that six of the ten ossuaries found therein had names on them: ‘Yeshua bar Yehosef; Maria; Yose; Yehuda bar Yeshua; Mariamne e Mara; Matya’, Hebrew names conventionally Hellenized as Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Martha and so on. Other experts have been less convinced.
The academic community of archaeologists has concluded that what we are presented with here is an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave containing a group of ossuaries bearing very common Jewish names of the first century CE. [Petra Dijkhuizen, ‘Buried Shamefully: Historical Reconstruction of Jesus' Burial and Tomb’, Neotestamentica, 45:1 (2011), 115]Some scholars follow J D Crossan in thinking it likely Jesus's body was left on the cross to be devoured by wild animals. Others disagree:
Several NT scholars have presented valid points of criticism against Crossan's argument for Jesus' non-burial. B. R. McCane (2004) notes that the norm prescribed in Deut 21:22-23 and the Temple Scroll had currency at the time of Jesus. Jews did not customarily leave bodies of executed criminals hanging past sunset on the day of death, but asked for permission to bury them lest the land be defiled. Roman peacetime administration ordinarily granted such a request (Evans 2005, 13) ... McCane argues that in accordance with Jewish religious and cultural norms, one or more members of the Sanhédrin obtained the body of Jesus from Pilate and arranged for a dishonourable interment before sunset most probably in a tomb reserved for executed Jewish criminals. From an early date the Christian tradition tried to conceal this fact, but the best evidence shows that Jesus was buried in shame which meant two things: burial away from the family tomb—by design, not by fate—and burial without the proper rites of mourning being performed [Dijkhuizen, 121-22]Alternately, Marianne Sawicki thinks Jesus' body was eaten by quick-lime.
The gospel stories mention a gentle enshrouding, a magnanimous laying out, and a loving tomb side vigil; but a limed pit is much more probable. Like countless others of the ‘disappeared,’ Jesus was not important enough to trouble the governor with a trial or the death squad with returning the remains to the family. Lime eats the body quickly and hygienically. Therefore we find virtually no skeletal remains of the thousands crucified outside Jerusalem in the first century. . . . Calvary had been a quarry in antiquity, and after executions the police dumped the bodies into any convenient hole together with some lime to cut the stench. [Marianne Sawicki, Seeing the Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices (Minneapolis: Fortress 1994)]Much depends upon a couple of imponderables: how significant a figure Jesus was to the Romans (that is, whether denying a request for his body might stir up trouble; or whether, indeed, disposing rapidly of the body might be thought the best way to avoid further disturbance) and how well-connected his (likely, poor and provincial) family were with the authorities.
At the head of this post: ‘Jesus Is Laid In The Tomb’ by Edward Arthur Fellowes Prynne. As you can see by the watermark in the image's bottom right corner, this is a modern work of art that is available for sale at the PaintingStar Fine Art Online Store, should you be interested.
[Next: lines 121-163]
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