The following is an essay in honor of Easter 2024 and is an excerpt from an unfinished commentary I had begun writing on the Apostles' Creed.

[I believe Jesus Christ]...was crucified, died, and was buried...

The Creed is brought to its climax with the crucifixion. Jesus’ passion was not only an hour or so; Jesus’ suffering on the cross was His suffering from taking the sins and sicknesses, the death and diseases of those around Him. Neither was Jesus just taking the sins of those who were with Him in the moment of history upon Himself but all of the sins that surrounded Him in time - The sins of Adam and of Eve that had them exiled from the garden and the sin of Noah that led to Canaan’s curse; the curse of Israel that brought them into Egypt and would have brought them back into Egypt had they done what they actually desired; ultimately, the actual sin that had first brought Israel into exile and then Judah after them and the sin that kept them in exile even when they attempted religious reforms under Zerubabel, Ezra, or Nehemiah; He suffered the curse of the sins of Israel that had them attacked by Antoichus and which the Hasmonean Dynasty spiraled into. All of these sins and this curse that kept Israel in perpetual exile and out of which they could not free them was taken onto Jesus as He was crucified.

After all, that is what crucifixion is: the ultimate Roman punishment. This is the significance of all the sins of Israel and Adam building up to the point of the crucifixion. Despite the Covenant that Yahweh had made with Abraham and all Israel because of the sins of Adam - A Covenant with the purpose of freeing them and giving them new life based on their faithfulness - they had shown time and time again that they did not want to allege themselves with Yahweh. Rather, they had shown that they would allege themselves with whatever was most convenient and condemn themselves to death. So, Israel alleged itself first with Assyria and then, pulling back its allegiance, was taken into exile. Then Judah showed its treasures to Babylon and was brought into Babylonian captivity as their city burned in the background. As if this was not enough of a lesson, as Esther shows, even faithful Judahites in the Persian period were not fully faithful (yet Yahweh was still faithful to save the nation of Judah from behind the scenes).

And, as the “intertestamental” history that most aren’t aware of shows us, Israel continued to rebel by building Greek gymnasiums in Jerusalem that would have the Judean worshippers in the Temple flood into the naked Hellena-center as de-circumcised. These same renegades would actually judge their few faithful Jewish brothers to be killed for having the Torah, being circumcised, kosher, or resting on the Sabbath. And, even when zealots (not the Jewish sect of the Zealots but Jews who were zealous [though these Jews certainly set the example for the Zealots hundreds of years later as well]) rebelled against the rebels and took back Judah, they couldn’t help but ally themselves with foreign power (Rome!) once again to find strength to fight back against their enemies and oppressors. Of course, as the Essenes (if that even is what the Qumran Cult is - Either way: “essenoids”) had noticed, the Judeans who had attempted to free itself from foreign oppressors and occupation turned in on itself as this same Hasmonean Dynasty took upon itself unlawful power similar to that which it fought against!

So, as these Jews had turned to Rome for support a hundred years before Rome would siege them, they found that their fighting only lasted as long as their faithfulness and they were back in occupation. And it should be said that occupation was not much better than exile - This is the argument of Ezra-Nehemiah. Even though they were in their land, they did not own it, they were not free, God’s holy presence had already taken itself away from the Temple before Babylon came against it and it did not re-reside in the Second Temple. All this is taken upon Jesus as He dies on a Roman execution device as allowed by Rome while in Judah. Judah’s only power to have Jesus killed was by (once again) alleging itself with the foreign powers it was supposed to stay set apart from. And, as the Tower of Babel had taught us, not only did humans have an enormous problem with personal sin, but, when they came together they only did even more evil.

For since Jesus had barely begun His ministry, already enemies from the earliest of times - The Jewish Pharisees and Herodians - came together to conspire against Him (Mark 3.6). The Pharisees were those that rejected the Roman regime and thought that through pure following of the law they would be freed from its reign and rule and be brought out of exile by the Messiah. The Herodians, on the other hand, were, in some ways, the seed of the original Jewish renegades that supported the Jewish puppet ruler Herod who actually did the most evil against the Jews. These two were so threatened by the humble ruling of Jesus that they decided to humble Him in the ultimate way: making Him suffer the shame of crucifixion. And, as He is being condemned to death, it is said by Luke that “Herod and Pilate became friends with one another that very day; for previously, they had been enemies toward each other” (Luke 23.12). Though Jesus came to unite all humanity, He came to unite them in His life and love. However, in some twisted way, Jesus’ passion is about how the humans that will continue to reject His rule and reign will unite together despite their significant differences to see Him die.

Not only do these Jews comprise their personal theological convictions to kill Jesus, but, they ultimately lay aside the law to have Him die a death not prescribed in the law. Instead of them stoning Him (an actually prescribed sentence for a sinner), they have the Romans judge Him according to their own laws and have Him put to death. All the witnesses that held something against Him, instead of giving their testimonies apart (as the Daniel in the story of Susanna would have had done), share their own contradictory and dishonest allabis against Him. And, as Deuteronomy itself says, “if the witness is a false witness and he has testified against his brother falsely, then you shall do to him just as he had planned to do to his brother. So you shall eliminate the evil from among you” (Deuteronomy 19.18-19). So, those that falsely accused Jesus against their own laws and the Law itself and that desire Him to die, deserve death themselves (at least on that account).

So, the teachers of Torah and leaders in their own laws were condemned by the very law and especially the law that they agreed on being the second part of the first law: loving their neighbors as themselves (Leviticus 19.18; Matthew 22.39). And, though they did not know it, they, at the same time, hated their own God (Matthew 22.37).

Jesus did not only die when human torture had been perfected. Jesus did not just suffer the most shameful, painful, death that humans had been working on making as evil as possible for millennia but He suffered an actual curse. As the Scriptures say: “[I]f a person has committed a sin carrying a sentence of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree his body is not to be left overnight on the tree, but you shall certainly bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is cursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance” (Deuteronomy 21.22-23). All sin is worthy of suffering death: “[T]he wages of sin is death” (Romans 6.23). Jesus, committing no sin and not being worthy of death, was put to death and hung on a tree to take the curse of God. Or, as the Apostle Paul says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf…” (2 Corinthians 5.21). Jesus took the actual curse of humanity onto himself when He was hung on a tree.

This was the curse that came with the Covenant that God made through Moses with all of Israel to make a new humanity. The curse came because they failed to be the blessing to the nations that God had been to them. God desired to bless Israel through the Covenant He cut with them and all the Torah that came with it. They were supposed to be a blessing to the nations through this Torah by being set apart from Him. On the other hand, they laid aside their laws and convictions to work with the other nations on their own terms to terminate the God that had called them to be set aside. The curse of exile that they were supposed to bear for failing to do their end of the Covenant came upon the one perfect person (the God-human) that had come to save them from their curse.

The Creed continues from the crucifixion to the climax of even that: “death”. Crucifixion was about Jesus dying under the occupation of Rome as the Jews worked with those that they were supposed to be set apart from and whom they even hated and desired to be freed from. Jesus, who came to save Israel from exile was destroyed with the Jews accepting their exile in working with the very government that ruled over them to give Him death. In contradistinction, that was what the cross was all about: that Jesus would end exile by entering into the ultimate exile. A literal exile by dying outside of the city of Jerusalem; a deeper exile that Israel chose for itself in deciding to work with Rome (for the Pharisees and Herodians) or just reject Jesus (for the disciples).

The crucifixion has to be the answer to exile because exile was the end of Israel’s faithlessness. The cross was about communal sin crushing Jesus as governments and people of all philosophies work together to give death to the one God that gave them life since they are accepting the exile that was a response to the societal sins of Israel. Though not every Israelite had rejected God and His Covenant in the same way personally, they did reject it as a society. The response to their societal sin was exile and being brought to be among the nations that they had decided to work with. The end of Israel being among the nations is them bringing the worst punishment of those nations upon the God that came to make them set apart. Even the Pharisees who were trying to make Israel holy again and so free them from exile had given up on their own guidelines that kept them from working with Rome. They also worked against God with those that they were supposed to be set apart from.

And, it should be said that, while the story of the sin of Adam and Eve is archetypal and speaks to how everyone sins personally and on their own, the story of Babylon’s founding is about an archetypal imperial sin against God. When people work together against God, they must also be punished according to their sins. Solomon had prayed that personal sins would be punished accordingly as the Temple for united Israel was inaugurated (1 Kings 8.31-32). However, in the same breath, Solomon prays that to God that “when Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You, if they turn to You again and confess Your name and pray and implore Your favor in this house, then hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of Your people Israel, and bring them back to the land which You gave their fathers” (1 Kings 8.33-34). In whatever way that it happened, Solomon, seeing that Israel would be exiled, asks that God will restore them and bring them back.

Why did Israel need exile? As Exodus and Numbers made clear: even as Israel enjoyed being freed from Egypt, they cried and complained against the God and leader that took them out of it. Even when they decided they would not enter the land, and so God gave them that desire, they still turned back to try and go back in and take it on their own! In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees believed that their own righteousness would make the way for God to bring them back into the land and make it their own. Ironically, they rejected the God that came to do just that and destroyed Him! As Joshua and Judges made clear, Israel would be complicit and allow their enemies to lead them in their own laws and would only cry out after evil oppression. The Pharisees actually saw Rome as a problem occupying their land and knew that they needed to live by the wisdom of the Torah that God had given them despite their occupation. But when it came to Jesus, they sacrificed even that conviction and so sacrificed the Son of God by the rules of the Romans.

In other words, unless Israel was brought into exile and suffered for their sins as a society, they would not learn. However, even as they were attempting to set themselves apart in their occupation, they gave in and worked with their enemies to destroy their own Deity. Just as Israel didn’t listen to the prophets and portents for centuries before, the Pharisees - The best of Israel! - carried on to kill the ultimate prophet in the worst of their exile.

Jesus’ crucifixion was about Him saving Israel from the curse that came from them failing to live by the Covenant. In the same way, Jesus’ death was about Him taking the curse of humanity upon Himself. When Christians focus only on the theology of Jesus’ death, they can begin to sound anti-semitic. “The Jews that God chose killed Jesus! It was them that rejected Him!” This is certainly the point of the cross. However, the point of Israel is that all humanity is the same. First, Israel did work with the nations to have Jesus killed but, second, Israel was supposed to be the archetypal humanity. Jews (those from Judah. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had been exiled and mixed with the nations so that they were not purely Hebrew any more) was archetypal Israel in the same way that Israel was archetypal Adam. To say that the Jews were the worst because they crucified Jesus is missing exactly the point being made by Jesus’ death. The point of the Jews killing Jesus (again, working with Romans) is that they are the same as other humans. When Judah failed to be any better than Israel, they showed that they are no archetypal Israel. When Israel failed to be any better than Adam, they showed that they are no archetypal Adam. They were all absolved into the nations because they were the same as the nations!

The Gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1.16). It is to the Jews first since they were first chosen to represent humans. However, it is not denied to others any more since Jews had shown they are just the same. Those who say “Jews are the worst” for crucifying Christ need to know that Christ Himself became a Jew and not just any other human. Jesus could only make all of humanity right with Jesus if He became a Jew since God’s plan to bless Adam was to first bless Israel. God did bless all Adam through Israel but only through Him becoming true Israel Himself: Jesus!

The Creed then says that He was “buried”. The significance of the burial of Jesus is the apparent loss of all hope. He had died but He was also buried. How could He return from the dead now? Jesus was first cursed according to Torah by being hung on a tree in His crucifixion but was cursed according to Adam by returning to dust (Genesis 3.19). The burial of Jesus is about the ultimate Adam returning to the earth (Robert Alter translates the word-play of adam, ‘adam’ and adamah, ‘dust’ as “human” and “humus” [a homophone that means soil]). The last word of God’s prescribed (or perhaps it was only described) punishment for Adam was: “[Y]ou are dust, / And to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3.19). Jesus, the archetype after which Adam was made (what John will call logos in chapter 1 of his gospel) not only made Himself human but allowed other evil humans to return Him to humus.

In this way, Jesus is the conclusion to God’s pronouncement of punishment on all adam as much as the proclamation of the protoevangelium to Eve. Jesus did not strike the serpent’s seed with soldiers but struck the serpent at its source by being struck by it and suffering under the sin and death of the serpent's seed (Genesis. 3.15). However, it wasn’t that Jesus had only come into the world to save it and was surprised to be destroyed. This was Jesus the Messiah - Not Judah Maccabee - the one who would make right not with military might but by willingly giving Himself over to those that do use military might. With the Father and Spirit, they had all together planned His suffering to be the way of salvation for all of humanity. “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5.6). In the hopelessness of exile and occupation, God became human. When it seemed He might save Israel with an army, He gave Himself over to an army. When it seemed He might actually come off of the cross and save everyone, He gave up His Spirit. Still might have thought He was the Messiah ben Joseph that some had sought out - That He would rise from the dead with others and give them life. However, his burial made the Messiah nothing more than some miracle-worker to those that had hoped in Him His whole ministry.

The one that seemed to have been out of the world (and He was!) came into the world to be buried in the World. The Word (Greek logos) by which the world was made - The archetype for all existing things - was placed underneath the world that was made after Him. Even at the outset of His ministry, “And immediately the Spirit brought Him out into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild animals, and the angels were serving Him” (Mark 1.12-13). Jesus had seemingly fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy that

[T]he wolf will dwell with the lamb,

And the leopard will lie down with the young goat,

And the calf and the young lion and the fattened steer will be together;

And a little boy will lead them.

Also the cow and the bear will graze,

Their young will lie down together,

And the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra,

And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. (Isaiah 11.6-8)

Adam himself could hardly do more than name the animals and he sinned and brought death to himself and the beasts with him - That was when he was in perfect paradise with everything he could have ever needed. Jesus went into a wilderness fasting and without any food and restored the world as it was where there was nothing. Jesus was the ultimate Israel that brought about life and love and peace and wholeness while in the deadest part of the world. That Jesus was the wholeness of the world in whom “we live and move and exist” (Acts 17.28). Jesus’ burial in the grave was the realization that this archetype for all existing things had died. The sky went dark, the earth’s stomach quaked, and everything went into complete chaos.

The third day He rose again from the dead.

The Creed says, “The third day he rose again from the dead.” Though those in the West emphasize His death and Christians in the East say its all about His resurrection - The two go together. If Jesus didn’t die, we are all still in our sins! They never came upon them and we would have never been saved from the death and destruction that we brought on the world with our sins. However, if he didn’t rise, among a whole multitude of other issues, our faith is futile and “you are still in your sins.” If Jesus did not resurrect, the corruption He had taken onto Himself on the cross would resurrect and wreck the good world God made.

Jesus had been the end of all life in the beginning and is the end of life as the new Adam. Humanity was made in the image of God by being images of the Word (Jesus!) that was from God. When humanity rebelled against God and only blamed the other, its deadly destiny only meant that it needed a new Word to make it new again. The new Word had to suffer the same death that humanity had brought upon themselves. However, the Word had to come back to life to give a “likeness” to humanity to live in - That is what Jesus did. This is the reason for the resurrection! For those that could not comprehend the depth of His radical resurrection, Jesus gave two means by which they might experience it: reading it as the center of history (the Sacred Scriptures) and yet eating it in their own days (the Sacred Supper, or the Lord’s Supper). These two are deeply connected.

The Nicene Creed uses the Apostolic phrase to refer to Jesus’ resurrection: it was “in accordance with the Scriptures”. As Mark begins his gospel: “just as it is written…” (Mark 1.2). Jesus Himself explains all of the Scriptures to two of His disciples while walking to Emmaus right after His resurrection saying that the Scriptures were all about Him:

He said to them, “You foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to come into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the Prophets, He explained to them the things written about Himself in all the Scriptures. (Luke 24.25-27)

Jesus clearly saw Himself as the completion of everything that was written about Him. He saw Himself as the explanation to all of history (and especially the holy Hebrew accounts of their own history). In His second explanation to them He says, “it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24.46-47). In other words, it is especially in His purity, election, suffering and death and coming back to life that gave Moses meaning!

Without His death and resurrection, the Scriptures have no significance - Without the resurrection, there is no reason to read them! Without Jesus’ death and resurrection, all the Scriptures are only “vanity of vanities” (Ecclesiastes 1:2): if Jesus didn’t rise, Adam’s hope in enjoying Eden’s fulness again and having faith in God to bring him back to life was in vain; Noah’s salvation through the waters and blessing of Shem was in vain; Abraham’s blessing, Covenant, and family was in vain; Isaac being offered up was in vain; Joseph’s saving his whole family and all Israel through his suffering was in vain; Jacob’s blessing of his sons was in vain; Moses’ leading Israel through the Reed Sea, receiving the Torah, and prophesying to Israel was in vain; Joshua’s conquest of Canaan was in vain; Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Samson, and all the judges led by faith in the Spirit in vain; Ruth followed her mother in vain; Hannah had hope in Samuel, Samuel anointed David, and Solomon built the Temple in vain; God prophesied through the Prophets against the priests and kings and preserved David’s line in vain.

The Scriptures are certainly centered on the revolution of Jesus’ resurrection. However, even the writings of the Prophets are experienced in another way when they’re eaten! Jesus knew this when He instituted Eucharist as a meal to remember His death and resurrection - And Eucharist is not just some symbol that helps us to remember. One practical problem with memorialists making this claim is that they tend to only administer it monthly or quarterly - If that is the infrequency of which they wish to remember Jesus and the gospel then that says something about their church as a whole. However, even on an empirical or theological level, it is Jesus Himself! Jesus, the Resurrection, claims to give life to everyone who participates in the divine supper: He says,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in him.” (John 6.53-56)

Apparently, in an extremely offensive  and unordinary way (“As a result of this many of His disciples left, and would no longer walk with Him” [John 6.66]), resurrection life is encapsulated in the bread that Jesus gives to those who follow Him. Even the meaning of Moses is found in a meal. For even after Jesus explains the Hebrew Scriptures, He still has to bless bread and eat it with His disciples for their eyes to open and for them to recognize who He is. It is only then that they can actually recount what Jesus had explained to them on the way to Emmaus: “‘Were our hearts not burning within us when He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24.32).