President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has emphasized the importance of Easter, saying Easter Sunday “is the most important religious observance for followers of Jesus Christ.”
In preparation of celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, host and Church News reporter Mary Richards is joined by Brigham Young University professor emeritus and historian Richard Neitzel Holzapfel to discuss the historical context surrounding Easter, Holy Week, Gethsemane and more.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: And it hit me: I don’t have to come to Jerusalem to feel Him. I don’t have to be here. If I will spend the time in praying and meditating and reading the words of the story, I can have the same experience of feeling the presence of Jesus. It’s the event that the Spirit testifies, not the location. And one of the thoughts that I continue to think when I visit there is the fact that the tomb was empty, which really shows that life is not empty in Christ. With Him, we can feel bound to Him. We can feel He’s caring for us. And so, while the tomb was empty, our life doesn’t have to be empty. Not that we won’t have moments of grief, somebody we love passes away, but ultimately life is full, and Easter is really that joyous occasion.
1:06
Mary Richards: This is Mary Richards, reporter at the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In his April 2023 general conference talk, President Russell M. Nelson emphasized the importance of Easter, saying Easter Sunday “is the most important religious observance for followers of Jesus Christ.”
As the holiday draws near and we prepare to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we at the Church News are excited to explore the historic context of the time, places and practices surrounding Holy Week.
On this episode of the Church News podcast, I’m joined by BYU professor emeritus Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, who attended Hebrew Union College as a graduate student and taught at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.
Welcome, Richard, to the Church News podcast.
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Glad to be with you today.
Mary Richards: Tell us a little bit about you and your background.
2:13
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Yeah, I went on a mission to Italy and Switzerland, and so I kind of came back to go to school here in the United States thinking, “It might be fun to be involved in foreign service.” I kind of got the bug international, and “Maybe I could do that.” So I came back, and I changed my emphasis to Middle Eastern studies. So it’s a social science degree, and that was really to prepare you to work for some state department government agency. But I then realized I was really more interested in the ancient past. So then I switched from social science to history.
So, I left BYU, where I did my undergraduate work; went to Hebrew Union College, graduate student, and just really thoroughly enjoyed that experience; and then moved on toward a Ph.D. in ancient history, studied under a very famous Jewish-Roman historian named Richard I. Frank, and he was just so easy to work with and wonderful. So, I got this bug in college and then graduate school. And fortunately, I was able to receive a teaching appointment at BYU, where I got to teach ancient history and New Testament and teach courses related to my interests.
Also, BYU affords the opportunity for professors to go teach at the [BYU] Jerusalem Center [for Near Eastern Studies]. And so I got all my five little kids, we jumped in a plane, we went to Tel Aviv, lived in a little apartment away from campus in French Hill, and we just got involved in Jewish community, and I was able to teach and write. And there I wrote my first in-depth study of Easter. And when I returned, I had done the research and started writing in Israel, but when I returned to school at BYU, I was very fortunate to get a TA [teaching assistant] who was just ready to be lit up.
His name was Matt Grey, and so he helped me on that book, and he got the bug, not just from me but other professors, and he went off and got a degree at North Carolina in New Testament studies. And he and I just collaborated on this recent project, and he’s a really good archeologist. I’m kind of the old guy. This is a case where your student becomes smarter, brighter than you are, and as a professor, you’re just so happy that that has happened. And Matt is really a stellar scholar and a disciple scholar and archeologist. And so I’ve been able to reinvestigate the story just recently, which has been a lot of fun.
4:23
Mary Richards: We had him on the Church News podcast to talk about Bethlehem at the time of Jesus Christ’s birth. And yes, so many interesting insights.
And with all of your time spent over in the Middle East and travels back since your time as a professor, we’re excited to hear some of these insights you have about the Holy Land. Let’s first discuss, then: What actually is Easter? What does it actually mean?
4:46
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Yeah, there’s a famous New Testament scholar, a former Bishop of Durham, Anglican Church, named N.T. Wright. And I came across something he said that really hit me, which has really become a lens how I look at Easter now. Let me just quote this thing that he wrote many years ago. Talking about Easter, he says, “This is the greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms, you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament. You don’t have a Christianity. And as Paul says, ‘You are still in your sins.’”
And when we think about Christmas, it’s during break, so we have this Christmas break, and there’s — we put up lights, and we do all these things. Easter, we get done with work on Friday, or school on Friday, and Monday we’re back to work and school. So we don’t have the same opportunity. So, I think N.T. Wright’s point here is that actually, Easter should be the big celebration for us.
And The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are doing that. President Nelson has announced that we’ll have a special Easter Sunday and that there will be no other meetings, no interviews, no temple recommends. We’re just going to go to church for one hour, focus on the meaning of Easter, and then be with our family and friends and to celebrate that special day. So, Easter is the greatest holiday on the holy calendar for all Christians, and as Latter-day Saints, we recognize how important that day is.
6:15
Mary Richards: And our First Presidency has invited us to do more than simply celebrate this sacred event. We can remember the “greater love” that made it possible, is what President Dallin H. Oaks [first counselor in the First Presidency] has recently posted about this date. And it can become also, maybe, a longer period of celebration for us, if we look at different ways to think about Holy Week, and maybe even those weeks before?
6:39
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Yeah, I think for us, there’s lots of traditions. There’s the Eastern Christianity, there’s Western Christianity, the Holy Roman Apostolic Church, the Catholic Church, there’s Protestants — there’s lots of Christians who approach this in ways that it’s all right for us. We have an article of faith that says, “If there is anything ... lovely, or of good report ..., we seek after these things.” So it’s all right to have holy envy. That’s different than coveting something. So like, “I see something in your family, or I see something in your tradition, that’s wonderful,” and I can have holy envy, and I can try to put that into my tradition. It’s not denying my tradition.
Joseph Smith said really, we’re looking for all truth; bring it here with us. And so, as I’ve looked around, I think we can do a better job, and we certainly are, of looking at maybe the Holy Week. It begins with Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, and then the whole week things are happening. The Gospels emphasize it. Some people have described the Passion narrative. Passion is the word we talk about the suffering, death, burial of Christ, right? And then there’s the Resurrection. The Passion narrative is the longest detailed account in the New Testament of any event. Some people have said everything before Mark starts telling that story is an introduction. The story really is Easter.
And so, if you look at antiquity, all the stories we have, all the histories we have of great men and great women, Jesus we have a detail. We can follow Him basically day to day; in some cases, hour by hour, minute by minute. So we can start on that triumphal Sunday — the Palm Sunday, traditional Palm Sunday — and during the week start looking at and prepare for Easter Sunday, which is a glorious Resurrection.
8:13
Mary Richards: So, let’s start right off with Palm Sunday. What can you tell us about that?
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Yeah. I came across two biblical scholars. One’s a former Catholic. He no longer believes in the divinity of Christ. But like a German professor studies German history, you don’t have to believe in it being divine. His name was Dominic Crossan. He’s one of the most famous New Testament scholars. And the reason I read them is because I want to know what they’re saying so that I can try to find the answers for myself. Peter said, “Be ready ... to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15). But also, they do have insights on culture history that are valid.
And he and Marcus Borg wrote something that caught my attention. He said, “Most likely, Pilate came to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday also.” Well, yeah, obviously. See, the capital of the Judean province was in Caesarea Maritima on the coast. It was not Jerusalem; it was on the coast. And that’s where he had his military soldiers. That’s where the administration occurred, and that’s where the palace he used, Herod the Great’s palace, he’d taken it over. And so, he had to have come up, because the Gospels are clear: Pilate was present. So he had to come up. I had never thought about, “What day did he come?”
So the idea, you can imagine a Roman Imperial procession was pretty spectacular. I served a mission in Italy as a young man, I did work in Italy as a graduate student, and I’ve been back a dozen times. And we’ve all seen the famous triumphal Arch of Titus, and it shows soldiers and spears and horses and trumpets and this very ceremonial process. And of course, Pilate wants to intimidate the population. He wants to keep them under control. Because remember, Passover for them was religious, but it’s also political. It was their day of liberation. It’d be like July 4 for Americans. Passover was the day they were liberated from slavery.
So this is a really touchy time for the Romans, because they’re in control, they’re dominating, and they’re worried that people are going to respond. So he brought his soldiers up, but he entered on that day in the procession of soldiers and cavalry and chariots and all the accouterments to show the imperial power but also to announce imperial theology, which is: Caesar was God, he was God’s son, and he’s the prince of peace. That was what they put on his coins.
And so, this is an interesting possibility. What’s happening the same day? On the east side — he would have come from the west, from the coast up to Jerusalem — Jesus is coming from the east, down the Mount of Olives. And if you compare the two different processions, one doesn’t have weapons. They have branches, palm leaves. Pilate probably was riding in a chariot with two or three horses, and the soldiers, the stomping of hooves and the clanking of weapons and armor.
11:00
Jesus is riding on a donkey, and His procession’s very different. I mean, a different point of view of what God’s reign really looks like. Interesting point, and I hadn’t really thought about this until just recently, the only account we have Jesus riding is the triumphal entry. There’s no other account of Jesus riding. Now, I’m not saying he didn’t, but I’m just saying it’s interesting in the Gospel. So this story is important for them to tell you He was riding a donkey.
And let me quote from something I recently wrote: “From the east side of Jerusalem, far away from the Roman gaze, Jesus and His disciples descended the Mount of Olives to enter the holy city in their own royal procession. But unlike Pilate, Jesus rode a lowly donkey, and instead of weapons, His followers carried branches, including some cut from nearby palm trees. Instead of deafening sounds of horses’ hooves, soldiers stomping in unison, military drums beating and trumpets blaring, Jesus’ disciples joyfully walked and danced towards Jerusalem singing, ‘Hosanna now to David’s son, God’s blessing on the coming one, this one who comes in the Lord’s own name, Hosanna in the highest.’ This shout hearkens to the prophecy found in the Hebrew Bible that declares, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughters of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughters of Jerusalem. See your King come to you triumphant and victorious. He is humble in riding on a donkey.’
“This prophecy also reveals what kind of King Jesus would be, a King offering peace to the nations, where there would be no more chariots, no more war horses and no more weapons. He will cut off the chariots, the Prophet said, from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and He shall command peace to the nations of His dominion, shall be from sea to sea and from river to river to the ends of the earth. In this first-century context, Jesus’ arrival to Jerusalem was not a triumphal entry in the Imperial Roman sense, it was the entry of the Messianic Son of God proclaiming peace through the coming of the kingdom of heaven.”
That changed everything for me. I mean, this is what I wrote, but it was that insight from these two scholars about that I had never thought, well obviously the Gospels say Pilate came to Jerusalem and Jesus met him there. I never thought about, “What day did He come?” And then also that Roman procession, so different than the Jewish procession that came from the east. So that really has given me a lens to think Jesus came in peace, proclaiming peace, not as a warrior king.
13:52
Mary Richards: I love that term “triumphal entry,” because it is a triumph for us because of what he did for us.
What other things have you noticed and learned about the week and these different things that can help us think about it differently?
14:07
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: One thing that’s fun is we sometimes try to harmonize the Gospels. It’s kind of like having these four beautiful ancient mosaics, taking a big hammer, smashing them and then pulling out different squares and piecing them together to make one beautiful mosaic. And there’s certainly a benefit from doing a harmony. But I like to look at parallelisms. I like to look at Mark by itself. “Who is Mark? Who’s the author? When was it written? Who is his audience? What was he trying to do here?”
And then do the same with Matthew, the same with Luke and the same with John. I mentioned Mark first because he’s most likely the oldest Gospel. That’s rock bottom right back to the earliest period. And Matthew and Luke quote from him. It’s obvious that they’re using him as a source. And so, when we look at that, this allows us to preserve the four mosaics and to identify the beauty in each one of them, how they’re different, how they’re the same. And of course, it helps us to understand what their real message is.
15:07
Mary Richards: And each one is giving us these different parts of the week. For example, Monday cleansing the temple and Tuesday teaching in Jerusalem, and so on.
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Yeah. Again, the Gospels present the picture of Jesus very differently because their audience and their purpose is different. It’d be like me — I remember this actually happened; I had gone to speak at an academic conference. On Friday, I flew home, and I was asked to speak at a young adult stake conference, kind of one of those Saturday night devotionals. And then Sunday, I had my own Church calling, so I went to Church and I spoke. I was stake president, so I spoke at a ward conference.
And then later that afternoon, my family gathered, and we talked. Now, this is really interesting: They weren’t the same message, but they did focus on similar themes. I adapted to the academic audience, so the words I used, the way I did it; the YSA conference devotional I spoke at on Saturday night was very different; and then my Church assignment at a ward conference as stake president, my message; and then with my family, it was very different.
So we have to think of the four Gospels this way. They’re telling the same story — Jesus went to Jerusalem His last week. He taught, He healed, He was betrayed, He was handed over to Pilate, He was crucified and buried, or Paul said on the third day he was raised from the dead. That’s the same message in all the Gospels, but what they emphasize and what they pull out is just as interesting.
Now, why would Matthew not tell this part of the story? Or why did John skip over the Last Supper, really? I mean, he does tell us he’s there, but he doesn’t talk about instituting the sacrament. He has a whole different purpose. So we appreciate it by looking at these days. Now, traditionally — and this is a question where we simply don’t have a video that tells the date and time — we’re trying to reconstruct the past using the fragments that we have the best of our ability.
So we just have to put — can’t put an exclamation point, but traditionally, how many New Testament scholars see this and how we see it, is that Thursday, after each day of teaching and healing and confronting the Jewish authorities, the cleansing the temple really was a prophetic act showing them that, “This is what’s going to happen. Judgement’s going to happen if you don’t accept God and His good news.” So, a prophetic act. And of course, that caused the leadership to even coalesce to say, “We’ve got to get rid of Him, and we’ve got to do it in a special way.”
So, Thursday, he wants to celebrate His Last Supper. Now, is it a Passover seder, the actual Passover dinner, or is it the day before Passover? I don’t know. One year, I had to take a trip to Israel, and I left on Christmas Day to go to Israel. So we had our Christmas the day before. So it could be pre-Passover, or it could be Passover itself. The synoptic Gospels, which are the Matthew, Mark and Luke, they seem to suggest it’s a Passover meal. John seems to say, “No, it was a dinner before Passover.” And it’s because he likes this play on the word “Lamb of God,” and Friday the lambs are being slaughtered. That’s how he sees it, so Jesus is being slaughtered, He’s being crucified, on Friday.
18:18
So everybody’s a little different, but we can say He ate with His disciples the night before He was arrested. And this Last Supper is very touching and very wonderful, and He institutes the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament, we call that. And then He prophesies, He makes three prophecies: One of you will betray me, one of you will specifically deny me, and all of you will scatter. You will be a “skandalon,” is the Greek word, you’ll be scandalized by me, and you will run away. And then, of course, they’ll say, “No, no, no, it can’t be. Won’t happen.” And what we see, then, is this wonderful, crafted narrative of how Jesus’ prophecies come true, and the disciples’ claims they find out that they’re weak.
But it’s interesting; it comes to a climax when they cover Jesus’ face during the hearing, before the Jewish authorities, cover His face and start beating Him, saying, “If You are the King Messiah, who is hitting you? Prophesy, tell us.” At that very moment, the prophecies are coming fulfilled. Peter denies him. So, the story is dripping with irony, if we look at Him and see what they’re emphasizing.
And so, sometime after midnight — in fact, let’s just look at the passage; I like to use Mark because it’s most likely the earliest account. It says this after the Last Supper. So sometime after midnight, so this would be early Friday morning: “And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives” (Mark 14:26). Mount of Olives is the most prominent land feature in Jerusalem. In some places, it stood 1,000 feet higher than the city walls. The mountain itself is about 2,700 feet above sea level, but in certain areas it’s 1,000 feet taller than the city walls. So obviously, everybody saw it.
And of course, it has a great biblical history. The Old Testament tells stories about a mount of olives, and there’s expectations what’s going to happen. The Messiah is going to come there, God is going to do judgment, He’s going to begin the Resurrection. So it has a past, it has a present, and it has a future. But what’s interesting is this of how we translate the word “hymn.” It could be “hymn” or “hymns,” and it probably are the hymns that are sung at the end of a Jewish Passover dinner today at a Seder, which comes from the book of Psalms. So this goes back. I mean, I can go to a Jewish home and participate in a Seder dinner, and at the end, we’re going to sing the same psalms that Jesus probably sang.
And then, of course, He went to the Mount of Olives. So that’s Friday, early Friday morning, sometime after midnight. And there in the garden, the synoptic Gospels talk about His suffering, and trying to reconcile His will to the Father. I mean, He had prophesied already that He was going to die. He was really questioning, “Is this the right moment? Is this the moment that I should surrender myself?” And He comes to grips with that and stands forward and says, “Yeah, this is it. I’ve got to fulfill my messianic duty.” And Judas and the representatives of the leaders of the Jews, and probably some Roman soldiers, came and arrested Him and then take Him to Annas’ home first, who was the father-in-law of the current high priest, but he had been the high priest. And He’s then interviewed by Caiaphas, and then they charge Him with blasphemy, but also for the Romans’ sake, that He is a messianic pretender, pretending to be king against Caesar, and that’s how they get into a political situation.
And they sent Him over to Pilate on Friday, and then Pilate, when he finds out He’s from Galilee, says, “Oh, Herod Antipas is visiting from Tiberius in Galilee. He’s his actual subject,” so he sends Him over to Herod Antipas. And Herod Antipas is hoping that he can see Jesus perform a miracle. And it’s interesting: The Gospels say Jesus didn’t respond to anything.
Mary Richards: He was quiet.
22:00
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: He just kept quiet the whole time. And remember: Herod Antipas had killed Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptizer, John the Baptist, and he was always afraid of who Jesus might be. “Is He the resurrected? Is He brought back to life, John the Baptist?” But Jesus doesn’t give him any dignity by responding to any of his questions. So then He’s sent back to Pilate. And of course, we know that tragic story.
Friday, the hearing, we think we now know where that happened, this place in Jerusalem. You might recall that after the Jewish revolt in 66 and 70, the city was destroyed. But then also there was another revolt in about A.D. 133 called the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and the Romans said, “OK, we’ve had it with you Jews.” They completely razed the city and rebuilt a new Roman colony there, and so obliterated everything from the first century. It’s rubble. So now, as Christians have gone back, we see a lot of artifacts, but they’re of this A.D. 130-135. So when we used to say, “Oh, Jesus was here, and Jesus was there. Oh, here’s the Ecce Homo Arch,” that’s all Hadrianic. None of it’s first century.
So, Israelis just keep digging. They discover things sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. We think we now know pretty sure exactly where Jesus was. And you can go there today on the west side of modern Jerusalem, just south of the Jaffa Gate, and there are some still original stairs from the first century. And there’s even, up closer to the wall, there’s still part of the original floor. And we think this is where Jesus met Pilate, where the crowd stood and where He was condemned.
And He, of course, leaves there, walks and goes north up by the Jaffa Gate. And of course, that’s Friday. And then they crucify Him at Golgotha. And it’s very clear that He dies at the ninth hour, which would be 3 p.m. Friday afternoon. That’s how the Romans calculated the time. So He dies at 3 p.m. Friday afternoon. Because the Shabbat was coming, in Jewish tradition, it’s evening to evening. So Shabbat was about to come, nightfall was coming, they bury him, and then Saturday is pretty silent. The New Testament is silent. Restoration scriptures tell us there’s something else going on.
Mary Richards: We know more, yes.
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: But the New Testament, you have to ask, “Why is it Silent Saturday?” So we call Faithful Friday, or Good Friday, Faithful Friday, where He’s tried and executed and killed; Silent Saturday; and then Glorious Sunday, which is the tomb is empty. And one of the thoughts that I continue to think when I visit there is the fact that the tomb was empty, which really shows that life is not empty in Christ. With Him, we can feel bound to Him. We can feel He’s caring for us. And so while the tomb was empty, our life doesn’t have to be empty. Not that we won’t have moments of grief, somebody we love passes away, but ultimately, life is full, and Easter is really that joyous occasion.
25:12
Mary Richards: It is so joyous. And because of what happened Friday and Saturday, I think Silent Saturday, I heard a talk in my ward from a woman who talked about a time of waiting, the waiting and the watching on Saturday and just sitting in that grief, not knowing — He had prophesied He would rise again, but did they truly understand that? Did His followers at the time know He would be resurrected like He said He would? And so just that waiting and that grief then is so much more beautiful by the joy of His Resurrection.
25:46
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Yeah, that’s a really good point. For us, it’s so easy; we used to be able to say Monday quarterbacks, but now they have football games on Monday. But after the game on Saturday or Sunday, we could go back and say, “They should have done this, should have done this.” It’s easy for us, and we almost think, “How come the disciples didn’t get it?” But we have to also remember the first-century context. The first century, the idea of what is a Messiah. Now, there was more than just a Messiah; there were messiahs. The Qumran community — who basically, we think, collected the Dead Sea Scrolls — they were looking for Messiah ben Aaron; somebody who had descended of Aaron who would be this anointed.
The word “Messiah,” of course, comes from the Hebrew word that means “Anointed.” In Greek, it’s the Greek word “Christos,” it means “Anointed.” So whether we say Messiah, Anointed or Christ, it’s just different translations of the same word. And so they were looking for a Messiah ben Aaron, a Messiah descendant of Aaron, a priestly Messiah. Other Jews were looking for a Messiah ben Joseph. And still to this day, the Samaritans talk about this Messiah ben Joseph, an anointed servant, descendant of Joseph, who would come before the end of time. He would restore the temple, He would die a martyr’s death, tragic battle, there was all these things about Him.
So there was multiple competing ideas, but the most generally accepted position was the Messiah ben David, the Anointed Son of David the king, and that He would fulfill the promises that were given to David of a kingdom that would stand forever. So that’s the most general view. But even there, what do you mean? What will the Messiah do? Lots of different opinions. For some, maybe even we could say maybe a majority, he would be a warrior king, a human who’d become a warrior king, kick out the Romans and establish the kingdom of Israel again centered in Jerusalem.
So, Jesus was really — He was struggling, because when He talked about Messiah, He knew that it would immediately bring these false ideas, because He was going to be a suffering Messiah who would die and liberate us from spiritual death and Satan and the grave. So, it’s just this interesting context of the first century that we have to be careful about how we say this, but Jesus is certainly clear that He accepts the title of Messiah, and He then tries to help the disciples reinterpret it. So every time He prophesies about, “I’m going to Jerusalem to suffer and die and be resurrected,” it’s just not on their radar. They have no context. “What do you mean?”
In fact, the first time He does it — remember, up at Caesarea Philippi, Peter takes Him aside and says, “Hey, wait, you’re not going to do that.” And Jesus rebukes him, says, “Get behind me. Get behind me. You need to follow me. You need to pick up your cross.” Because it was so much accepted that He was going to be this warrior king, He had to reinterpret it. So the fact that they thought about the Resurrection probably went over their head, just like they couldn’t figure out, “Messiah doesn’t suffer, Messiah doesn’t die, and there is a Resurrection for an individual, the Resurrection will be one-time universal.” So they have no social, religious context for this. So it’s not surprising they didn’t get it.
28:59
There’s that fun story in Luke, maybe we could read it. It’s Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, and it says, “Behold, two of them” — two of the disciples, followers of Jesus, who now are disappointed and now go home to their home up in Emmaus — “which was from Jerusalem about three score furlongs. And they talked together of all the things which had happened” (Luke 24:13-14). So, this great expectation, Jesus arriving on triumphal Sunday, His teaching and power cleansing the temple. I mean, all these things that are happening. It’s excitement. This is the Messiah. But then all of a sudden, overnight, within minutes, within hours, He’s arrested, He’s killed, and He’s dead. The Romans did that on purpose. It wasn’t just to kill somebody. They wanted to send a signal to everybody: “We can take you that fast. Within hours you’ll be dead.” So they’re disappointed.
And probably, I mean, if we were there, “Was He the Messiah? What do we do now? Is there anything we should do?” And notice what happens. So, they’re talking about all these things that happen. “And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him” (Luke 24:15-16). So he shows up as a stranger, right? And He’s listening and talking to them as they’re walking home.
“And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?” (verse 17). So obviously, the word picture that we’re getting here by Luke is these are two disciples who are devastated. “This isn’t how we thought it was going to end. All my hopes, my aspirations. We saw Him do these miracles. We stood in awe of His teachings. We felt something. Gone.”
“And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas” — so we have one name — “answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem” (verse 18), are you crazy?
30:55
Mary Richards: “Do you not know what’s been happening?” Yeah.
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Yeah, “Hast not known the things which are come to pass ... these days?” (Luke 24:18). And Jesus says, “What things?” They’re just like, “What? This was the most incredible week of our lives, and you don’t know what’s going on?” And then He said this, they responded this: “But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” (verse 21). We thought it was Him, but now our hopes are dashed. And then, “beside all this, [this] day is the third day since these things were done” (verse 21).
So, He walks on, they get to their home, and He apparently keeps walking, so they think He’s continuing on past Emmaus. So they said, “No, no, no, come, stranger.” This is first-century hospitality at its best. And they invite Him in, and He comes in, and He takes the bread, breaks it and blesses it. And immediately they remember the Last Supper. See, we have to have a TV camera. You show a close-up of a crowd of 10 people, but then you pan it back, you realize this protest everybody’s talking about, it’s about 10 people. So we have to pull the camera back. There’s more than 12 disciples having Passover dinner, that Last Supper. There are other disciples present, because they were there, they saw Jesus break the bread, they heard Him bless it.
And what happens in the story? As soon as He did that, they recognized who He was, by the way He broke the bread and blessed it. They had participated in that first sacrament. That changes everything. And Luke’s kind of got a funny personality here, because he tells the story that they run back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples that Jesus is resurrected. Before they can, the disciples go and say, “He’s risen. Peter saw Him.” “Oh, we ran all that way?” So, Luke’s got a good sense of humor. But to your point, that’s the story. We shouldn’t be hard on them.
Presentism is a real problem with history students, because we want to see things through the lens of the past. Now, I’m not saying we can’t judge the past. We can, but we have to be careful not to look through these lens of the present context, the present reality, and judge people. And so, it’s easy for us to say, “The disciples, they just didn’t get it.” No, they weren’t prepared to get it. And He’s trying to help them, and He loves them so much that He, after His Resurrection, He’s going to teach them, all of them, what the scriptures meant.
And in this case, Matthew 28, we read this at the end. Before He tells them to go to all nations and make disciples of all nations and to teach them, He goes through the scriptures, He unfolds them and says, “Let me point to the scriptures where the Messiah suffers and dies, instead of focusing on the scriptures where the Messiah is triumphant and victorious. Let’s put those to the side. That’s Second Coming. Let’s look at these.”
And all of a sudden, they start to understand, “Oh, it’s in the scriptures. The Hebrew Bible foresaw this.” And then all of a sudden now, they get it. The lights go on, and we have Paul’s writings, we have Peter’s testimony, we have all the disciples who left their testimonies in the book of Acts and in the four Gospels, and all of a sudden, they’re like us. Post-Resurrection, they see the story.
34:06
Mary Richards: I love this verse from Luke 24:32: “And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” And that can be something we can experience today. I may never get to Jerusalem, but through the scriptures and through the power of the Holy Ghost, I can have that witness myself.
34:28
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Yeah, that reminds me of a story. Dave Seely, who’s a professor of ancient scripture — probably the best biblical scholar in the Church; he’s just fantastic — we actually served in the same mission, and so I got to know him there, but he’s beloved by students, but smart and bright. We decided, as college students, we would instead of going on the BYU study-abroad program, which was pretty expensive, and both of us were poor students, we decided we’d just go on our own. So we talked to professors, “OK, if we go to this site, we read this book, can we get credit?” So we went to Jerusalem.
It was August, it was just hot, and we were poor, we were at the end of our trip and didn’t have much money. We went to the Garden Tomb, which is the site that Protestants often go to remember, but the ambience is wonderful. It’s peaceful, off the road and beautiful, lush garden. It’s a really wonderful place to go and to contemplate and read scripture. But we were into the tomb itself and sat down, and then all of a sudden, a big busload of pastors from Texas came, and they all lined up with their wives in front of the entrance for a photograph. And so Dave and I both kind of moved back because we didn’t want to be in the photograph. And then I heard something that really affected me. One said, “Isn’t it great to be here to feel the presence of Jesus?”
On the door, when they close the tomb at night, they close the door, the door goes into the tomb, and so you don’t see it, so you can get this beautiful picture of the door of the tomb, the empty tomb. But the door is on the inside. And so I looked up, and it said, “He is not here. He is risen.” And it hit me: I don’t have to come to Jerusalem to feel Him. I don’t have to be here. If I will spend the time in praying and meditating and reading the words of the story, I can have the same experience of feeling the presence of Jesus. It’s the event that the Spirit testifies, not the location.
And so, that taught me that I can be anywhere. I can be in Salt Lake City, I can be in Nome, Alaska, I can be in Rome, Italy. And if I will, with an open heart, open the scriptures, engage in the words of the prophets and apostles, I can feel that Spirit. Like you said, it comes to us. And so when we read the story this coming Easter, as we prepare for it better than we maybe have ever prepared before, really thinking about being decisive and very focused on preparing for Easter. Not that weekend; it’s so short, will come and go without any thought.
And I think your suggestion is maybe we start on Sunday and read the Gospel accounts for Sunday, and what does the Gospel tell us about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, so that when we come to Sunday, we really are prepared for having an experience that’s just wonderful and beautiful, and the Spirit can touch our hearts. We don’t have to go to Jerusalem.
Now, in our modern day with technology and travel and relatively price range, which would have been impossible for people in the 1830s — Joseph and Emma could never afford to go to Israel — it’s great that we can go, and it’s wonderful. I’ve been a number of times, and I enjoy it. But you’re right: It’s the Spirit that testifies of this. And they said, “Didn’t we feel our hearts burn within us?” And it didn’t have to be in Emmaus. It can be even in Provo.
37:45
Mary Richards: I want to bring back in what the First Presidency has taught about Easter this year and this beautiful invitation and testimony. They said, “Because of His infinite love and sacrifice, we will all rise again. Let us strengthen our families, share our testimonies and embrace traditions that reflect the true meaning of Easter. This season, may our hearts echo the exclamation heard around the world: ‘He is risen.’”
38:11
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: That’s beautiful. The way I see it is the First Presidency has given the Church an incredible gift: to worship for one hour together as a congregation, to build from each other, to share music that can be powerful beyond words and to share a message of this great day, this hope that they mentioned there, and then to go home — as a college student, back to my apartment with my roommates, or go to my aunt’s home, whatever our family situation is, to be with somebody in there to start some traditions maybe we hadn’t thought about before, to emphasize some traditions we haven’t maybe done for some time.
This Easter will be more powerful than last Easter, and last Easter was more powerful than the Easter before, because I’m building. I don’t think the Lord expects us to be all there the same day, the same time, but He’s given this through His Prophet, through the First Presidency, this gift to really make Easter something special. And can I go back to the N.T. Wright that I said earlier? Christmas is wonderful. The birth of a baby is always a miracle. I mean, it’s just amazing. But Jesus’ birth really only matters on the cosmic scale because of what happened at Easter.
39:25
Mary Richards: Without Easter, there would be no Christmas, right. What other thoughts do you have?
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: Well, before the four Gospels were written, Paul was writing his letters. So actually, the earliest account of Easter is found in Paul’s writings around 52-54, 1 Corinthians 15. This is the earliest written account of what happened in the last days of Jesus’ life and then that weekend of Faithful Friday, Silent Saturday and glorious Easter Sunday. He wrote: “Moreover, brethren [and sisters], I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you” — and that idea of memorializing, remembering Easter and reading the stories and having these family traditions, that’s part of the capturing and memory that Paul’s talking about here — “what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:1-2).
And then he says, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received” — so, if we could be in Corinth in the early ’50s, and we were in that branch and Paul shows up, this is what he would have preached. This would have been the first message. He said this: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).
Now, all scholars agree Jesus was killed in Jerusalem. They all agree that He was buried. Now, there’s some questions about the Resurrection, but I want to make two points. Paul interprets Jesus’ death, “How that Christ died for our sins,” not just the event that He died, which everybody accepts, but the meaning of it, and then the idea that He was raised from the dead. And then he gives this long list of people who saw the Resurrected Jesus. As Latter-day Saints, we are blessed and fortunate to also be able to share with the world another testament of Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, which has this long, extensive Resurrection narrative, beginning in 3 Nephi, chapter 11.
Now, again, if we’re not careful, we harmonize everything. We don’t see these distinct, unique nuances with Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and 3 Nephi. Third Nephi is the fifth Gospel. There, we have this extended story with little nuances, little things that Jesus said, a little different perspective. He’s now resurrected. And this beautiful, long story with 2,500 people came forward to feel the prints, witnesses. Christianity is based on the story of witnesses, the people who saw the empty tomb; Mary, who saw the resurrected Jesus first and was sent to go tell the other disciples that He was risen, all the disciples that Paul mentions here in 1 Corinthians 15. But we have another witness in the New World, 2,500 witnesses.
We should be the most blessed people this coming Easter to think of these beautiful stories preserved for us in Paul and in the Gospels and also in the Book of Mormon. Thank God, praise God, that we have witnesses in the multitudes of this incredible, important, decisive moment. I would say that the Resurrection of Christ isn’t just that the door of eternity was open; it was thrown open and will never be closed again.
43:03
Mary Richards: We can really also echo, “He is risen” and just celebrate that. Thank you for sharing that.
With our last question on the Church News podcast, we always ask: What do you know now? And so I would ask you, after living in Jerusalem with traveling there, your studies on this topic, being a professor, a scholar, all these things, but also because of your faith in Jesus Christ: What do you know now about Easter?
43:33
Richard Neitzel Holzapfel: I think I’ve become much more aware. As an adult, I’ve spent my academic life learning Greek and Hebrew and taking classes at college graduate school, graduate studies at UC Irvine, and going to the sites, writing books and articles, speaking at academic conferences. And it hit me one day that all of my colleagues know about Jesus through the writings of dead apostles — we kind of have a little fun here — preserved on dead trees, because books are paper. So, the witness of dead apostles on dead trees. And we’re so grateful to have this record. This is just so precious to us.
But as Latter-day Saints, living Apostles walk among us. And when I listen to them bear their testimony, I’ve been in small — because of Church callings — I’ve been in small settings where they’ve borne their testimony. Like many people, I watched general conference. Wow, we have a Paul, we have a Peter, we have a Matthew in our presence today. So I appreciate God’s continual love by continuing to send apostles and prophets in our own day. That’s who testify of Christ. This First Presidency is unbelievable. We have modern witnesses testifying at these events, to add to all the other witnesses that we have. That’s what I’ve learned.
44:59
Mary Richards: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m Church News reporter Mary Richards. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
