by Brother Joel

"And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared unto many." Matthew 27:50-53

Damn, what a show! Now you would think that those addled Jews and Gentiles would have converted to Christianity on the spot, what with those obvious signs and wonders. I especially like the part about the open graves, with the "undead" walking into Jerusalem ...cue the soundtrack to Michael Jackson's "Thriller..." and those walking corpses managed to appear to their loved ones without apparently being detected by anyone else.

Seriously, such an event would have been as famous as the explosion of Mount Vesuvius, or the mass suicides at Masada. How about the supernatural tearing of the temple veil, in the holiest place of pre-diaspora Judaism? How could there be a nonbeliever left after such a marvelous sign? Unless...

...it never happened in the first place. The gospel writers clearly felt the need to embellish the Jesus execution story, since the event itself barely caused a ripple in its time. More pathetic than the first century Christians who accepted this bizarre tall tale uncritically are the TWENTY-FIRST century Christians who do so now.

(Now cue up Stevie Wonder's "Superstition")

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