№ 48: The End of Exile

And visits to London, Portsmouth, and Manchester

Alastair: Susannah is currently flying back over to New York. [Susannah: The title of this post is not related to that fact… or is it?] I will be in Stoke-on-Trent for most of the next three weeks, after which I will be joining her. We have enjoyed our latest UK time together and, while it has been busy and productive, have spent a lot of time with friends and family. We have been blessed with some beautiful weather and, with the warmth, lots of bright flowers and blossom on the trees, have experienced how delightful England can be in the spring.

[Susannah: I’m not going to delete the below pic because Alastair will complain but I do just want to point out the degree to which it is insight into his mind that he feels that it belongs in the category of “lovely English April” photos]

Perhaps the highlight of the time since our last post was a trip down south. We had a Plough event and several friends with whom we wanted to connect, so we decided to take an extra day and a half, finding somewhere to work in London, while meeting up with people.

We travelled down to London, where we met up with Andrew Noble, who used to run the socials for Mere Fidelity. Meeting at Nelson’s Column, we had a meal at The Admiralty pub, and then spent a short time at the British Museum. As we could not stay for long, we dashed around, but saw the Reading Room, the Rosetta Stone, the Cyrus Cylinder, the Elgin Marbles, and several other highlights.

Susannah and I then went for evensong in Westminster Abbey, spending a few minutes looking around after the service.

We then made our way to Victoria Station, from which we caught a train down to Portsmouth, where we were going to spend the next day. I had suggested a day in Portsmouth to Susannah a few weeks previously and she had jumped at the prospect of visiting such an important city of British maritime history. The fact that we could meet up with a friend of ours and his new wife while there made it even more appealing!

The train ride down to Portsmouth was wonderful, especially passing by Arundel, which I would love to visit at some point. Arriving into Portsmouth and Southsea station, we made our way to our hotel, leaving our luggage in our tiny room, before going out to explore the town.

Portsmouth is a charming city of little over 200,000 people. It received its city status largely on account of its naval importance and partly due to the relaxation of the criteria following Stoke-on-Trent’s receipt of city status in 1925 (it is our centenary this year!). It also is one of the few cities with both an Anglican and Catholic cathedral, which could not have hurt its claim.

Situated on the Solent, a strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth has been the site of a prominent naval base for over eight hundred years. It is also the second busiest port in the UK after Dover. Much of the appeal of Portsmouth for Susannah was the Historic Dockyard, arguably the greatest museum of maritime history in the world. More about that in a moment.

We went to the Square Tower and slowly walked along the city walls to the Round Tower, where we watched the sunset over the Solent. Susannah instantly fell in love with the place. From there we wandered to The Ship Anson pub for some food and saw HMS Warrior.

The next morning we got up early and walked down towards the docks, hoping to get a full English breakfast before visiting the Historic Dockyard. Unfortunately, that part of Portsmouth seems to be poorly served on the breakfast front, so we had to satisfy ourselves with pastries from a chain bakery. We did get a closer look at the Spinnaker Tower, although we did not climb it. I seldom like such modern architecture, but thought the Tower quite fitting in its context.

We went to the Historic Dockyard as soon as it opened. We fancied that we would be able to explore the whole thing in the five hours that we had devoted to it, but badly underestimated how much there was to see there.

[Susannah: The vessels below are the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carriers HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Queen Elizabeth, currently in service — as in fact is the HMS Victory, technically, which has just hit 247 years of service.]

[Susannah: And here’s HMS Victory, and the only reason there aren’t an embarrassing number of heart eyes emojis after that name is that I don’t know how to do emojis on Substack]

Portsmouth Naval Base still houses a couple of aircraft carriers: HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s flagship. [Susannah: Oh I didn’t realize he’d already mentioned this, serves me right for adding text without reading the post through first.] Seeing the aircraft carriers alongside HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, and the Mary Rose museum there is a palpable sense of the continuity of British naval history.

We started off by going to HMS Victory. The vessel is currently surrounded by covered scaffolding as part of a huge repair operation, which prevented us from seeing much of the exterior. What initial measure of disappointment we experienced rapidly dissipated as we went inside. Having visited the reconstruction of the Golden Hinde and the Andalucía over the past year, the size and organization of HMS Victory were two of the most arresting things about it. It felt like a considerably more modern vessel than the others did. [Susannah: NB the Golden Hinde is a reproduction of Francis Drake’s ship from the 1577-80 circumnavigation, and the Andalucía is a replica of a galleon from around the same time or just after; the Victory’s keel was laid in 1759 and she has been preserved as she was fitted out for the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.]

HMS Victory, of course, is famous on account of its association with Admiral Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Indeed, had Nelson not died upon her, she would not have been preserved for posterity. Victory, commissioned in 1758, was already an old vessel when she fought in the Battle of Trafalgar. She is now the world’s oldest naval vessel still in commission and serves as the flagship of the First Sea Lord. [Susannah: Forget it, I’m not deleting my insertions above, you guys can handle hearing the same things twice.]

Seeing the plaque on the deck marking the place where Nelson fell was exhilarating. [Susannah: I had a LOT of Feelings.] We would later briefly visit the Nelson Gallery in the National Museum of the Royal Navy, which gives a sense of the myth and the cult that surrounded the deeply flawed yet brilliant Nelson. In that moment, the sense of our proximity to a momentous historical figure and series of events was almost intoxicating.

We had audio guides to help us to tour the ship, which, while leading us through the various parts and levels of the vessel, walked us through the drama surrounding the Battle of Trafalgar. Victory was badly damaged in the battle and suffered devastating losses, most notably Nelson himself. It needed to be towed from the battle to Gibraltar for repairs. Sailing back to England, bearing the body of Lord Nelson [Susannah: Preserved in brandy to prevent him from going off; our Navy friend told us that while officers celebrate Trafalgar Day, on October 21, the men celebrate the 22nd, the day that Nelson’s body was immersed in the brandy, as Pickling Day.], it was still in such bad condition that it needed to be towed again.

We saw the quarters of Hardy and Nelson, both of which were attractively decorated, yet were designed to allow for rapid repurposing in a battle. A first rate ship of the line, Victory has three gun decks and one hundred guns. Having recently visited the Golden Hinde, which has only twenty-two guns, the scale of Victory’s gun decks was impressive.

From the Victory we went to the Mary Rose museum. The Mary Rose, one of the greatest vessels in Henry VIII’s fleet, sank in the Battle of the Solent in 1545, where Henry’s navy was protecting England from a French invasion with a larger armada than the Spanish one in 1588. There are various explanatory theories for the cause of the Mary Rose’s sinking, which occurred as the vessel suddenly leaned over to her starboard side and took in water through her open gunports.

Initial attempts to salvage the vessel after her sinking failed and, over the following three centuries, the structure of the ship was broken down, eaten away, and covered with layers of sediment. Her wreck was rediscovered and identified in 1836. What remained of the wreck was raised from the Solent in the early 1980s.

The Mary Rose’s wreck is now in a remarkable museum, which we toured. Moving from the Regency-era Victory to a vessel of the Tudor navy, the shift back in time was quite marked. Life aboard the carrack Mary Rose seemed a lot harsher than aboard Victory. One also sensed just how important advancements in standardization, naval discipline, and other such things must have been. The guns on the Mary Rose were almost all of slightly different sizes, for instance.

The Mary Rose is housed in a large hall, with glass-covered walkways facing the open side of the wreck, providing visitors with a cross section of the vessel. On the other side of the walkway, items from the wreck that would have belonged at the corresponding part of the ship are displayed, along with other items from the time. [Susannah: It was remarkable and poignant to me that among the personal possessions of the sailors were many rosaries, found on all four decks of the ship: a reminder of how complex and incomplete Henry’s break from Rome eleven years earlier had been, and how Catholic his flagship’s crew; also, it was fascinating to hear that at least a third and perhaps more of the 500-man crew were not from the British Isles.] At the end of each side of each floor there is a small museum section, giving visitors a sense of life aboard the vessel. At the top, one finally passes through an air lock and sees the vessel without any intervening glass. We were both extremely impressed by the museum.

From there we went to the National Museum of the Royal Navy, which was also superb, with a lot of model ships. However, as we were scheduled to meet up with our friend soon afterwards, we did not have long to look around.

As we were leaving to meet up with our friend, Susannah noticed a naval store, which put paid to any chance of us meeting our friend on time. [Susannah: look. There were some navigational instruments I had to buy.] He ended up coming to meet us instead, taking us to look inside Boathouse 4, with its collection of small military craft.

From there we walked to HMS Warrior, the first iron-hulled warship and the largest and fastest ship of her day [Susannah: Launched 1860, under both sail and steam power.] Once again, the transition from the earlier HMS Victory was striking, Warrior having a length of 420ft to Victory’s 227ft and a displacement of 9137 long tons to Victory’s 3500 long tons.

We did not have the time to explore below decks, but walked to a pub for a pint. From there we went to Portsmouth Cathedral, a bright modern building with a distinctive design that feels perfectly suited for a seaside city and merits its title of the Cathedral of the Sea. Seeing a model sailing vessel hung up within it, I was reminded of the many vessels hung up in Notre-Dame de la Garde in Marseille. [Susannah: They’re votive offerings: every time a crew in danger prays for rescue and is delivered, they have a model of their ship—or helicopter or plane—built and offer it in thanksgiving and witness.]

From there we walked out by the sea towards Southsea to meet up with our friend’s wife. After a delicious meal at a Belgian restaurant, we went to the station and travelled back to London. We stayed that night with some friends of ours on the edge of north-east London.

The next day we largely spent working in London. In the evening, we went to The Sekforde pub for the Plough event. [Susannah: The launch of the Work issue!] I wrote a piece on work for the latest issue of Plough and Sebastian Milbank and I were discussing the topic. We were delighted to meet up with several great friends at the event, the video of which is below. The next morning, we returned to Stoke.

A couple of days later, we went for a walk in Queen’s Park, Longton with my parents. We are blessed with many pleasant parks near to us, to several of which I have yet to take Susannah. This was her first time in Queen’s Park. The park worked well for my dad’s wheelchair and afterwards we went to get ice cream in Trentham Park.

Just over a week beforehand, we had visited Alsager Book Emporium with one of our friends (he is a local Anglican rector with a strong theological interest and was astonished by the extent of its treasures!)[Susannah: As Alastair described it, he went into his warp spasm]. Besides purchasing a lot more books at bargain prices, I had gotten into conversation with another person there, who had told me about Dagfields Crafts and Antiques. Not having heard about it before, but knowing that we have some great places for antiques in the area, I was not expecting what we found there.

We ended up spending the best part of five hours going through its vast emporiums and stores, getting numerous incredible finds and enjoying ourselves immensely. I usually greatly dislike spending more than a few minutes in a store and, even in a bookstore, am usually wanting to leave by half an hour at the most. However, Dagfields was an exception and, even on a limited budget was an exceedingly enjoyable shopping experience.

After church on the Sunday, the weather was too glorious to miss out on, so we cycled out past the Wedgwood Factory to the Plume of Feathers in Barlaston. That stretch of the Trent and Mersey Canal really is one of my favourites in our area. [Susannah: There was a canal boat selling candy outside the pub; it was an aggressively England-in-April day.]

Since our latest post, I finished teaching my Davenant Hall Psalms class and have begun teaching my course on reading biblical narrative. I had never taught at length on the Psalms before and it was wonderful to have occasion to do so. I have taught a few courses on reading biblical narrative before, but I shake up the material every time.

My sister-in-law’s mother is currently over with them in Manchester from Brazil. They briefly dropped by our house on the Tuesday while visiting my parents and invited us to a barbecue at their house on the Saturday. We decided that, after a busy week, we would travel up early in the morning and spend much of the day there.

Manchester is only about forty minutes away on the train, but we do not go there as often as we should. The last time we were there, we had breakfast with Peter and Fernanda in Browns, a restaurant and bar in an Edwardian baroque building, and Susannah was eager to go there again. We had a full English breakfast, after which Susannah insisted that we visit Fred Aldous, a craft store that we had also been introduced to on our last visit. I set a time limit and managed to escape relatively unscathed.

Our main goal was to visit the Science and Industry Museum, which we walked to from the craft store. Manchester has long been a place of innovation and industry, one of the great cities of the Industrial Revolution and a pioneer of innovation into the computer age. It was once at the heart of the world’s cotton industry, with its vast mills propelling the city’s rise.

The museum had an exhibit on Stephen Hawking and has a working replica of the Manchester Baby, the first electronic stored-program computer. Perhaps the most interesting displays for us were the spinning machines. [Susannah: I am easily propagandized and by the end of the day came very close to thinking that Science and Industry were interesting and perhaps important; it helped that I have been reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.]

From the museum we walked to Castlefield, the site of the Roman fort, which represented Manchester’s origin as an important settlement. The Castlefield Viaduct nearby is currently in phase two of a National Trust project, converting it into a sky park, akin to New York’s High Line. The results are superb so far.

We had limited time left before we had to go to Peter and Fernanda’s, but we decided to squeeze in a quick visit to the Ryland’s Library, which we have visited a couple of times before. As we were in a hurry, we spent almost all our time in its spectacular reading room.

From the Library we walked towards the Cenotaph. Just past the Abraham Lincoln statue, we saw a group of people singing in a side street. There was no audience there and we wished we could have stayed longer to hear them, but it was a short but delightful addition to our day.

The meal at Peter and Fernanda’s was wonderful, with several Brazilian elements within it. It was special to have the time with them and my parents together.

[Susannah: This is Alastair’s father capitalizing on my interest in Science and Industry to explain the mechanics of how trains with fixed axles manage to go around bends; if you are interested in learning more, please DM me and I will be happy to share what I know.]

We went back into the city, but decided against staying much longer, although we did see some very entertaining street performers. Manchester really seems to be thriving as a city in many ways; its dynamic culture, successful business, appealing architecture, and bustling streets really contrast with the marked decline one generally sees in Stoke.

We went to a Palm Sunday service in Newcastle-under-Lyme on the Sunday, enjoying the flowers in Queen’s Gardens before we went back. That evening, we were invited by some neighbours for a meal with them. Susannah has become good friends with their daughter and it has been a privilege to get to know them better.

Alastair [20th April]: Today is Easter Sunday. After church this morning, I cycled out to my parents’ for a meal. The day could not be more pleasant.

Susannah [20th April]: Back at Emmanuel, our Anglican church in New York City, I stood up as godmother/sponsor for Joan and Marion Mackin, our friends Brooke and Josh’s two daughters, bringing my godchild total to six. I’m so grateful for our church and community here, and for all my godchildren, two more of whom, a baby and that baby’s father, are visiting this week.

I also had a lovely dinner with my father, stepmother and brother yesterday: the Strand bookstore and Japanese food, a classic David Black good time, in celebration of his 80th birthday, which is tomorrow. Any of you who are praying types, please pray for him at this milestone!

Moving slightly backwards in time: I’m back in the City, as of three days ago! Absolutely delighted, though I miss Alastair very much. I spent Lent off Twitter, which was incredibly sanity-inducing, and while I don’t think I’ve been convinced to get off for good, the experience certainly has made me want to aggressively limit my time on the stupidest website.

What have I been up to? Well, work, which is satisfying and wonderful as usual, but also, I have become briefly but powerfully obsessed with Marvel. As in, I’ve been reading comic books. We can only hope that this passes before I spend too much time tweeting about them.

The End of Exile

Throughout the Old Testament there are numerous themes and narrative threads anticipating the death and resurrection of Christ. By the time these arrive at their full and climactic expression in the gospels, we should experience a sense of recognition. Although most are not direct prophecies, they are elements of the biblical story that render its Christological dénouement an eminently fitting one. Seeing the fullfilment of these themes in Christ, it is hard to imagine it being otherwise.

In considering the meaning of the atonement of Christ, theologians have sometimes compared Christ’s death to his taking our exile upon himself. This tends to function as a theological metaphor for our alienation from God. However, in Holy Scripture there is a deeper development of this as a theme.

In Matthew 12:39-41, Jesus responds to requests for a sign:

But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”

Jesus’s comparison of his death and resurrection with Jonah’s being in the belly of the great fish is apt in many respects. Our Lord draws attention to the length of time, which anticipates his resurrection on the third day. Beyond this, we might think of the symbolism of being thrown into the deep and swallowed by a sea monster. The deep or the abyss can represent the realm of death and the great fish might represent Satan as the sea monster.

However, the sea or the deep is also a symbol of the nations. When a nation, especially Israel, is threatened by foreign invasion, it can be compared to a deluge from a swelling river (e.g. Isaiah 8:6-8) or to being engulfed by the sea (e.g. Jeremiah 51:42). Developing this imagery further, the great fish or the sea monster can be an image of a pagan nation. In Isaiah 51:9-10, Egypt is spoken of as ‘Rahab’, a dragon that was cut in pieces as the Lord dried up the waters of the great deep, bringing his people through the Red Sea. Similar imagery is employed with reference to the crossing of the Red Sea in Psalm 74:13-14, where the heads of the sea monster Leviathan are crushed in the deep. Israel being brought out of Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea was like the land being brought up out of the deep.

In Jeremiah 51:34, Babylon is likened to a sea monster that has gulped down Judah

Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me;
he has crushed me;
he has made me an empty vessel;
he has swallowed me like a monster;
he has filled his stomach with my delicacies;
he has rinsed me out.

Later in the chapter, in verse 44, we are told that Babylon would be forced to disgorge its prey:

And I will punish Bel in Babylon,
and take out of his mouth what he has swallowed.
The nations shall no longer flow to him;
the wall of Babylon has fallen.

When reading the book of Jonah, it is important to bear such symbolism in mind, as the opening narrative of the book functions on two levels. On the immediate level, it is a story of an unfaithful and resistant prophet, who tried to escape from his divinely appointed mission and was miraculously prevented by the Lord. However, on another level, Jonah stands for the nation.

Israel was supposed to be a prophetic voice to the nations, yet was unfaithful, abandoning its calling. On account of Israel’s unfaithfulness, devastation was going to come to its land. The storm that struck Jonah and the pagan sailors on their vessel is akin to the great conflicts that came to the region, devastating Israel and the smaller nations that surrounded it on account of Israel’s sin. Peace would only come as Israel was cast into the deep of exile. In exile, God’s people would be swallowed up by a great nation. However, if, like the penitent Jonah, they sought the Lord in the belly of the deep of exile, the sea monster would be an ark for them. They would be delivered and restored.

In the second half of the book of Jonah, we might notice parallels between Nineveh and the great fish. Nineveh is the ‘great’ city, paralleled with the ‘great’ wind, the ‘great’ tempest, and the ‘great’ fish of chapter 1. It is a three days’ city (3:3), much as Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish. In the final chapter of the book, the city is likened to the plant ‘appointed’ by God to grow up over Jonah, shielding him from the sun. The great fish, although it might seem to be a threatening monster, is also ‘appointed’ by God (1:17) for Jonah’s good.

Read in such a manner, the book of Jonah functions as a parable for the people. As an unfaithful prophetic people, seeking to escape the calling of God, they face the same fate as Jonah. They will be cast into the abyss of exile, where they will be swallowed up by a great nation. However, if they submit themselves to the Lord’s providence, repent, and seek his face, they might be returned.

In using Jonah as a sign of his own death and resurrection, Jesus presented a story that was already charged with import, as a symbol of exile. Jesus would enter into a sort of exile, seemingly swallowed up by the terrible monster of the abyss, Satan. However, in God’s providence, this would be a means of salvation. The monster would be forced to disgorge his prey.

In Jesus’s use of the example of Jonah, he also contrasted the city of Nineveh and the city of Jerusalem. Like Nineveh, Jerusalem was given a warning of destruction. While I would not place much weight on this possible connection, as Jonah warned Nineveh about destruction in forty days if they did not repent, Jesus preached concerning the kingdom of God for forty days after his return from the grave.

In the story of Daniel we encounter another analogy where a prophet in peril stands for the wider people. At the beginning of Darius’s reign, Daniel is cast into the lions’ den on account of his refusal to the king’s decree. Conspired against by envious rivals, Daniel was sentenced to death, placed in a den with a stone laid over its mouth and sealed. However, coming at the break of the next day to the den, the king found Daniel still alive. God had vindicated his servant, who had done nothing wrong and had trusted in him, shutting the mouths of the lions.

Reading the book of Daniel more carefully, various connections might come to mind. Immediately before the story of Daniel and the lion’s den, we read of Darius coming to the throne at the age of sixty-two years of age (5:31). Nowhere else in Scripture are we given the age of a pagan king. That Darius is sixty-two seems noteworthy, as this is a number that appears later in the book, where it has a prophetic significance. In the first year of Darius’s reign, Daniel enquires about the seventy years foretold by Jeremiah for the desolations of Jerusalem (9:1-2). The Angel Gabriel comes to him and tells him that seventy weeks of years are decreed for the people and the holy city. There would be an initial seven weeks of years—a jubilee—followed by sixty-two further weeks of years, which would then be followed by a decisive seventieth week.

In 7:4, the first beast in Daniel’s vision is likened to a lion with eagles’ wings. The first beast, which corresponds to the nation of Babylon (note the parallels with the image of Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream in chapter 2), being lion-like gives us a hint as to a deeper significance of Daniel’s deliverance from the lion’s den. The lion’s den can function as a symbol of Babylon itself. Daniel’s deliverance from the lion’s den, vindicated for his trust in the Lord, corresponds to the hoped-for deliverance of the nation from exile. That this seemingly happened at the beginning of Darius’s reign corresponds with the deliverance of Judah around the same time.

However, when we consider the parallel that chapter 9 draws between the seventy years of Judah’s exile and the seventy weeks of years ‘to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place’ (9:24), Daniel’s deliverance from the lions can resonate on another level. Not only does it symbolize the deliverance of Judah from Babylon, but it symbolizes the awaited redemption of the seventieth week, a redemption achieved in Christ’s death and resurrection.

Jesus prayed three times in Gethsemane, when Judas and the crowd from the chief priests came to arrest him. Daniel prayed three times a day and was taken by the conspirators while he was in prayer and brought to the king, as Jesus was brought before Pilate for judgment. On the cross, Jesus was, as it were surrounded by wild beasts seeking to destroy him. Psalm 22, whose opening line Jesus quoted on the cross, contains phrases like ‘they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion’ (verse 13). Placed in the tomb, Jesus entered the domain where the great lion Satan himself prowled. A stone and seal were placed upon Jesus’s tomb, much as a stone and seal was placed upon the lions’ den into which Daniel was cast. And, as in the case of Daniel, Jesus’s deliverance from the lion and vindication by God was known at the break of a new day.

Within the gospels, Jesus’s death is also associated with themes of exile. In John 2:19, Jesus refers to his death, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ This would have recalled the great destruction of the first temple by Babylon, which led to the exile. Peter Leithart has remarked upon the way that the gospel of Matthew employs Old Testament scriptures in a way that maps the story of Jesus onto the Old Testament narrative. Jesus is Israel, recapitulating its story within himself. Importantly, there are allusions to Lamentations 3:19—‘Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!’—and 2:15—‘All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”’—as Jesus hangs upon the cross.

…they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. (Matthew 27:34)

And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads (Matthew 27:39)

Hanging on the cross, Jesus is the destroyed city and its destroyed temple. He will then descend to the exile of the grave. The day of resurrection is depicted like the Day of the Lord, foretold by the prophets. The raising of Jesus could be compared to Ezekiel 37, a text that compares the bringing up of the people from exile to resurrection from the grave. Of course, the book of Matthew ends where the Hebrew Scriptures end, with a great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20; cf. 2 Chronicles 36:23).

In the gospels there are also parallels to observe between the events surrounding Jesus’s death and those he foretold in the Olivet Discourse. The coming apocalypse is enacted in miniature upon Jesus. In Gethsemane, the disciples are charged to watch and pray and not to fall asleep, staying alert with Christ. The charge to keep watch is like those of the Olivet Discourse: the faithful disciple keeps watch, waiting for his Master’s return (Matthew 25:13; 26:38-41). The flight of the disciples as Jesus is arrested parallels with the flight of those in Judea in Matthew 24:15-20. Reading of the man who is stripped of his garment in the tumult in Mark 14:51-52 and does not return to get it—‘And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked’—might recall Matthew 24:18—‘and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.’ The darkness at the cross is like the darkness foretold in the Olivet Discourse in 24:29. And the earthquake likewise (27:51; 24:7, 29). The body of Jesus hung on the cross surrounded by Roman soldiers might recall Matthew 24:28—‘Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures [or ‘eagles’] will gather.’

Similar remarks might be made about the tearing of the temple curtain (27:51), which anticipates the destruction of the second temple in AD70 foretold by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse. The events of Easter morning—the earthquake, the descent of the angel with the appearance like lightning from heaven, the trembling of the soldiers, the declaration of Christ’s heavenly authority, and the sending out of his messengers throughout the world—all anticipate the final great Day of the Lord and also the events described in Matthew 24:30-31.

In Jesus’s death and resurrection, the climactic events of Israel’s history are recapitulated. Jesus takes the history of the people of God into himself as he goes into the greater exile of the grave, bearing the destiny of a sinful people and gloriously restoring them as the temple of his body is rebuilt in three days. In his death and resurrection, he also anticipates the coming judgment. The Day of the Lord that will come upon Jerusalem is played out in advance, so that all who are united with him might pass through that judgment unscathed. The events of AD70 cast a long shadow back over the pages of the New Testament, which foretell and anticipate them. However, the terrible destruction that was to befall Jerusalem and its temple had already happened to Christ. He had been numbered with the insurrectionaries and rebels. As the temple, he had been destroyed by the Romans. Yet, as the faithful Servant of the Lord, he had been raised up again. And all in him would enjoy the same deliverance.

Jesus has experienced the greatest exile of all. He descended into the maw of the monster of Death and it could not hold him. The great roaring lion who prowls in the den of Hades was powerless to harm him. In Christ, God’s history is summed up and his future comes to us this day. Let us celebrate Jesus’s stripping of the grave of its terrors, the death of Death, the defanging of Satan, and the release of the prisoners of Hades.

Happy Easter to you all!

❧ Susannah: In case you missed it, for a parallel walk through pagan prefigurements of Christ and what they can tell us about what happened on Easter Sunday, see my piece “The Birth of Comedy” here. Sample:

The problem isn’t that we can’t escape our post-Christian state by cosplaying the Dionysiads in the woods of New Hampshire, or by slonking eggs, or by pacing the streets of Manila at four in the morning, looking for an aristeia.

It’s rather that if we could get back there, it would not be enough.

It’s rather that the vitalists themselves, the Bronze Age men themselves, and their remote Roman descendants, were trapped in the reality, and in the knowledge of the reality, of death. They loved vitality because they had none - not the kind they needed.

We can’t go back not because we are too Christianized to re-enter that world, to drink that cup and witness that ear of corn reaped in silence. Rather, we can’t go back because what that world was waiting for, what it was hoping for, has already happened. Christ came for this: to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

The dead want life. They are hungry and thirsty. What that means is that they want grain and wine and above all blood. What slakes their thirst, for a few moments, is the blood of lambs.

Odysseus offered lambs as a sacrifice, there on the shore in the land of the Cimmerians, where the sun did not shine. He promises Tiereisas a ram, a male lamb, the very best of his flock, unblemished, when he returns to Ithaka.

Jesus didn’t just break down the gates of Hades. He gave the dead his body to eat, his blood to drink. He gave them life. He gives his body and blood to us too, for us to eat and drink. And he told us exactly what he was doing.

Again you can read the whole thing here. You’ll have to make an account to read it but it will take you five seconds and it’s free and you should have an account at Mere Orthodoxy anyway.

Recent Work

Alastair:

❧ The Theopolis podcast series on Hebrews continues, with the following episodes: The Promise of Entering His Rest (Hebrews 4), Sharper Than Any Two-Edged Sword (Hebrews 4:1-13), and Jesus the Great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14—5:10).

❧ I had a discussion with Sebastian Milbank on the subject ‘Why We Work’ for Plough’s latest issue. You can watch the video of the event here.

❧ The Theopolis website has published my recent reflection, ‘Eight Lessons on the Psalms from the Book of Hebrews’.

There is no better way to learn how to read the Scriptures than by following the Scriptures’ own example. We can learn typological and Christological reading of the Old Testament scriptures from passages such as 1 Corinthians 10, extending such a pattern of reading to texts beyond those referenced by Paul in that passage. The books of John and Revelation offer an allegorical reading of the Song of Songs. And the book of Hebrews teaches us how to read the Psalms in the light of Christ.

❧ My latest God’s Story Podcast episode in the Zechariah series is on Zechariah 11.

❧ I have produced videos of some past Argosy reflections.

The Levitical System for the Uninitiated

David’s Lamb

Upcoming Events

❧ Much of Alastair’s work is as an independent scholar, funded by Patreon donors. His primary goal is to create thoughtful yet free Christian material for the general public, most notably his largely-completed chapter-by-chapter commentary on the whole Bible (available here and here). If you would like to support his continuing research, teaching, writing, and other content production, you can do so here.

❧ We are hoping to attend the Davenant Conference this year. It will be held in Resurrection Presbyterian Church, in Matthews, North Carolina, on June 6th and 7th. We would love to see some of you there!

Much love,

Alastair and Susannah