New Testament Gospel Doctrine Lesson 27: Matt. 28:1-20, Luke 24, John 20-21, Mark 16.

Apologies for a short post on such an important section.

I don’t get out to Utah that often, but what I absolutely love is the concentration of thoughtful, intelligent, people who love to talk about scripture and history. I’ve been lucky enough to get tossed in with a few of these overlapping collections, both formal (seminars, conferences, including one I’m presenting at) and informal (lunches, study groups, etc.) One of these seminars has done a really good job bringing in international LDS, from Scotland, the Netherlands; it’s important that people outside the US have these experiences as well, so they can experience and plant at home some of the intellectual richness and depth of the Gospel. One night, about 20 of us spent three hours reading through Alma 45. That might sound terrible (“three hours on a war chapter?!”), but the level of conversation was such that we only stopped because it was 10pm. In all that time, we covered 10 verses (“three hours and you didn’t even cover the whole chapter?!”) Back in May, along the same lines, I posted my Mom’s experience teaching through the Book of Mormon once in six years.

My point here is to mourn how fast we blitz through our scriptures in Gospel Doctrine, skimming over the surface like a water bug, just barely touching down here and there. I hope that all my readers (all dozen of you!) have had similar experiences to mine, that open to their eyes the depths in the scriptures, that they/you sometimes slow down, and go deep instead of broad.

So, with so much material today, let’s hit a few things.

Outside the Garden Tomb

First, a traditional question, where was Jesus buried? The two traditional locations are 1) The Garden Tomb (which looks a lot like how we imagine it) and 2) the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which you can see in this Jerusalem film trailer, (it’s a fantastic 3d iMax film, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch), and take an 8-minute tour here.

Inside the Garden Tomb

As for the Garden Tomb, Jesus probably wasn’t buried there, but it’s a good stand-in. Some readings-

• Pro-Garden Tomb by John Tvedtnes, in The Ensign.
• Not-Church-of-the-Holy-Sepulchre, and Not-Garden-Tomb, by LDS archaeologist Jeffrey Chadwick, in Religious Educator,  put out by BYU’s Religious Studies Center.
• LDS New Testament prof Eric Huntsman, with pics and experiences from teaching in Jerusalem. Post #1, post #2. (Scroll down to find the Garden Tomb.)

the bus depot

Looking over the fence to the bus depot on the other side of the garden tomb

Depicting Jesus inside the holy sepulcher

A candle inside

Mom inside the Holy Sepulchre

Second, as many of you know, the oldest and best manuscripts of Mark don’t explicitly include the resurrection. This is called “the short ending” of Mark. On that, see  Julie Smith’s post.

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