Jesus Laughs in the Face of Death
After Jesus was crucified, he was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea before rising from the dead on the third day – we all know this. However, what most of you might not know is that the Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by St. Bartholomew the Apostle (one of the Christian Apocrypha) contains a bizarre and undeniably epic story about the events that took place in the afterlife in the two days during which the Son of God was dead. This is the story of how Jesus fought with Death and his six serpent sons, destroyed the Original Sin and unleashed unspeakable tortures upon Judas Iscariot. Suffice to say, none of this is Biblical canon unfortunately. It’s just a really bizarre theological footnote of Bible fanfiction. Before we begin, I would like to briefly rant about someone named Apa Anania. According to the Apocrypha in question, he was a holy man who was taken up into Heaven with Jesus when he ascended on the third day. This character wasn’t referred to in any previous writings and was never mentioned after he was taken up into Heaven. Basically, we have no idea who Anania was – but apparently, he was important enough to be taken up with Jesus. Right, okay so now that I’ve finished bitching about forgotten characters in Christian theology – lets get on with the story. Are you sitting comfortably?
Joseph of Arimathea, stricken with grief, laid the body of the Messiah in His rocky tomb – but while this was going on in the mortal world, Death was visiting Amente (the Coptic equivalent of Purgatory) to inquire as to what had happened to the soul of Christ. He had apparently been searching for said soul for two days and was greatly troubled by his inability to find it. There had been unheard-of trouble when Christ’s soul left his body after the crucifixion, and Death felt that he had to find the errant soul presumably so that it couldn’t cause any more commotion. He called his various companions to him and commanded them to go and visit Christ’s tomb in the hope that His soul might have concealed itself close to his body. Among his companions were his six sons – Gaios, Tryphon, Ophiath, Phthinon, Sotomis and Komphion, left Amente and went to the tomb. However, this deathly entourage was shocked to find that the tomb was now marked with the ‘light of life’ when they visited it. They all sat down behind the tomb and took counsel as to how they should proceed. Eventually Death’s six children concluded that they would wait with the body to hopefully track the Lord’s soul when it went down into Amente so that they could see how he acted when faced with the afterlife. They assumed the forms of serpents and slithered into the tomb – and were immediately confronted with the sight of Jesus’s body lying there in the back of the tomb, with one cloth around his head and another around his face.
Meanwhile, Death was talking to an ominously named figure known as the Pestilence Fiend, who apparently had an overseeing role in the affairs of Amente. Death asked the Fiend if the soul of Christ had been registered as having arrived in Amente, and described to said Fiend the causation for his great concern over the whereabouts of this most powerful of souls. When Christ had died, the pillars of Heaven had trembled, Amente had rocked and quaked, the air was whipped up into a state of disturbance, and the cycles of day and night and the orders of the hours had been thrown into chaos. The fires of Hell had been extinguished and Gehenna (the location according to the Hebrew Bible where the Kings of Judah had sacrificed their children by fire) had gone cold. The gates of Hell had been battered open and their guards had fled, leaving the innumerable servants and ministers and envoys of the damned with nothing to do. The fallen angels had all been scattered and Death’s power had apparently passed into new hands after he himself was destroyed by the power of Christ.
And so, Death was now back with his six sons in the tomb of Jesus. He nervously approached the body of the Saviour and admitted to him (who was still choosing to appear in the form of His dead body) that he had been deeply disturbed by what had happened after his death. While he was saying this, Jesus promptly removed the cloths from his face and looked straight at Death before laughing at him. Utterly terrified, Death ran from the chamber and fell to the ground with his six serpentine sons.
Eventually he regained his senses and got up, once again making his way towards Christ while literally shaking with fear. Jesus once again laughed at him, but this time Death was able to muster the courage to stay and stand before the Son of God. He repeated the question he had previously asked – ‘Who art thou?’ – and judging from the description of the events he once again got no answer. He was left there alone in the tomb to contemplate the situation, eventually coming to the realisation that he might be in the presence of the ‘Good God, Merciful and Compassionate’. However, he still refused to believe that Christ was not obliged to answer him. He stood his ground and started to speak.
Who art thou that laughest? I ask, I speak. Tell me, why dost thou refuse to answer? Thou humblest me, thou makest a mock of me. I will never leave thee, but will cleave unto thee until thou showest me who thou art. I am all-powerful, my power is invincible, thou canst not deceive me.
It seemed that Death did not realise that he was talking to the Lord of All, and in what can only be described as a cosmically epic power move, Jesus went up into Heaven and fetched an army of all the different classes in the hierarchy of angels. The Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, Seraphim, the Four and Twenty Elders (??) and the Powers all stood by the tomb, presumably trapping Death. While Death was unable to act, Jesus descended to Amente and broke open the doors which had been locked in his face, and overturned the cauldrons of flame and put out the vast fields of fire. He swept everything and every soul out of Amente and left it as a barren desert. He bound mysterious figures known as the Shameless Ones and the Ministers of Satan, and fettered a demon named Melkhir with iron chains. In this bizarre campaign across the Coptic cosmology, he also took the time to redeem Adam and deliver man. He set all of Creation free and healed the wounds inflicted by Satan. He also went to Judas Iscariot – and in a decidedly unexpected move for someone famous for his forgiveness – demanded to know why he had betrayed him before declaring that he should now suffer ‘twofold woes’. Judas is also labelled as being the son of the Devil in an alternate version of this passage, and there is an entire page in the document which describes the horrendous tortures inflicted upon Judas. His mouth was filled with thirty serpents embodying every mortal vice, and they destroyed him completely. He was then cast out into the ‘outer darkness’ where ‘utter oblivion shall cover him for ever’ and ‘none shall enquire concerning him’.
Lets just let all that sink in for a bit.
Okay, so now our narrative moves to the third day of Jesus’s temporary death. He rose from the dead and of course left Death now unable to see his body in the tomb. Panicking, Death told the Pestilence Fiend (now referred to as the Pestilence God) to go down into Amente and secure it to keep himself safe until he could track down the missing body of Christ. Death confessed to the Pestilence Fiend that neither he nor his sixfold slithering spawn could overcome it, whether or not it really was the Son of God – of which he was still apparently doubtful. Death followed the Pestilence Fiend down into Amente but was shocked to discover what Jesus had done to the place. The gates had been destroyed, all the fires and their cauldrons lay extinguished and cold, three voices cried out in agony and suffering, and the Worm ‘which never sleeps’ lay among the carnage as well. Death and his sons examined the devastation wrought upon their domain while the angels sung hymns like the Seraphim would over the Offering of the Eucharist on the Lord’s Day.
On the day of the resurrection, a large group of women whose lives had been somehow touched by Jesus (the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene were among them, as well as the unnamed woman forgiven by God in Luke 7:47) congregated outside the tomb of Christ. They stood in the garden of Philogenes (a character introduced in this Apocrypha and then seemingly not mentioned again) who had been responsible for spurring the Jewish people into building another tomb for Jesus for some unexplained reason and he told them about how he had seen the entirety of the angelic host in his garden the previous night. While watching the angelic host in what one can only assume was stunned silence, he witnessed God the Father appear from his tabernacle and raise his Son from the dead. Philogenes therefore witnessed the Resurrection as it was happening.
The narrative then drifts off into describing in epic detail the Resurrection of Christ and how his light covered the entire world with his indomitable angelic host. Jesus then ascends into Heaven and the Apostles follow suite after a further revelation on the Mount of Olives. This story is extremely confusing and convoluted, and it is difficult to tell if the document is meant to contain one coherent narrative or if it simply contains a collection of interesting stories loosely strung together. The first few pages of the original document are unfortunately missing, and the text itself was apparently not in a good condition. It is quite possible that vital information pertaining to the identities of some of the bizarre figures mentioned in the document has been lost. I have done my best to present the story surrounding Jesus decimating Amente and forgiving the Original Sin – the latter of these actions is so insane in the context of Christian belief that it is hard to believe that this document, once again allegedly written by St. Bartholomew the Apostle, hasn’t gotten more attention.
Further Reading:
The Coptic Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt by EA Wallis Budge (Original Source)
Analysis from BibleGateway