the timboucher experience

“I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”
- Revelations 1:18 (NIV)

Jesus’s descent into Hell is one of my personal favorite aspects of the Christian story, while being one of the most neglected. Supposedly the orthodox origin of the legend that he did so is based on 1 Peter 3:19, which says that Jesus “preached to the spirits in prison.” There were many apocryphal sources though which dealt with this story in much more detail, such as the Acts of Pilate / the Gospel of Nicodemus, among others. For an exceptional run-down of these sources, check out The Descensus Ad Inferos (on Delirium’s Realm).

I once asked my parents (who both work for the Catholic Church) why the story of Jesus’s exploits in Hell was not included in the official canon of the Church. They said something to the effect of the Church doesn’t want to focus on what he did or did not do there, but on his saving message of blah blah blah… I guess that’s all well and good for some people, but the idea of Jesus going to Hell is too interesting to me to just brush off. Historically, many others seem to have sided with my interest. In the Middle Ages, the story was immensely popular, and was generally referred to as the Harrowing of Hell. In it, Jesus was generally depicted as a conquering general, throwing down the gates of Heaven, and freeing the righteous pagans, and those who were born before Jesus’s life, who were unable to achieve salvation through him.

Part of the reason I like this story is because it makes Jesus look pretty badass. Otherwise, he’s generally depicted as being a pretty mild nice guy, into non-violent solutions and shit like that. But here he comes and smashes hell to shit. There is an apocryphal text called the Odes of Solomon which also has some cool accounts of this. One of them is Ode 42. Line 11 says:

Sheol saw me and was shattered, and Death ejected me and many with me.

Sheol was the Hebrew version of Hades/Hell. Jesus then sets about collecting the spirits to him in Line 14:

And I made a congregation of living among his dead; and I spoke with them by living lips; in order that my word may not be unprofitable.

Other odes address this in some other really exciting ways as well. Specifically Ode 17, which has an imprison spirit say in line 4:

My chains were cut off by His hands, I received the face and likeness of a new person, and I walked in Him and was saved.

And in lines 10-12, Jesus exclaims:

And I shattered the bars of iron, for my own shackles had grown hot and melted before me. And nothing appeared closed to me, because I was the opening of everything. And I went towards all my bound ones in order to loose them; that I might not leave anyone bound or binding.

Having recently written about Christian Anarchism and Liberation Theology, the conspiratorial side of me has to wonder if these apocryphal texts weren’s suppressed with good reason - at least from a social control standpoint. That is, if you’re trying to build a centralized church/government, you would want to de-emphasize as much as possible your main character’s propensity for violent liberation. A story-system used for social-control can’t encourage flouting of the institution which rests on it. You don’t want people to sit there and think they can imitate Christ by going into actual prisons run by the Empire and shattering the bars and throwing off the shackles of those chained there. If that were the case, maybe we would have seen a Christian citizens brigade go in and liberate the prisoners at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. So perhaps from the perspective of the Empire, it’s best if we spend the days preceding Easter grieving for the death of Jesus, rather than exalting in his triumph over the Black Iron Prison.

Christ is not the only mythical figure who descended to the underworld of course. This act goes back to all the oldest religions and appears throughout the world. In the Middle East, we have the story of Inanna who descended to the Sumerian underworld. Greek mythology abounds with such figures as well - notably among them, Orpheus, who went to Hades to get back his wife. In the Orphic and other Mystery Religions of pagan Europe, the “descent into the underworld” was one of the primary rites of initiation for all members. Some authors even attribute the popularity of Christ’s Harrowing of Hell as having been merely an adaptation of pagan stories of the time. Going back even further than that though, we have the shamanic tradition in which shamans would go into trance and descend into the underworld or ascend into heaven in order to perform some task or bring back a sick or dying soul. In some sense, you could easily say that Jesus continues and keeps alive this ancient shamanic tradition.

All this stuff, for me, tends to make Good Friday a great deal more interesting and exciting.

• The entry on Persephone
• Good & plenty
• The Wild Hunt & Lil Red
• Van Stinking
• Kore/Persephone rise celebrated on my birthday?