Richard, sorry I haven't replied. I've been out of town today. A friend and I went to see Saving Mr. Banks. Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson were wonderful.
On Friday, January 3, 2014 1:18 PM, Richard J. Williams <pundits...@gmail.com> wrote: On 1/3/2014 10:25 AM, Share Long wrote: > Nor did she see Jesus ascend into heaven 40 days later. > You are really bringing up some important issues, Share. We don't have a Bible in the house so I'm depending Judy, and on my local Monsignor - he can read Greek - and Dad, who is in his third year reading the Bible from start to finish at his Bible Class every Sunday. Apparently Mary wasn't invited over to the house in Bethany that day, or maybe she was locked out by the men. The other guys probably didn't want a woman around the house so she didn't even try to get in. According to what I've read, Mary went back to Magdala. > It sounds like she saw him standing around looking like a > gardner. Go figure! > He just appeared to be a gardener - the key word here is *appeared*. Gnostics believe that the human body and the whole world is just an appearance, like a phantom or an apparition. Jesus even BEFORE the crucifixion, was able to walk on water, so I'm sure he also knew a thing or two about a garden. Someone that has been dead and miraculously comes back to life, and can walk through walls of solid rock, could certainly make himself look like a gardener - or anything else. So, Jesus could have presented himself as a gardener, but in order to prove that he was not a mere ghost, Jesus spoke to Mary from his human body and voice and then he flew up in the air to sit with his Father. I'm am quite certain that Mary saw Jesus disappear in the clouds. When Jesus returned to earth to meet the apostles he came flying back down as the Christ. It's not complicated. "Mary sees two angels and then Jesus, whom she does not recognize. Jesus tells her to tell the disciples that he is ascending to the Father, and Mary tells the disciples she has seen the Lord." Acts 1:3: "And when he had said these things, as they were looking, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight." Resurrection of Jesus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_of_Jesus
