A Sign Contradicted: Essays on the Life of Christ

By John O'Neill

The whole point of this collection of twenty-two essays on the life of Jesus is to give the reader more information, not mentioned in the four gospels so that you might more readily experience, in your readings and reflections on these events, something of what others who were actually there with Jesus saw, heard and felt during each event. I use information from historical, archeological, medical and theological sources to “flesh out” these narratives, hoping to recapture a sense of being there with Jesus as He ministered to the people in first-century Palestine, accomplishing, through the horrors of His suffering and death, infinite expiation to His Father for our sins.
I’ve arranged the essays into four parts. The two essays of the first part depict the period from Jesus’ miraculous conception in His mother’s womb, through the joyful and perilous circumstances of His’ birth, early infancy and pre-adolescent life.
The twelve essays of the second part take us on six jouneys with Jesus though many of the significant events of His three-year public ministry throughout all of Palestine. Each essay strives to add all the more realism to the story by including details not contained in the gospels narratives, but literally were unearthed in later centuries.
The five essays in the powerful third part trace the horrors inflicted on Jesus during the solemn three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday: His Last Seder; His agony, betrayal and arrest in the garden of Gethsemane; His late-night trial before the Sanhedrin and subsequent beatings by the palace guards; His trial and sentencing by Pilate; His even crueler torture at the hands of Pilate’s Roman guards before carrying His crossbeam to the summit of Golgotha; His extremely cruel crucifixion and excruciating death; and, finally, the hasty interment of His body in a nearby tomb.
The fourth and final part concludes Jesus’ gospel story with three essays, which give a fuller explanation of the evangelists’ sketchy accounts about His resurrection, His post-resurrection appearances to His disciples, and His ascension to His Father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John O'Neill
• Release date: Apr 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452419220

John O'Neill

About the Author John O’Neill is a retired Naval Commander of the Royal Australian Navy who served most of his time as a Submarine Engineering Officer. Those years provided him with a range of experiences that were at times tense, but mostly of achievement. He served as the Submarine Staff Officer in London during the IRA terrorist days and the build of the remaining Oberon Class Submarines for Australia. Upon retiring from the Navy, he joined the Swedish Submarine builder Kockums to build the Collins Class Submarine in Adelaide South Australia. John holds a master’s degree in Business and Technology from the University of New South Wales. Seven Long Steps To Paradise is John’s third book, the first two being Kafira, and Two Crowns. John was awarded the Order of Australia Medal in 2009.

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A Sign Contradicted

Essays on the Life of Christ

By John O’Neill

Author of Jesus’ Six Keys to a More Perfect You

Published by John O’Neill

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 1011 John O’Neill. All rights reserved.

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The Scriptural quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Catholic Edition, Anglicized Text, copyright © 1999, 1995, 1989, Division of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

Cover Design by Meghan O’Neill

Cover Art Credit: Le Calvaire by Karel Du Jardin (1626-1678), Musée du Louvre and Direction des Mesées de France, 1999. The licensor in no way endorses the author or this book. Attributed under the conditions listed at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/nc-nd/3.0/

Table of Contents

Preface: Fleshing Out the Life of Jesus

Part 1: A Portent of Things to Come

Chapter 1: Mary’s Conception of Jesus

Chapter 2: Jesus’ Birth and Childhood

Part 2: Jesus’ Public Ministry

Chapter 1: The Baptism of Jesus

Chapter 2: The Temptations of Jesus

Chapter 3: Jesus Calls His Apostles

Chapter 4: Jesus Begins His Public Ministry

Chapter 5: Jesus, Teacher

Chapter 6: Jesus, Healer

Chapter 7: Jesus Rejected in His Hometown

Chapter 8: Jesus Feeds Thousands

Chapter 9: Peter Confesses Faith in Jesus

Chapter 10: The Transfiguration of Jesus

Chapter 11: Jesus’ Entry into Jerusalem

Chapter 12: Jesus Cleanses the Temple

Part 3: Jesus’ Passion, Death and Burial

Chapter 1: Jesus’ Last Seder, First Mass

Chapter 2: Jesus’ Agony and Arrest

Chapter 3: Jesus’ Criminal Trials

Chapter 4: Jesus’ Torture, Crucifixion and Death

Chapter 5: The Burial of Jesus’ Body

Part 4: Jesus’ Glorification

Chapter 1: Jesus’ Resurrection

Chapter 2: Jesus’ Post-Resurrection Appearances

Chapter 3: Jesus’ Ascension to His Father

Appendix: Liturgical Gospel Readings

About the Author

Preface: Fleshing Out the Life of Jesus

When I was a first-year student of theology at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., I attended lectures by Fr. Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., on the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Thanks to his vast knowledge of Old Testament history, languages and archeology of that period, — and, most of all, to his enthusiasm about his topic — he made the persons and events of that book come alive for everyone in his class.

In imitation of Fr. Murphy, I’ve mixed, in this collection of essays, references from the gospel narratives with information from historical, archeological, medical and theological sources, to flesh out these New Testament narratives, hoping to recapture a sense of being there with Jesus as He ministered to the people of Israel in first-century New Testament times, and accomplished, through the horrors of His suffering and death, infinite expiation to His Father for our sins.

The goal of this book is to give you more information not mentioned in the four gospels so that you might more readily experience, in your readings and reflections on these events, what others who were actually there with Jesus saw, heard and felt during each event.

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Part 1: A Portent of Things to Come

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Chapter 1: Mary’s Conception of Jesus

It is Elûl, the sixth lunar month of the year in the Hebrew calendar, corresponding to the twenty-nine days from August 8 to September 6 in the Gregorian Calendar. It is summer in Galilee, and in the town of Nazareth, a young maiden of thirteen years named Mary has risen early to pray. The heavy dew of this summer morning covers the ground; it will dissipate soon as the hot, dry summer sun begins to parch the Galilean soil.

The Nazareth of Mary’s time is an obscure, impoverished little village in the Galilean hill country, home to about 400 people, overlooking the valley of Esdraelon, which runs south of Mount Tabor toward the River Jordan south of the Sea of Galilee. It is part of Lower Galilee, a fruitful region rising about 1,500 feet above the valley below. Mary is a peasant girl, toughened by a hardscrabble life and the constant struggle to survive under the rule of the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus and his puppet regime of the notoriously brutal King Herod the Great.

The cruel Roman occupation of Palestine began more than fifty years earlier. By this time, the Romans had developed a system of government there in which Roman overseers supervised Jewish monarchical and religious leaders who ruled in the name of Rome. Such was the system of power in which the family of Herod the Great prospered. The Jewish people of Galilee detested the tyrannical rule of the half-Jewish Herodians, who had sold them out to Rome for their own political and economic ambitions. For decades now, the Palestinian Jews had lived a torturous existence under the oppressive tyranny of the Herodians and their Roman puppeteers. By now, there were great expectations among the Galilean people that their God soon would provide the prophesied Messiah, a savior who would deliver them from this repressive regime and restore Israel to its rightful place in God’s plan for his chosen people.

Amid this oppression, which caused generations of Galileans and Judeans to cry out to God for the long-prophesied Messiah, Mary’s prayer time is interrupted suddenly by a stranger claiming to be God’s messenger.

Greetings, favored one!, he addressed her, The Lord is with you.

It comes as no surprise that Mary was greatly perplexed by what the stranger had said to her. Recognizing this, he explains further: Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus [which means Yhwh has saved.].

Mary was going to be the mother of the Messiah prophesied seven centuries earlier by Isaiah when he said, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, God with us".

The messenger confirms this by telling Mary, He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will rule over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Until now, Mary had no clue as to what is about to happen. Before her is a perfect stranger, telling her that she has been chosen by the Most High God from among all the women in human history to bear His Son. Even at thirteen, Mary is nobody’s fool. She quizzes the stranger on his knowledge of human reproduction, How can this be, since I am a virgin?

He explains that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and the power of the Most High will overshadow her so that the son born to her will be called rightly the Son of God. As a clincher, he tells Mary that her much-older kinswoman, Elizabeth, thought to be sterile, has been with child for the past five months, for nothing will be impossible with God.

On hearing this, Mary acquiesces: Here, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. At that moment, Mary’s acceptance unalterably changed the course of human salvation history.

Not long after this messenger of the Lord left her, Mary set out in haste for Elizabeth’s home in the hill country of Judea, near Jerusalem, a four-day trip by caravan.

On seeing Mary, Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.

Mary, deflecting Elizabeth’s praise to the Most High, responded, My soul magnifies the Lord; and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

Luke’s coverage of the events surrounding Mary’s conception of Jesus ends here with the report that she stayed with Elizabeth about three months before returning to her home in Nazareth (See Luke 1:26-56).

In those days in Israel, Jewish maidens were considered marriageable at twelve-and-a-half years of age. The marriage took place in two stages: the betrothal, a legal marriage contract by which Mary, the daughter of Heli [traditionally called Joachim] and Anna, became the wife of Joseph, the son of Jacob, but continued to live with her family until the wedding a year later. According to rabbinical law at this time, the betrothal is equivalent to an actual marriage and can be dissolved only by a formal divorce. When Mary returned from her trip to be with her cousin Elizabeth, she was showing enough that Joseph could tell that she was pregnant. Joseph knew that he wasn’t the child’s father, but did not want to expose his beloved Mary to the ignominy of death by stoning. So, when he had decided to divorce her quietly, Gabriel visited him in a dream, explaining the situation and instructing him to take his wife Mary into his home. Joseph did as he was told (See Matthew 1:18-25).

God chose as the mother and foster father of His Son a teenage girl and an older carpenter, living in obscurity in a remote rural hamlet perched on the side of hill in a conquered land, reviled by their oppressors. Mary, when told that she is to be the mother of the Son of the Most High, fully aware of her lowliness, accepts God’s will as the handmaid of the Lord. Of her own free will, she consents to what will become the torturous life of the mother of Jesus, the Messiah.

Joseph, when fully informed of Mary’s extraordinary circumstances, accepts his role as the legal head of the family. The redemption of humankind hinged from all eternity on the unselfish love and mutual trust of this extraordinary girl and her devoted husband, and they did not disappoint.

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