Witnesses For The Defense

An Easter Sunday Sermon

Gentlemen of the Jury, I hope you will allow me just a few minutes to present to you my final arguments in this important, if perplexing, case.

My charmingly inadequate colleague of the Defense points to the witness of the women, as reported in the Gospel of Luke. You will also find before you a photo of three of them, though I must say, they don’t exactly look all that happy, do they, considering what they’ve supposedly witnessed? I’m sure we must all generously agree that they were actually present at the tomb on the day in question. However, in an egregious omission, my well-intentioned colleague failed to admit that their witness is, in this or any other case, inadmissible.

As you probably know, through most of human history, the testimony of the “gentler sex” has been regarded as unacceptable in courts of law. This is because of the female disposition to emotionalism, often to the point of hysteria, and particularly as women are (how shall I delicately put it?) affected by the waxing and waning of the moon. Hence, I ask you to completely disregard everything said by the “witnesses” Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, or any of the other women with them (none of whose husbands, by the way, would vouch for the veracity of their statements, to say nothing of the fact that some of them, most curiously, remain spinsters).

Further, since this is a case about religious pretensions, let us appeal also to the very foundations upon which religion is built. Do any of you have the audacity to question the very nature of God? Because that is what is being asked of you. If, as my kind-hearted colleague suggests, it is not only permissible but also theologically commendable that women be considered equals of men in court, then the very design of human society as given by God Himself is itself under question.

This outrageous assertion also calls into question the teaching of the venerable apostle St Paul whose many contributions to sacred scripture make it abundantly clear that he himself would recognize it as nothing less than sacrilege. He wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians (14:34), for example, that women must remain silent in church. And he distinctly stated in his letter to the Ephesians (5:22–24), that it is the duty of wives to submit to their husbands because, as he so powerfully put it, “the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church.” It goes without saying, however, that it is advisable to disregard St Paul’s surprising statement in his Letter to the Galatians that in Christ there is no Greek or Jew, slave or free, male or female, supposedly because “all are one in Christ.” He simply couldn’t possibly have meant that the way it sounds.

Worst of all — I can scarcely bring myself to even form the words — accepting the legal testimony of these or any other women implies the indisputable blasphemy that females were created as much in the image of God, and as equally, as men. I’m sure none of you could possibly be so reprehensibly sacrilegious or so downright vulgar.

Allow me a moment to wipe my brow and imbibe some pure, cool vodka, I mean water, to calm myself. That’s better. Thank you for your patience.

My venerable colleague, Mr Lamb of the Defense, has argued, not completely unconvincingly, that recent scholarship has questioned the authenticity of certain parts of the Bible. Of course, that would seem to make our beloved red-letter editions of the New Testament (King James Version) a bit redundant, don’t you think? Nevertheless, let’s forge on with the alleged academic argument, shall we? For the past while — a mere couple of hundred years or so — ivory tower “scholars” have developed some rather strange methods for studying the Bible (upon which, I may remind you, everyone who has testified in this case has placed their hand while solemnly vowing to tell the truth and only the truth).

Many liberal academics have gone so far as to suggest that holy scripture, and most notably the New Testament, be studied using the very same methods of ordinary literary criticism — redacting texts, looking at sources, and using post-modern whatchamacallits. I’m told that contemporary biblical criticism has seen the rise of new perspectives which draw on feminist and multidisciplinary sociological approaches to address the meanings of texts and the wider world in which they were conceived. (What ever that means; I confess to finding it in Wikipedia.)

Anyway, I guess that’s all well and good, as long as the crazy professors leave us true believers alone. I say let them play with their demonic chemistry sets until they blow themselves to kingdom-come. Nevertheless, to advance the Prosecution’s case, I’d like us to focus for just a moment on one of the most widely-used elements these biblical “scholars” use, something they call, quite unapologetically, the Criterion of Embarrassment. Imagine!

It goes something like this. To assess whether a passage in the New Testament is “historically accurate,” these highfalutin college instructors have decided that if something would have been awkward or embarrassing for the author to write, it’s more likely to have been true. Their prime example is St Peter. They’re very sure he actually did deny knowing Jesus, because according to the Criterion of Embarrassment that story only made the early Church look bad. If that doesn’t take the cake!

Consequently, they say, similar claims may be made about the veracity of this gaggle of women “witnesses” who reported encountering two shining “angelic” men in the empty tomb where the deceased Jesus had been previously lain. Their story was regarded by the apostles as complete nonsense (no doubt because of the same shortcomings which, you’ll remember, have already proven to make women universally inadmissable witnesses in a court of law). Anyhoo, according to that crazy ol’ Criterion of Embarrassment, because the apostles deemed their story unbelievable makes their witness likely to be true. What!?

In any case, it’s clear that Peter, the Rock upon whom the Church was built, didn’t see anything at all. Holy Scripture tells us that those harridans, those slippery idle-tale-telling women, caused at least a moment of unsupported hope in his saintly impetuous mind, and so he ran to the tomb. There, we’re told, he saw only linen cloth. I’m sure we can all agree that a piece of cloth is not any kind of proof of resurrection. Poor Peter went home shaking his head, wondering what happened. Of course he did!

If what those hysterical females said was true (and I hasten to remind you it wasn’t), you’d think Peter would have seen something. You’d think an event as profound as the one “reported” at also would have had some significant effects, causing something in the world to change, wouldn’t you? I mean, at the very least, one would expect women by now to have gained some level of legal (if not moral) credibility. Or, ridiculous as it may sound, have caused them to be counted among the Company of Saints. Can you imagine anything as absurd sounding as “Saint Mary Magdalene”? It’s patently inconceivable.

Besides, if what those promiscuous women said was true, you’d think they’d have later developed skills beyond simply telling nonsensical idle tales. After all these hundreds and hundreds of years, have they done anything more serious with their lives, like earning the same rights and responsibilities as their male superiors? The right to vote perhaps? Equal pay for equal work?The freedom to make decisions about their own bodies? And perhaps — and please don’t think me reckless in making such an outlandish prognostication — you’d think that by now they’d have been admitted to Holy Orders as members of the Church’s esteemed clergy. Heaven forfend!

But no. It is obvious that, as always, men were correct in their assessment of women, and clearly of this group of old gossips. The poor dears were so obviously overcome with grief at the death of that Jesus character that they hardly knew what they were saying.

So my dear friends, Gentlemen of the Jury, I urge you in the strongest terms to join your upstanding masculine ancestors, and put a stop to this foolish resurrection rumour once and for all. Ignore the groundless bleatings of Mr Lamb, my eloquent if ineffective colleague. Stand on your own two feet, sirs. As citizens of this world, strike permanently from the record all unprovable, nonsensical idle tales about some empty first-century tomb. Above all, be practical and keep things as they are. As they were meant to be.

Remember this portentous moment, sirs, when you ascended to the heights of the most courageous of men. When I, the eminently humble Mr De Ville, Chief Prosecutor, convinced and enabled you to finally free mankind from the oppressive blight of womanly temptations.

(By the way, if any of you are interested in personally engaging my services, and I’m sure that you are, I will happy to distribute my card when court is dismissed. My fees are on a sliding scale that I know will you will find accommodating.)

Your Honour, Gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.