He's Not the Gardener! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rabboni!

"Rabboni" is Hebrew or Aramaic and means "Teacher" or "Master", according to the NASB version of the Bible. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word as a Jewish title of respect given to learned persons or spiritual instructors. Whatever the nuances of the translation are, it is clear that Mary Magdalene has recognized that the person is not the gardener, but is Jesus, standing alive before her.

This question was submitted by Allison03.

Answer: It is the only Gospel to include angels in it.

The other Gospels do include angels. See Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20. John is, however, the only one to mention the garden. John 19:41 mentions that there was a garden where Jesus was crucified and buried, and then John 20:15 proclaims that Mary Magdalene didn't recognize Jesus at first. She thought He was the gardener.

Some Bible scholars and readers interpret the significance of the garden in several ways. For one, God created Adam and Eve and placed them in a garden. It was in that garden where they sinned and brought a curse upon mankind (Genesis chapters 2-3). 1 Corinthians 15:45 calls Jesus the second or last Adam, because He came to redeem mankind. By having a garden in His tomb, Jesus portrays how He wants to re-create people, at least spiritually.

Another interpretation suggests that John alludes to the Song of Solomon's garden in his Gospel. For example, in Song of Solomon 6:2, the bride states that her beloved went down to his garden to pasture his flock. While some Christians consider the Song of Solomon to be a literal depiction of the love between a husband and a wife, other Christians believe that it metaphorically portrays the love between Christ and His "bride", which is the born-again believers. The New Testament calls Jesus a shepherd, so from a Christian perspective, when the Shulammite bride says that her beloved went down to his garden to pasture his sheep--acting as a shepherd--one can certainly see how that could symbolically refer to Jesus Christ.

This question was submitted by Ceduh.

Answer: Do you love Me?

According to John 21, Jesus appeared to the disciples while they were fishing. Interestingly, they didn't realize that the man on the beach was Him at first. However, verses 12-19 tell of Jesus inviting them to have breakfast with Him. The breakfast was fish and bread. Verse 15 states that Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him. Peter answered yes, but Jesus asked him two more times (verses 16-17). Each time, after Peter answered the question, Jesus responded by commanding Peter to tend His lambs or flock His sheep. The "sheep" are the followers of Christ.

GotQuestions.org provides intriguing details in their article "Why Did Jesus ask Peter 'Do You Love Me?' Three Times?". The article states that when Jesus asked the question the first two times, He used the Greek word "agape", which refers to unconditional love. When Peter answered yes, he used "phileo", which means brotherly and friendship love. When Jesus asked him the third time, Jesus used "phileo" and Peter still replied with "phileo". It seems like Jesus wanted Peter to move beyond brotherly love and love Him unconditionally, which he would need to be a martyr, but at least at that *specific* time, Peter failed.

This question was submitted by Ceduh.

Answer: By eating some broiled fish

This event is described in the 24th chapter of Luke, verses 36 to 43. It's important to remember that Jesus returned in His physical body, which was the same one that was crucified and entombed. However, the body had been modified so that He could now operate in multiple dimensions, as evidenced by His appearing and disappearing at will.

The promise is that we Christians, too, will one day have a resurrection body like His.

This question was submitted by Watchkeeper, proud member of the Bible Believers Brigade.

Answer: False

The quote is a clever (I think) trick on my part. Luke 24:4-7 doesn't state that Jesus appeared to those women and said that. In fact, Luke doesn't even give the women's names until verse 10. Furthermore, the verses don't say that the resurrected Jesus spoke to any woman. Instead, 4-7 states that *angels* spoke to the women (with the exception of Mary Magdalene, which I'll explain below) and the angels told them,

"'Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again'?"

It is rarely good to make conclusions based upon one part of the Bible; it is best to study the whole Bible before drawing conclusions. All four Gospels agree that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and Matthew, Mark, and Luke mention that she didn't originally go there alone. She had other women with her. As Luke 8 states, Jesus had many female followers.

Even though John doesn't plainly list any other woman, even he implies that Magdalene wasn't alone because she uses the plural term "we" in John 20:2. But John also clearly states that Magdalene didn't know where Christ's body was before He appeared to her. If the angels told her what they told the other women in Luke, then she should had known that Christ resurrected, and she wouldn't had felt the need to run and tell Peter that His body was gone. After Peter and the beloved disciple left the tomb, Mary Magdalene was left alone, crying (John 20). Evidently, Mary Magdalene ran outside of the tomb to find the male disciples *before* the angels spoke to the other women.

Probably dismayed after their encounter with the angels, the other women left the tomb, so when Magdalene returned to the tomb with Peter and John, her female companions were gone, similar to what she thought her Lord's body was!

Both Mark 16 and John 20 proclaim that Mary Magdalene was the first person (singular) to see and talk to the risen Jesus. Matthew 28 briefly mentions Jesus appearing to other female followers, but I believe He did that after His initial appearance to Mary Magdalene.

This question was submitted by Ceduh.

Answer: They gave them a large amount of money and told them to say that the disciples had stolen the body.

According to Matthew 28:11-15, the chief priests consulted with the elders and paid the soldiers a lot of money to say that the disciples had stolen the body by night whilst the soldiers slept.

This was a very dangerous thing for the soldiers to do. If they reported that they had fallen asleep whilst on duty, they would probably have been executed under Roman law.

Matthew also tells us that many Jews at the time believed this version of events and it is possible that some still do.

This question was submitted by cal562301.

Answer: Cleopas

It's interesting to note that Cleopas, also known as Alphaeus, has long been thought to have been the brother of Joseph, Jesus's earthly foster father. According to Matthew Henry's Commentary, the other person traveling on the Emmaus road may have been Peter, but that isn't certain.

This question was submitted by rredman95.

Answer: Jerusalem

Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He longed to care for His people's city. In Matthew 21, Jesus says, "How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling." In Luke 19 verses 41-44 of the same lament, where Jesus foretells the death of Jerusalem, when its enemies will surround it and it will be leveled. The gardener is Jesus who has been given power of judgment (John 5:22). The people of Israel are the trees that must produce fruit, and Jesus wept at their eventual destruction which he foretold, because they rejected one who was to save them. (Isaiah 28:16, Matthew 21:42-43). They were expected to bear fruit, to follow the Word of God, to recognize the truth given to them by their cornerstone, Jesus.

This question was submitted by Allison03.

Answer: Jesus told Mary to tell His brethren that He was ascending.

We are looking, from the definition of "apostle" given, for a messenger or one sent on a mission. Of the choices given, we choose the only choice where Jesus gave Mary a mission. He told her to tell the "brothers" or "brethren" that He was ascending or going to the Father. She was sent on the mission, and she did indeed go to the disciples and say that she had seen the Risen Lord and she relayed what He had told her. Another reason for this title was that she arrived at the tomb, according to verse 2 of Chapter 20, saw that the stone had been rolled away, and then ran to Simon Peter and "the other disciple whom Jesus loved" and told them about the missing body. It is nteresting that, in this verse, it states that she said, "we do not know where they have laid Him." The "We" implies that she was not alone when she went to the tomb. In Matthew 28, the account includes two Marys. In Mark 16, two Marys and Salome. In Luke 24, "they" and "women" are mentioned, and later we are given a partial list that includes three named women and "other women." From this we know that Mary Magdalene was definitely NOT the only woman at the tomb to see the stone rolled back.

So why was Mary Magdalene titled "The Apostle of the Apostles"? It was because she was the one who, while weeping, was approached by the "Gardener", and who was given the mission to go tell Jesus' brethren the good news. John 20 parallels Mark 16 in that Jesus gives the commission to Mary to tell the disciples of events. (Ceduh's note: St. Thomas Aquinas originally gave her the title and other people have used it since.)

Lee Strobel's book "The Case for Christ" lists the fact that Mary Magdalene is listed as the first to see the Risen Christ as a major argument for the truth of the Gospel events of the Resurrection. In the traditions of that day, Strobel's experts agree, a woman would not be the first choice to see the Risen Christ if a story were fiction made up by the disciples. But two Gospel accounts make it clear that not only was she first, but she was sent on a mission by Jesus to the others to announce that "I have seen the Lord!"

This question was submitted by Allison03.

Answer: It is worthless.

Christians believe that Apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, along with several other New Testament books after the Gospels. Paul dedicated chapter 15 to Christ's resurrection and resurrections in general. He begins verse 12 by stating that some members of the Corinthian church didn't believe in resurrections from the dead. Interestingly, Paul condemns their unbelief and doesn't seem to distinguish Jesus resurrecting from other people rising from the dead. In verse 13, he states that if there is no resurrection of dead people, then even Jesus didn't resurrect.

He then goes on to proclaim that if Jesus didn't come back to life, then the Christian faith is worthless and there is no salvation. In other words, without faith in the resurrection, Christians might as well be unbelievers, or if they claim to be Christians but don't believe that Jesus came back to life, according to the Bible, they aren't really Christians at all.

As an interesting side note, even though the Pharisees were violently against Christ, they also believed in resurrections. The Sadducees didn't.

This question was submitted by Ceduh.