Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong

What really causes addiction -- to everything from cocaine to smartphones? And how can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand, as he watched loved ones struggle to manage their addictions. He started to wonder why we treat addicts the way we do -- and if there might be a better way. As he shares in this deeply personal talk, his questions took him around the world, and unearthed some surprising and hopeful ways of thinking about an age-old problem.

The Surprising Thing I Learned Sailing Solo Around The World

What do you learn when you sail around the world on your own? When solo sailor Ellen MacArthur circled the globe – carrying everything she needed with her – she came back with new insight into the way the world works, as a place of interlocking cycles and finite resources, where the decisions we make today affect what's left for tomorrow.

What Do We Do When Antibiotics Don’t Work Any More?

Penicillin changed everything. Infections that had previously killed were suddenly curable. But as Maryn McKenna shares in this sobering talk, we've squandered the advantages of penicillin and the antibiotics that followed. New, drug-resistant bacteria mean we're entering a post-antibiotic world -- and it won't be pretty. There are, however, things we can do ... if we start right now.

The Art Of First Impressions — In Design And Life

Book designer Chip Kidd knows all too well how often we judge things by first appearances. In this hilarious, fast-paced talk, he explains the two (opposing) techniques designers use to communicate -- clarity and mystery -- and when, why and how they work. He celebrates beautiful, useful pieces of design, skewers a few sacred cows and shares the thinking behind some of his own iconic book covers.

Why It's Time To Forget The Pecking Order At Work

What makes a successful team -- one that's flexible, full of ideas, empathetic and smart? In a radical rethink, Margaret Heffernan suggests that it's not a great leader or a superstar staffer, but actually the team's informal social bonds — built every coffee break, every time one team member asks another for help — that lead over time to great results. It's a bold vision of what it means to work. Because as Heffernan points out: “Companies don’t have ideas. Only people do.”

How A Driverless Car Sees The Road

Statistically, the least reliable part of the car is ... the driver. Chris Urmson heads up Google's driverless car program, one of several efforts to remove humans from the driver's seat. He talks about where his program is right now, and shares fascinating footage that shows how the car sees the road and makes decisions about what to do next.

Why I Believe The Mistreatment Of Women Is The Number One Human Rights Abuse

In this passionate talk, former US President Jimmy Carter shares jaw-dropping stats about the mistreatment of women and girls, the number-one human rights issue on the world today. He suggests three reasons why inequality continues in so many ways in so many parts of the world. The final one? “In general, men don’t give a damn.”

Meet The Women Fighting On The Front Lines Of An American War

In 2011, the US Armed Forces still had a ban on women in combat -- but in that year, a Special Operations team of women was sent to Afghanistan to serve on the front lines. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon tells the story of this "band of sisters," an extraordinary group of women warriors who helped break a long-standing barrier to serve.

How This FBI Strategy Is Actually Creating US-Based Terrorists

There's an organization responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and ISIS combined: the FBI. How? Why? In an eye-opening talk, investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson reveals a disturbing FBI practice that breeds terrorist plots.

The Surprisingly Logical Minds Of Babies

How do babies learn so much from so little so quickly? In a fun, experiment-filled talk, cognitive scientist Laura Schulz shows how our young ones make decisions with a surprisingly strong sense of logic, well before they can talk.

Do We See Reality As It Is?

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman is trying to answer a big question: Do we experience the world as it really is ... or as we need it to be? In this ever so slightly mind-blowing talk, he ponders how our minds construct reality for us.

Resurrection – A Reality or a Pious Dream? Part V Matthew’s Story of Easter

by John Shelby Spong
http://johnshelbyspong.com/

When we come to the Easter story in the gospel of Matthew, which was written according to the best estimates of the scholars about 10 to 15 years after Mark, we discover two things immediately. First, Matthew was very dependent on Mark, which he clearly had before him as he wrote. Second, Matthew regarded Mark as incomplete and so he quite consistently filled in the blanks or sharpened the details that he believed Mark had left vague or empty in his story.

Mark says: “When the Sabbath had passed” (Mark 1:1) and only later tells us it was early in the morning, while Matthew is quite specific that the women began their journey to the tomb: “After the Sabbath toward the dawn of the first day of the week” (Matt 28:1).

Mark had identified the women who came to the tomb as Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James, and Salome. As we discussed last week depending on where one places the comma that could be two women or three. Take that comma out and the text could be read: “Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Salome,” making James and Salome siblings and seeming to identify just which Mary this was.

It seems to me that this is the way that Matthew read it for he refers to only two women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. We also noted last week that in Mark’s final verses of his crucifixion story, he tells us that only Mary Magdalene and another woman named Mary viewed the crucifixion from afar. In any event that seems to be the way Matthew treated it. Again, I raise the possibility, based on an earlier passage in Mark, that this second Mary was in fact the mother of Jesus.

The mother of Jesus was referred to by the name “Mary” only once in Mark’s gospel and that was by an anonymous voice in the crowd. Jesus had just spoken in the synagogue in Nazareth in what must have been a brilliant fashion, prompting this voice to cry out: “Where did this man get all this? What is the wisdom given to him? What mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and mother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon and are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:2, 3).

If that is a proper reading of Mark, Salome could have been one of the unnamed sisters of James and therefore of Jesus. If this second Mary is not the mother of Jesus, then there is no biblical evidence that the mother of Jesus was present at the foot of the cross until the 10th decade when the Fourth Gospel places her there. Such a conclusion would shatter Marian piety, which has always portrayed the mother of Jesus as cradling the deceased body of her son at the foot of the cross. At the same time, this identification would indicate that the mother of Jesus did in fact have other known children, which would serve to shatter another aspect of Marian piety, namely that the mother of Jesus was “ever virgin.” Separating biblical facts from developing tradition has never been easy.

In any event, to go back to my original assertion, when we read Matthew’s story of Easter we discover that he regularly filled in the blanks that he appeared to think that Mark had left open. As Mark’s women approach the tomb, they expressed some anxiety as to how they would be able to roll the stone from the door of the tomb. When they arrived, however, they discovered it had already been rolled away. How that was accomplished was left unexplained. Matthew filled in this blank. He tells his readers that there was a “great earthquake.” In that earthquake the angel of the Lord descended out of the sky. It was this angel, he asserts, who rolled the great stone away. Matthew has clearly heightened the supernatural quality of the story. Its miraculous nature was growing.

Mark described the messenger of the resurrection as: “a young man in a white robe” (Mark 16:5). Matthew has heightened that figure also, describing him in overtly supernatural terms: “His appearance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow” (Matt 28:3).

Matthew then used this angel to take care of another problem that he himself had created. Only in Matthew are we told the story of Temple guards being placed around the tomb of Jesus, lest the “disciples of Jesus come by night and steal the body, while claiming that he had been raised from the dead.” By the time Matthew wrote, some apologetic agenda was surely operating and it found expression in this story. Having created this guard around the tomb of Jesus, Matthew now had to deal with its presence. He did so by suggesting that the appearance of the angel, who arrived on the wings of an earthquake, was so dazzling that the assigned guards trembled and fell over into a state of unconsciousness. They “became like dead men” (Matt. 28:4), says Matthew’s text. So with these two issues settled the way was prepared for Matthew’s women to arrive at the tomb and to be unhindered, so his story could unfold.

The angel in Matthew now spoke directly to the women. The message is all but identical with the words of Mark’s young man in a white robe: “Do not be afraid. You seek the one who was crucified.” Matthew had the angel call him Jesus while Mark had the messenger identify him as “Jesus of Nazareth.” Then each gave the resurrection message: “He is not here. See the place where they laid him.” That place was presumably empty. Then the angel said: “He has risen.” Note that the action has now been shifted from God who raised Jesus in Paul, to Jesus who now did the rising.

Then Matthew’s angel repeated the instruction of Mark’s young man in a white robe, with one distinction: “Go tell the disciples,” they both said, “that he is going before you to Galilee,” but Mark’s messenger said: “go tell the disciples and Peter.” Peter has, however, disappeared from Matthew. The last one sees of Peter in Matthew’s gospel is the portrait of a broken, weeping man who has just denied Jesus three times. Peter is never rehabilitated in Matthew. That restoration was destined to happen only in the epilogue to the Fourth Gospel written some fifteen years later.

At this point, however, the two stories diverge significantly. In Mark’s gospel we are told that the women “went out and fled from the tomb, for fear and trembling had come upon them and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). At this point, as we noted last week, Marks gospel came to an abrupt ending. The risen Christ never appeared to anyone. There was only a promise in Mark, vague and unfulfilled, that if they went to Galilee, that is, if they returned to their home, they would in fact see him.

That ending was clearly too incomplete for Matthew so he wrote a new one. It is in two parts. In the first part, Matthew’s women did not flee in fear and say nothing to anyone. They were not, as they appear to be in Mark, faithless and disobedient to the instructions of the messenger. Matthew had them rather go at once to tell the disciples, who presumably were still in Jerusalem. They were then rewarded for their faithfulness, for before they had gone from the garden, they are confronted by the risen Jesus.

This is the first actual narrative of how the raised Christ appeared to anyone that we have in writing in the entire Bible. We note that this first appearance story was not written until the middle years of the ninth decade, or some 55 years after the first Easter. It is also in this story that the first hint that the resurrected body of Jesus was a physical reality was suggested.

The risen Jesus met these women, presumably still in the garden belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. He spoke to them first with just the single word: “Hail.” Presumably they fell to the ground in worship for the text says that they took hold of his feet. I do not know how one can take hold of feet that are not physical. Matthew’s intention was clear. Resurrection, he was asserting, was real, it was tangible. Then Jesus spoke again to the women, but his words were disappointing. He simply repeated, almost verbatim, the words of Matthew’s angel.

Grasp now the significance of this fact. The first words attributed to the resurrected Jesus in the entire Christian tradition were neither original nor unique, they are an identical repeat of the words of the angel, except they have been placed into the first person, singular: “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brethren (rather than the disciples) to go to Galilee and there they will see me.”

Matthew completed his Easter story by relating the details of that appearance in Galilee, but before he does, he had to complete his story about the Temple guards who, at the appearance of the angel, had fallen over “like dead men.” By now they had revived. Matthew had them report to the chief priests all that they had experienced. They were then, he said, bribed by the assembled elders to put out a story that Jesus’ disciples had stolen his body while they were asleep. To be asleep while on guard duty, however, was a capital offense. To admit that would be like volunteering to be executed. So these guards were given the assurance that if they would stick to this official explanation, they would be protected when these reports came to the governor’s ears. So Matthew said they took the bribe money and spread the official line. What the followers of Jesus now call resurrection, they said, was, in fact, nothing but the disciples stealing the body of the deceased Jesus. That was in Matthew’s mind the official line of the Temple authorities. The Easter stories in the New Testament do read rather differently when one isolates them and reads them in the historical order of their being written.

Matthew was destined to fill in one more Marcan omission. He will describe the Galilean appearance that Mark left only as a promise. With it he will bring his gospel to a great conclusion. Next week we will analyze that final Matthew narrative.

How To Fix A Broken School? Lead Fearlessly, Love Hard

On Linda Cliatt-Wayman’s first day as principal at a failing high school in North Philadelphia, she was determined to lay down the law. But she soon realized the job would take much more than that. She shares the three principles that helped her turn around a school labeled “low-performing and persistently dangerous.” Her fearless determination is a model for leaders.

This Is What It's Like To Teach In North Korea

For six months, Suki Kim worked as an English teacher at an elite school for North Korea's future leaders -- while writing a book on one of the world's most repressive regimes. As she helped her students grapple with concepts like "truth" and "critical thinking," she came to wonder: Was teaching these students to seek the truth actually putting them in danger?

A Moving Song From Women In Prison For Life

The ten women in this chorus have all been sentenced to life in prison. They share a moving song about their experiences — one that reveals their hopes, regrets and fears. "I'm not an angel," sings one, "but I'm not the devil." Filmed at an independent TEDx event inside Muncy State Prison, it's a rare and poignant look inside the world of people imprisoned with no hope of parole.

Magical Houses, Made Of Bamboo

You've never seen buildings like this. The stunning bamboo homes built by Elora Hardy and her team in Bali twist, curve and surprise at every turn. They defy convention because the bamboo itself is so enigmatic. No two poles of bamboo are alike, so every home, bridge and bathroom is exquisitely unique. In this beautiful, immersive talk, she shares the potential of bamboo, as both a sustainable resource and a spark for the imagination. "We have had to invent our own rules," she says.

Programming Bacteria To Detect Cancer (And Maybe Treat It)

Liver cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to detect, but synthetic biologist Tal Danino had a left-field thought: What if we could create a probiotic, edible bacteria that was "programmed" to find liver tumors? His insight exploits something we're just beginning to understand about bacteria: their power of quorum sensing, or doing something together once they reach critical mass. Danino, a TED Fellow, explains how quorum sensing works -- and how clever bacteria working together could someday change cancer treatment.

New Video Technology That Reveals An Object's Hidden Properties

Subtle motion happens around us all the time, including tiny vibrations caused by sound. New technology shows that we can pick up on these vibrations and actually re-create sound and conversations just from a video of a seemingly still object. But now Abe Davis takes it one step further: Watch him demo software that lets anyone interact with these hidden properties, just from a simple video.

A Song For My Hero, The Woman Who Rowed Into A Hurricane

Singer-songwriter Dawn Landes tells the story of Tori Murden McClure, who dreamed of rowing across the Atlantic in a small boat -- but whose dream was almost capsized by waves the size of a seven-story building. Through video, story and song, Landes imagines the mindset of a woman alone in the midst of the vast ocean.

The Dancer, The Singer, The Cellist ... And A Moment Of Creative Magic

Legendary dancer Bill T. Jones and TED Fellows Joshua Roman and Somi didn't know exactly what was going to happen when they took the stage at TED2015. They just knew they wanted to show the audience a creative collaboration in action. The result: An improvised piece they call "The Red Circle and the Blue Curtain," so extraordinary it had to be shared...