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drconstellation · 7 months

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The Passion of Jimbriel

Part 3: Resurrection

Part 1: The Entry to Soho

Part 2: Trials and Denials

The story of events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus, and the days following, until his ascension to Heaven, are collectively known as the Passion narratives. It comes from the Latin "to suffer," or "to endure."

In Part 1 of this series we looked at the three temptations in the wilderness during the 40 days of fasting, before the entry to Jerusalem on donkey. Then there was the Cleansing of the Temple and the Anointing of Jesus. I matched up the various scenes in S2 that mirrored these parts of the narratives.

In Part 2 we had the Last Supper, before moving to the Garden of Gethsemane and predicting the Three Denials. The burden of other's sin was taken on, the kiss of Judas was received and Jesus was arrested. Then there was a trial, the first of two, before the Three Denials actually happened. Now we are off to the palace to meet the Roman Governor of Judea.

Just a note: Part 3 isn't any easier than Part 2. Now is the time to save it to read for later, if you aren't in a safe place.

The Court of Pontius Pilate

Jesus is taken to Pilate to be judged again, as the priests want this troublemaker executed, but on questioning Jesus Pilate can find no fault with him. Pilate asks Jesus if he is King of the Jews, and Jesus replies "You have said so," which is not really an answer. Pilate is not sure what to do.

AZIRAPHALE: ...So, you don't know who you are? GABRIEL: Oh, yes. AZIRAPHALE: Ah. GABRIEL: I'm me. I just don't know who me is. AZIRAPHALE: I see. GABRIEL: But you know me. You recognized me. AZIRAPHALE: Well, I ah… know someone who looks like you. GABRIEL: That's probably me then. I think that's one of the main ways you can tell.

Pilate can't see any reason to convict Jesus, since he does not lay claim to any earthly kingdom, only a spiritual one, so he sends him off to King Herod.

Herod questions Jesus as well, hoping to observe one the miracles he has heard about. He gets the same non-responses from Jesus, so sends him back to Pilate.

Hey, it's me! King of the Jews! Gabriel! Don't you recognize me?

It's also worth noting Jimbriel's actual pose as he exits the book shop and how he holds his fingers. He holds his pointer and middle fingers out, and curls his ring and little fingers in on both hands (and this is not the only time he does this in the series.) This is a classic "preaching" pose, and he is mimicking an iconic pose of Jesus here.

There is a small question about whether at this point in the narratives whether it is the soldiers of Herod that dress Jesus in the robes of a king to mock him at this point, or its done a little later, after the release of Barabbas, so lets just mention it here, as it seems to happen twice in our story.

It also might be worth taking a small digression about the performer Liberace here, who inspired the ostrich feather coat, and who reigned as a king of entertainers in the post-WWII era. He was famous not only for his over-the-top flamboyance (as well as being queer) but also for his signature candelabra. You know, one of these:

The Release of Barabbas

Pilate was in a bit of pickle now. He really didn't want to condemn Jesus to death, but the priests were still pushing him to condemn Jesus to execution, so he decided he would give the people the choice instead. He offered them the choice of releasing Jesus or a prisoner called Barabbas. Whether they were stirred up by the priests or not they had only one choice.

They chose...

Actually, I think there are two choices for the release of Barabbas here - one is Gabriel, as I will explain below, and the other one -

Release Bwian!

Er, release Barabbas Mr Brown!

Pick a card, Mutt? While you're dressed in robes that are a throw-back to biblical times? What kind of ineffable games are being played here by the Almighty?

The Way of Sorrows

(Also known as: The Stations of the Cross, The Way of the Cross)

Oh, yes, its this bit. And you thought it was just a bit of silliness.

Lead the way, soldier!

Some of the narratives have the Roman soldiers who take him from Pilates court strip him and robe him in either red or purple, give him a crown of thorns and call him "King of the Jews!" again in mockery before he is forced to walk to his place of execution.

Wait, who's execution are we walking towards again?

Crown of Thorns. ✅ Mocking garb.✅

I had already mused in the past that Crowley had dressed like this to mock the Archangels in my big colour meta (under silver,) and I have also bumped into pre-release comments that thought he was doing that as well, so I 'm glad to see I'm not the only one on this train of thought! He's gone a bit over-the-top with his outfit, which is similar to Saraqael's (a hint to the connection there) plus he has a tactical turtle neck on to go with his master spy work he's undertaking (but so does Saraqael!) It also tells us its a level of rank he's quite familiar with.

Oh, hang on. Gabriel didn't get away from doing anything here.

The Three Stations of Gabriel's Cross Bearing: The first in 1827, when Crowley shows it to Aziraphale on a midnight date, the second when Aziraphale comes across it again in the present - and tells Crowley "I think I've found some clues," and the third when we see Gabriel showing it off to Beelzebub.

OK, one more bit of mocking...

The Crucifixion

On arriving at the top of Golgotha, Jesus was stripped of his clothes and nailed to the cross. A sign was placed above his head declaring him the king of the Jews. On either side two other criminals were also crucified that day.

This is the one part of the narratives that did not fit into S2, so it got given to us separately.

In S1 we had the scene at Golgotha in S1E3 Hard Times, where we are shown Aziraphale and Crowley meeting to witness the event. Aziraphale remarks that he is "not consulted on policy decisions," while Crowley relates that he carried out the Third Temptation on Jesus not long before this.

A red cloth draped on the ground symbolizes blood in S1. In S2 we have red tomatoes spilling across the road as Gabriel walks past on his way to the bookshop. They take us back to S1 and tell us its repeating again. I would expect another iteration in S3.

Then we have the two classic poses that were given to us, that are not in any scene from S2. When these were first released a number of ops posted about the similarity to the iconography of the Madonna and Jesus on the Cross.

On the left, is Aziraphale, posing as mother Mary, in the "Stabat Mater" pose, or "the mother was standing." This is Mary standing at the base of the cross, and she is traditionally shown on the left hand side. She is but a spectator to the scene.

On the right, is Crowley, posing as Jesus nailed to the cross. He is a sacrifice of one, to save many, in his present day costume.

What intrigues me is they chose to have Aziraphale wear his Job minisode costume for this shot. The angels were dressed in white and gold to show their "divine majesty," to fit in with the vivid 1950's style colouring. But it was also where he had to chose very carefully what he said, and he chose to lie to save lives.

A scene from the Job minisode, A Companion to Owls: Sitis and Job on the left - Sitis is Aziraphale-coded and Job is Crowley-coded. on the right are the divinely-glowing angels. Gabriel stands on the demonic-sided left of them, but Aziraphale is on the far left, the most demonic angel there. He was lying, after all, and that's what demons do, isn't it?

While Jesus is often called the Lamb of God, as sheep were considered more respectable to Christian ideals, and Jesus is said to have gone willingly to his death, it is perhaps a better way to consider what happened as the scapegoat ritual - where two goats are chosen, one is burdened with the sins of the group and released into the wilderness to take those sins with them and die, and the other to be sacrificed to God. In the Passion, it was Barabbas that was set free, and Jesus that was sacrificed.

The question then becomes how to view this through the lens of the Good Omens story. If we didn't get a crucifixion scene in S2, when is this occurring in the story? If Crowley is Jesus, who is Barabbas? If Aziraphale is Mary, just witnessing the execution, and not able to intervene...what could be the long term implications of that?

This is where I feel like I've done a Crowley on myself, spreading a field of sharp tacks across that shiny clean aisle in Heaven I was sauntering blithely down and stabbed myself unexpectedly in the foot.

Because the answer to the second question there is Barabbas is Gabriel. (hey, wot, didn't you say Mr Brown was Barabbas??) S2 spent quite a bit of time trying to tell us how similar Crowley was to Gabriel, and the two characters appear to be acting as "foils" to each other this season. Indeed, they have been interchangeable in their roles as Jesus throughout this three-part meta (thinking about another meta to expand on this.) And right at the end Gabriel gets to run away into the interstellar wilderness to ostensibly never be seen again - and Crowley stays to be emotionally slaughtered.

Which still leaves us with the first and third questions.

When did happen? The problem is, as already stated - this scene did not fit into S2, so we were given it separately. I know one could argue that the end of the above scene, and the following moments, could count as the crucifixion, as Aziraphale was bound seemingly helplessly by the manipulations of the Metatron to leave Crowley behind, and in doing so to sacrifice him for a greater good. This goes someway towards leaving Aziraphale as the witnessing Mary, but he is still far too involved for my liking here. And we've already put the label of Judas on him in Part 2 of this meta. He had to betray Crowley to get him to stay behind for his own safety.

The more likely scenario is then it happened in the past. I'm going to quote a passage from @vidavalor's meta "The *Original* Original Sin Theory as they say it best, really:

Aziraphale doesn’t need to see Heaven’s files to find out what happened to Crowley when Crowley fell because he was there. S3 is going to be about preventing the Second Coming and so plot allusions to the crucifixion (which had its own Crowley & Aziraphale scene in S1) will likely abound. Aziraphale was there when Lucifer and The Gang were tossed out of Heaven. To be fair to Aziraphale, there is basically nothing he could have done to prevent this and the best possible situation is that he didn’t even have the chance to. The worst possible situation is that he’s literally Judas and sold Crowley out, out of fear of being tossed out of Heaven himself. I tend to think it’s more that he just didn’t stand up and say anything in support of Crowley to prevent himself from being seen as on the side of the eventual demons. Still, just as Crowley thinks the punishment for Adam and Eve was harsh, Aziraphale thought that asking questions and being curious wasn’t enough to send Lucifer and everyone around him to Hell to be damned for all of eternity but it caused an obvious existential crisis in him that he still struggles to totally resolve.

And that is basically how I see it, too. Heaven (the Jewish priests), through the Metatron, wanted the inquisitive, questioning angel!Crowley gone, possibly because he'd found something he shouldn't have seen. Lucifer and the guys (Rome) didn't care much for angel!Crowley either, as I showed back in this meta, and were happy for him to be the scapegoat that got made an example of for punishment. And Aziraphale, as Mary, kept his mouth shut and just watched, because he wanted to be a good angel and not get thrown out of Heaven himself. Maybe he did know something that could have absolved angel!Crowley, maybe he lied to escape being thrown out himself, but what ever happened, he's been carrying a sense of guilt about it ever since.

As for Crowley, he was not a willing lamb at all. We see him question God about his fall, about testing Earth to the point of destruction and he gives the goats in the Job minisode a soliloquy about their impending doom that seems an obvious reflection of his own experience as a scapegoat.

Now we have the Second Coming in S3. Jesus will be back. So will mention of the crucifixion. There is still plenty of dirt to be dug up and aired on this yet.

Maybe someone did die, after all...of embarrassment!

Burial of Jesus

Joseph of Arimathea was given permission by Pilate to remove Jesus' body from the cross, wrap it in white linen, and place it in a tomb. Even though Jesus was considered a criminal, he should still be buried before sunrise the next day.

I'm going to admit, this is the one bit of the narratives I'm not sure about. Was it the burying of Gabriel's essence in the fly? Or the burying of Gabriel's location under the 25 lazurii miracle?

There also a section called the Harrowing of Hell here, where Jesus was said to have descended to the Underworld, or Hell (because that is what Hell means, after all, the Underworld - that's why it's in the basement of the celestial corporate building!) and liberated those caught in Hell up until that time.

This could be why we get the scenes with Beelzebub stressing over the disappearance of Gabriel and lack an any sign of where he has gone. They look more "harrowed" as the days go on.

Resurrection

After three days, Jesus rose from the dead. This act is seen as a guarantee that all the dead (on the "right side" or those whose names are in the Book of Life) will be also resurrected when the Second Coming occurs. It is also known as The Parousia, which we see mentioned inside the cinema on the wall during the opening sequence in S2.

After three days, some women approached the tomb to finish preparing the body, because they had not been able to earlier due to the sabbath day occurring. As they approached, they found the stone that should have blocked the entrance rolled back, and an angel clad in white sitting there telling them not to be afraid, but to go tell others what had happened.

Well, Gabriel had left the building, but the last thing was they were going to do was tell everyone about it!

SARAQUEL: I don't trust him. Can we begin the memory wipe now? MICHAEL: What, without him here? [nods] Good idea. SARAQUEL: Right. I can't… I can't find his memory anywhere. In fact, I can't find him in the building. He's left Heaven. Should I sound an alert? METATRON: Oh, don't be so wet. No, you're all just going to have to find him. That's all.

Humph. You're being the wet blanket, Metatron.

On one side of The Resurrectionist sign for the pub in Edinburgh we have Jesus standing outside his tomb. He is dressed in red and blue. The red represents his connection to humanity but he is wrapped in the blue of divinity. It looks like we are looking out of the tomb into the world. The entrance is supposed to match the "gate" of Eden that Aziraphale sent Adam and Eve through, so if it looks familiar, that's why.

We something similar when Gabriel regains his memories from the fly. We start out with a red transition, then move towards blue as he regains his angelic divinity, then he is finally back as his lilac royal smugness self on the last.

I did take a very long look at @embracing-the-ineffable's The Ineffable Detective Agency's presents: Gabriel's Memory and the quick transition sections, but didn't come to any firm conclusions, other than the colours. Although this may be why Death appears four times.

Ascension to Heaven

Accounts vary - some say it was the same day, some say after forty days - Jesus ascends to Heaven.

See you later, guys!

You know you can never return, right? Right?

Um, so, what about this little thing called the Second Coming, then?

Wait and see? nngggkk...

Here endeth our journey through the Passion narratives.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #good omens analysis #aziraphale #crowley #gabriel #beelzebub #the metatron #saraqael #mr brown #the eldritch ball #liberace ostrich feather coat #jimbriel #the passion of jimbriel #the resurrectionists #job minisode

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