A nineteenth-century nun called Anne-Catherine Emmerich had remarkable visionary experiences. Housebound by illness in a small German town she received daily visits from a young writer called Clemens Brentano between 1820 and her death in 1824. She described what she ‘saw’ of the ministry of Jesus on a day-by-day basis and he carefully recorded it.
This source has been better known in Catholic than in Protestant circles and although never officially endorsed by the Catholic Church it has been regarded as at least an edifying meditation. It inspired some of the content of Mel Gibson’s 2004 film, ‘The Passion of Christ’.
In the 1880s a French priest called Julien Gouyet, having read Anne-Catherine’s visions about Jesus’ mother Mary spending the last years of her life in Ephesus, carried out his own search of the area. He found the overgrown ruins of a house which he was certain corresponded with the description of Mary’s home as regards both location and layout. He was ridiculed at first but several years later the ruins were found to have been visited by Christian pilgrims from an early time, revered as the place of Mary’s death, and the foundation of the original house was dated by Turkish scholars to the first century AD. The building has been restored and remains a place of pilgrimage.
It is controversial to claim knowledge of historical facts from a visionary source. New Testament scholarship has almost universally ignored Anne-Catherine. However, the quantity and quality of what she saw in her ‘panoramic’ recapture of Jesus’ ministry do present an extraordinary phenomenon.
There is an exact level of correspondence with the Jewish calendar, not only the weekly cycle of Sabbath observance but many greater and lesser festival occasions.
There is a description of Jesus’ journeys over a four-year period involving a knowledge of scores of obscure geographical locations which she could not have accessed by means of books but which later research has verified.
She provides a detailed chronological context for the majority of events familiar from the Gospels.
Many aspects of her account make it difficult to explain in terms of imaginative creation by either herself or Brentano.
Her chronological indications describe a four-year period of Jesus’ public activity which would start in the spring of 29AD (with baptism by John in September of that year) and continue until Good Friday on April 3rd 33, a dating for the crucifixion which many scholars have in any case favoured.
If the source is credited then it is a most remarkable supplementation of the Gospel accounts. It supports the view that the itinerant ministry of Jesus involved constant journeys across Israel including the south of the country. Incidentally it describes some journeys outside the land of Israel, for example a visit of several weeks to the island of Cyprus and the ministry of Jesus there in little-known locations which are correctly described.
A journey to Cyprus! It is not surprising that a visit lasting only a few weeks should not have received attention in our Gospel sources or ever been guessed at by New Testament scholars. Yet it is totally plausible. From the coast of Israel the voyage is short. The Acts of the Apostles mentions followers of Jesus from Cyprus engaged in early Christian mission activity in Syria.
I am deeply impressed by the claims of this material to be authentic and the way that her account adds extraordinary detail and further insight to our Gospel records. But I'm trying to consider it critically as well and there are points where I find particular uncertainty. Can it be true that the so-called ‘brothers of the Lord’, familiar figures in the early Church, are not actually children of Joseph or Mary but (in agreement with a traditional stream of Catholic opinion) various cousins? That Martha’s sister Mary, from the family Jesus knew so well in Bethany, is the same person as Mary Magdalene, having spent much of her early life in Magdala in Galilee? That Luke had already just become a disciple at the time of Easter and is the unnamed disciple on the Emmaus Road? That Jesus not only visited Cyprus but that in the last year of his ministry he was away for months in Egypt and Babylonia, travelling vast distances on foot with a small group of otherwise unknown disciples and only rejoining his main disciples for the last couple of months prior to his death?
Even if it is supposed that Anne-Catherine could be wrong on occasion (as many visionary and prophetic people in Christian history could be wrong on some matters while undeniably accurate on others) it would not prove that her testimony was worthless. She has so much that seems totally uninventable even by a precociously scholarly mind or an extraordinarily fertile subconscious imagination.
Jesus and the Gospels > Jesus and Anne-Catherine