He had already outraged the Jews by ordering his troops to march into Jerusalem displaying their shields with images of the emperor. Herod Antipas led delegations requesting their removal. Always “inflexible and cruel,” Pilate refused. When more Jews protested, he unleashed his guards, but the delegates lay on the ground and bared their necks. Pilate then removed the offending images. More recently he had killed the Galilean rebels “whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.”48
“Art thou the King of the Jews?” Pilate asked Jesus. After all, Jesus’ followers had acclaimed him king when he entered Jerusalem. But he answered, “Thou sayest it,” and refused to add anything more. But Pilate did learn he was a Galilean. “As soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction,” Pilate sent his prisoner to Herod Antipas as a courtesy to the ruler of Galilee, who had a special interest in Jesus. It was a short walk to Antipas’ palace. Herod Antipas, says Luke, “was exceeding glad” for he had wanted to meet John the Baptist’s successor for a long time “and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.” But Jesus so despised the “fox,” killer of John, that he did not even deign to speak to him.
Antipas played with Jesus, asking him to perform his tricks, presented him with a royal robe and called him “king.” The tetrarch was hardly likely to try to save John the Baptist’s successor, but he appreciated the opportunity to interview him. Pilate and Antipas had long been enemies but now they “made friends together.” Nonetheless, Jesus was a Roman problem. Herod Antipas sent him back to the Praetorium. There, Pilate tried Jesus, two so-called thieves and Barabbas, who, says Mark, “lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him.” This suggests that a handful of rebels, who perhaps included the two “thieves,” were being tried with Jesus.
Pilate toyed with releasing one of these prisoners. Some of the crowd called for Barabbas. According to the Gospels, Barabbas was released. The story sounds unlikely: the Romans usually executed murderous rebels. Jesus was sentenced to crucifixion while, according to Matthew, Pilate “took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person.”
“His blood be upon us and our children,” replied the crowd.
Far from being a mealy-mouthed vacillator, the violent and obstinate Pilate had never previously felt the need to wash his hands before his blood-letting. In an earlier dispute with the Jews, he had sent his troops in civilian disguise among a peaceful Jerusalem crowd; at Pilate’s signal, they had drawn their swords and cleared the streets, killing many. Now Pilate, already faced with the Barabbas rebellion that week, clearly feared any resurgence of the “kings” and “pseudo-prophets” who had plagued Judaea since Herod’s death. Jesus was inflammatory in his oblique way, and he was undoubtedly popular. Even many years later, Josephus, himself a Pharisee, described Jesus as a wise teacher.
The traditional account of the sentencing therefore does not ring true. The Gospels claim that the priests insisted they did not have the authority to pass death sentences, but it is far from clear that this is true. The high priest, writes Josephus, “will adjudicate in cases of dispute, punish those convicted of crime.” The Gospels, written or amended after the destruction of the Temple in 70, blamed the Jews and acquitted the Romans, keen to show loyalty to the empire. Yet the charges against Jesus, and the punishment itself, tell their own story: this was a Roman operation.
Jesus, like most crucifixion victims, was scourged with a leather whip tipped with either bone or metal, a torment so savage that it often killed the victim. Wearing a placard reading king of the jews prepared by the Roman soldiers, many of them Syrian-Greek auxiliaries, and bleeding heavily after his flagellation, Jesus was led away, on what was probably the morning of the 14th of Nisan, or Friday 3 April 33. Along with the other two victims, he carried the patibulum, crossbar, for his own crucifixion, out of the Citadel prison and through the streets of the Upper City. His followers persuaded a certain Simon of Cyrene to help bear the crossbar while his women admirers lamented. “Daughters of Jerusalem,” he said, “weep not for me but weep for yourselves and your children,” because the Apocalypse was imminent—“the days are coming.”
Jesus left Jerusalem for the last time, turning left through the Gennath (Gardens) Gate into an area of hilly gardens, rock-cut tombs and Jerusalem’s execution hill, the aptly named Place of the Skull: Golgotha.g
JESUS CHRIST: THE PASSION
A crowd of enemies and friends followed Jesus out of the city to watch the macabre and technical business of execution, always a spectacle that fascinated. The sun had risen when he arrived at the execution place where the upright post awaited him: it would have been used before him and would be used again after him. The soldiers offered Jesus the traditional drink of wine and myrrh to steady his nerves, but he refused it. He was then attached to the crossbar and hoisted up the stake.
Crucifixion, said Josephus, was “the most miserable death,”h designed to demean the victim publicly. Hence Pilate ordered Jesus’ placard to be attached to his cross—king of the jews. Victims could be tied or nailed. The skill was to ensure victims did not bleed to death. The nails were usually driven through the forearms—not the palms—and ankles: the bones of a crucified Jew have been found in a tomb in north Jerusalem with a 4½-inch iron nail still sticking through a skeletal ankle. Nails from crucifixion victims were popularly worn as charms, around the neck, by both Jews and gentiles to ward off illness, so the later Christian fetish for crucificial relics was actually part of a long tradition. Victims were usually crucified naked—with men facing outwards, women inwards.
The executioners were experts at either prolonging the agony or ending it quickly. The aim was to not kill Jesus too quickly but to demonstrate the futility of defying Roman power. He was most probably nailed to the cross with his arms outstretched as shown in Christian art, supported by a small wedge, sedile, under the buttocks and a suppedaneum ledge under the feet. This arrangement meant he could survive for hours, even days. The quickest way to expedite death was to break the legs. The body weight was then borne by the arms and the victim would asphyxiate within ten minutes.
Hours passed; his enemies mocked him; passers-by jeered. His friend Mary Magdalene kept vigil alongside his mother Mary and the unnamed “disciple whom he loved,” possibly his brother James. His supporter Joseph of Arimathea visited him too. The heat of the day came and went. “I thirst,” Jesus said. His female followers dipped a sponge into vinegar and hyssop, and raised it to his lips on a reed so that he could suck on it. Sometimes he seemed to despair: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” he called out, quoting the appropriate scripture, Psalm 22. Yet what did he mean by God forsaking him? Was Jesus expecting God to unleash the End of Days?
As he weakened, he saw his mother. “Behold thy son,” he said, asking the beloved disciple to care for her. If it was his brother, this made sense, for the disciple escorted Mary away to rest. The crowds must have dispersed. Night fell.
Crucifixion was a slow death from heat stroke, hunger, suffocation, shock or thirst, and Jesus was probably bleeding from the flagellation. Suddenly he gave a sigh. “It is finished,” he said, and lost consciousness. Given the tension in Jerusalem and the imminent Sabbath and Passover holiday, Pilate must have ordered his executioners to accelerate matters. The soldiers broke the legs of the two bandits or rebels, allowing them to suffocate, but when they came to Jesus he already seemed dead, so “one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side and forthwith came blood and water.” It may have actually been the spear that had killed him.
Joseph of Arimathea hurried to the Praetorium to ask Pilate for the body. Victims were usually left to rot on their crosses, the prey of vultures, but Jews believed in swift burial. Pilate agreed.
Jewish dead were not buried in the earth during the first century but laid in a shroud in a rock tomb, which their family always checked, partly to ensure that the deceased were indeed dead and not merely comatose: it was r
are but not unheard of to find that the “dead” were awake the next morning. The bodies were then left for a year to desiccate, then the bones were placed in a bone-box, known as an ossuary, often with the name carved on the outside, in a rock-cut tomb.
Joseph and Jesus’ family and followers brought down the body and quickly found an unused tomb in a nearby garden where they laid him. The body was sweetened by expensive spices and wrapped in a shroud—like the first-century shroud found in a tomb a little south of the city walls in the Field of Blood, still bearing clumps of human hair (but unlike the famous Turin Shroud, which has now been dated to between 1260 and 1390). It is likely that the present Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which encloses both the place of crucifixion and the tomb, is the genuine site since its tradition was kept alive by local Christians for the next three centuries. Pilate posted guards around Jesus’ tomb at Caiaphas’ request “lest his disciples come by night and steal him away and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead.”
Up to this point, the story of Jesus’ Passion—from the Latin patior, to suffer—is based on our sole source, the Gospels, but no faith is required to believe in the life and death of a Jewish prophet and thaumaturge. However, three days after his crucifixion, on Sunday morning, according to Luke, some of Jesus’ female family and followers (including his mother and Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’ steward) visited the tomb: “They found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre and they entered in and found not the body of the Lord Jesus … As they were much perplexed, behold two men stood by them in shining garments and as they were afraid … they said unto them: Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here but is risen.” The frightened disciples were in hiding on the Mount of Olives during the Passover week, but Jesus appeared several times to them and to his mother, saying to them, “Be not afraid.” When Thomas doubted the Resurrection, Jesus showed him the wounds on his hands and in his side. After some days, he led them up to the Mount of Olives where he ascended to heaven. This Resurrection, which turned a sordid death into a transforming triumph of life over death, is the defining moment of Christian faith, celebrated on Easter Sunday.
For those who do not share this faith, the facts are impossible to verify. Matthew reveals what was surely the contemporary alternative version of events, “commonly reported among the Jews to this day”: the high priests immediately paid off the soldiers who were meant to be guarding the tomb and ordered them to tell everyone that “his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept.”
Archaeologists tend to believe that the body was simply removed and buried by friends and family in another rock-cut tomb somewhere around Jerusalem. They have excavated tombs, with ossuaries that bear names such as “James brother of Jesus” and even “Jesus son of Joseph.” These have generated media headlines. Some have been exposed as forgeries but most are genuine first-century tombs with very common Jewish names—and with no connection to Jesus.i
Jerusalem celebrated Passover. Judas invested his silver in real estate—the Potter’s Field on the Akeldama south of the city, appropriately in the Valley of Hell—where he then “burst asunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out.”j When the disciples emerged from hiding, they met for Pentecost in the Upper Room, the Cenacle on Mount Zion, “and suddenly there came from heaven a rushing mighty wind”—the Holy Spirit that allowed them to speak in tongues to the many nationalities who were in Jerusalem and to perform healing in the name of Jesus. Peter and John were entering the Temple through the Beautiful Gate for their daily prayers when a cripple asked for alms. “Rise up and walk,” they said, and he did.
The Apostles elected Jesus’ brother as “Overseer of Jerusalem,” leader of these Jewish sectaries known as the Nazarenes. The sect must have grown because not long after Jesus’ death, “there was a great persecution against the church at Jerusalem.” One of Jesus’ Greek-speaking followers, Stephen, had denounced the Temple, saying that “the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” Proving that the high priest could order capital punishment, Stephen was tried by the Sanhedrin and stoned outside the walls, probably to the north of today’s Damascus Gate. He was the first Christian “martyr”—an adaptation of the Greek word for “witness.” Yet James and his Nazarenes remained practising Jews, loyal to Jesus, but also teaching and praying in the Temple for the next thirty years. James was widely admired there as a Jewish holy man. Jesus’ Judaism was clearly no more idiosyncratic than that of the many other preachers who came before and after him.
Jesus’ enemies did not prosper. Soon after his crucifixion, Pilate was sunk by a Samaritan pseudo-prophet who preached to excited crowds that he had found Moses’ urn on Mount Gerizim. Pilate sent in the cavalry who culled many of his followers. The prefect had already driven Jerusalem to the edge of open revolt; now the Samaritans too denounced his brutality.
The Governor of Syria had to restore order in Jerusalem. He sacked both Caiaphas and Pilate, who was sent back to Rome. This was so popular that the Jerusalemites jubilantly welcomed the Roman governor. Pilate vanishes from history. Tiberius was meanwhile tiring of Herod Antipas.49 But this was not the end of that dynasty: the Herodians were about to enjoy an extraordinary restoration thanks to the most adventurous of the Jewish princes, who would befriend Rome’s demented emperor and regain Jerusalem.
a Salome the dancer symbolizes cold-hearted caprice and female depravity, but the two Gospels Mark and Matthew never give her name. Josephus gives us the name of Herodias’ daughter in another context but simply recounts that Antipas ordered John’s execution without any terpsichorean encouragement. The dance of the seven veils was a much later elaboration. There were many Herodian Salomes (Jesus’ sister was also named Salome). But most probably the dancer was the wife of Herod Philip, Tetrarch of Trachonitis, until his death when she married another cousin who was later appointed king of Lesser Armenia: the dancer ended up as a queen. Ultimately John’s head would become one of the most prized of Christian relics. There would be at least five shrines claiming to have the original: the shrine of John’s head in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is revered by Muslims.
b No one knows exactly when Jesus came to Jerusalem. Luke starts Jesus’ ministry with his baptism by John, around AD 28–29, saying he was about thirty, suggesting that his death was between AD 29 and say AD 33. John says his ministry lasted one year; Matthew, Mark and Luke say it lasted three years. Jesus may have been killed in 30, 33 or 36. But his historical existence is confirmed not only in the Gospels but in Tacitus and Josephus, who also mentions John the Baptist. At the very least, we know that Jesus came to Jerusalem at Passover after Pilate’s arrival as prefect (26) and before his departure (36) during the reigns of Tiberius (died 37) and Antipas (before 39) and the high priesthood of Caiaphas (18–36): most likely between 29 and 33. Pilate’s character is confirmed by both Josephus and Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, and his existence is confirmed by an inscription found in Caesarea.
c Such as those of the Essenes, probably an offshoot of the pious Hasidim who had originally backed the Maccabees. Josephus explained that they were one of the three sects of Judaism in the first century ad, but we learned more in the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in eleven caves at Qumran near the Dead Sea in 1947–56. These contain the earliest Hebrew versions of some of the biblical books. Christians and Jews had long debated the differences between the Septuagint Bible (translated into Greek, from a vanished Hebrew original and the basis of the Christian Old Testament, between the third and first centuries BC) and the earliest surviving Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic, dating from the seventh to tenth/early eleventh century ad). The Aleppo Codex is the oldest Masoretic text, but incomplete; the St. Petersburg Codex is dated 1008, but is the oldest complete text. The Scrolls reveal differences but confirm that the Masoretic was fairly accurate. The Scrolls prove, however, that there were many versions of the biblical books in circulation as late as Jesus’ time. The Essenes were austere Jews who developed the apocalyptic ideas o
f Jeremiah and Daniel and saw the world as a struggle between good and evil ending in war and judgement. Their leader was a mystical “Teacher of Righteousness”; their enemy was the “Wicked Priest”—one of the Maccabees. They feature in many crackpot theories about the origins of Christianity, but we can only say that John the Baptist may have lived with them in the desert and that Jesus may have been inspired by their hostility to the Temple and by their apocalyptic scenarios.
d This Iraqi kingdom remained Jewish well into the next century. Queen Helena and her sons were buried just outside the old city of Jeruslaem under three pyramids; the ornate King’s Tomb survives today, north of the Damascus Gate on the Nablus Road that leads past the American Colony Hotel. In the nineteenth century, a French archaeologist excavated the site and announced it had belonged to King David. Adiabene was not the only Jewish fiefdom in that area: two Jewish rebels against Parthia, Asinaeus and Anilaeus, created an independent Jewish state around Babylon that lasted about fifteen years.
e The Golden Gate is the traditional gate by which Jesus entered the Temple, and in Jewish, Muslim and Christian mysticism, the Messiah will enter Jerusalem there. But Jesus would not have entered this way: the Gate was not built for another 600 years and the nearby Shushan Gate was not open to the public and only rarely used by the high priest himself. Another Christian tradition says Jesus entered through the Beautiful Gate, on the other side, today probably close to the Bab al-Silsila (Gate of the Chain) on the west. This is more likely. But the Beautiful Gate is also the place where Peter and John performed a miracle after Jesus’ death. The very name Golden Gate may be a muddled version of “beautiful” since golden in Latin (aurea) and beautiful in Greek (oreia) are so similar. Jerusalem’s holiness is criss-crossed with such misunderstandings, and multiple legends applied to the same sites to enforce and embellish their sanctity.
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