by Paul Johnson
This reply was enigmatic, and not what Caiaphas wanted to hear. It was not an admission to shock orthodox Jews, or to persuade the Romans that here was a dangerous rebel. But he decided it would have to do. He declared Jesus had uttered blasphemy and went through the ceremony of rending his garments in disgust. Jewish law listed only a few occasions when garments should be rent, such as death and blasphemy. In the latter case, both the inner and outer garments were torn. But the high priest wore a special double bib which was easy to tear and was expendable, for the law, which had thirty-nine rules, said that in the case of blasphemy the rent had to be the size of a fist and expose the breast, and must never be repaired. So Caiaphas rent both sides of his bib, briefly exposing his skin. Even his rending ceremony had an element of humbug and falseness about it (Mt 26:65; Mk 14:63). But he rent with a will and said: “[W]hat further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy.”
Those present said: “He is guilty of death.” Then, says Matthew, “did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands, Saying Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote thee?” When the morning came they led Jesus, bound, to the prefectural palace of Pontius Pilate, the governor. According to Luke’s account (23 : 1ff.), “the whole multitude of them” got into the palace, shouting that Jesus had been “perverting the nation,” “forbidding [the giving of] tribute to Caesar,” “saying that he himself is Christ a King,” and “[stirring] up the people.” Pilate surveyed the scene with disgust. He had his own information about Jesus’s activities and knew the accusations were false. He had been in office for several years and much disliked Jewish religious extremism, having clashed with it twice before. When, to curry favor with his superiors in Rome, he had brought to Jerusalem ensigns bearing Caesar’s image, the priests had protested. The Jewish historian Josephus says a large crowd of fanatics held a public fast, which he had broken up by using troops. He had again used troops when the priests and their mob had rioted against his decision to seize Temple funds to pay for a thirty-five-mile aqueduct bringing water to Jerusalem. Many Jews had been killed. There were well-placed Jews living in Rome, and it was not difficult for the priests to make damaging protests to the authorities there. Indeed, six years after the Crucifixion, a similar clash between Pilate’s troops and a religious procession, this time a Samaritan one, followed by protest to Rome, led to his dismissal (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities:18.4:1-2).
Pilate was displeased with Caiaphas for bringing a large collection of clamorous militants shouting slogans to his palace. He was also impressed by Jesus’s dignified silence. When the hubbub had died down, Pilate asked Jesus, “Art thou the King of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “Thou sayest it” (Lk 23 : 3). When he spoke at all, that was the line he took throughout: I am accused of all kinds of things but have made no such claims myself—which was the truth. Pilate turned to Caiaphas and said, “I find no fault in this man” (Lk 23:4). He meant: he has done nothing to which the Roman authorities can object. At this the tumult broke out again. “When Pilate heard of Galilee,” he seized the opportunity to pass the responsibility to the man who ruled Galilee, Herod Antipas. So he ordered Jesus to be taken to Herod’s court, which was in another part of the vast palace originally built by Herod the Great.
Luke says that Herod was “exceeding glad” to see Jesus. He had long wished to do so: he had “heard many things of him” and “hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.” He “questioned with him in many words.” But Jesus said nothing. He would not speak to the depraved man who had murdered his cousin John at the request of his wife and stepdaughter. While Jesus stood in silence, Caiaphas and his priests kept up their chorus of abuse and accusations. Finally, Herod tired of the game and sent Jesus back to Pilate, but not before his “men of war,” as Luke calls them, “mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe.” Luke, recounting this, says that Pilate’s gesture in deferring to Herod’s jurisdiction was nonetheless appreciated: “the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves” (23:8-12).
So Pilate found himself landed with the problem of Jesus again. He now made a second attempt to spare him. Matthew writes that at the feast of the Passover, it was the governor’s practice to release a prisoner at popular request (27 : 15ff.). Knowing of Jesus’s popularity with the local people, he proposed to do this. He assumed the crowd would demand Jesus’s freedom, for he knew that the priests had been motivated by “envy” (the word Matthew uses in 27:18) and had little public support. What he did not know was that the priests had organized a demonstration composed of Temple workers, and that this well-schooled mob was outside the palace waiting for the release ceremony; therefore, when Pilate, emboldened by his wife who knew all about Jesus and wanted him released (27 : 19), sat down on his judgment seat and asked whom he should release, the crowd shouted: “Barabbas.” This man, described by Matthew as a “notable” prisoner, was in jail for robbery and murder and for suspicion of planning an insurrection. Normally the priests would have been anxious to have him executed. But they now saw Jesus as a greater danger, so the trained mob had been coached accordingly.
Barabbas was released, to Pilate’s disgust. He now asked the crowd, “What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?” They all said unto him: “Let him be crucified.” Pilate said, “Why, what evil hath he done?” According to Matthew, “they cried out the more, saying Let him be crucified” (27:22-23).
Pilate then performed a symbolic ceremony of a judge disowning himself of responsibility under popular pressure. “[H]e took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children” (27 : 24-25). Pilate then had Jesus scourged by his soldiers, who used the dreadful flagellum, an instrument in which leather thongs weighted with rough pieces of lead or iron were attached to a strong wooden handle. After the scourging, the soldiers who inflicted it “took [him] into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head” (27:27-30).
Pilate, finding Jesus in this state, made one last attempt to appeal to the pity of the Jewish leaders and the crowd. According to John, he said, “I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!” This inspired no remorse or sympathy at all. Led by Caiaphas, the priests and their mob “cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him” (19:4-6). Thus occurred the greatest miscarriage of justice in history, the exemplary and archetypal betrayal of law, of legal procedure, of the rules of evidence and proof, and of all the orderly processes whereby a verdict is reached. Every vice and weakness which vitiates justice was present, from cowardice and perjury to mob rule. Both Jews and Romans, in their different traditions, revered the law. They were the two greatest law-makers of all time. But here they combined to enact a joint travesty, which has tolled through the centuries as the antithesis of law. It is hard to say who was more to blame for this huge evil: Caiaphas, the accuser, or Pilate, who had the power.
In John’s account (19:9-22) the question of power was, indeed, discussed. Pilate, said John, was “afraid” of Caiaphas’s accusations, and again examined the scourged and bleeding Jesus, who was wearing his crown of thorns. He asked, “Whence art thou?” But Jesus said nothing. Pilate pressed on: “Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have the power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?” Jesus said, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it w
ere given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.” So that was Jesus’s own verdict on the relative guilt of Caiaphas and Pilate, Jewish priest and Roman governor. At that point Caiaphas and his crowd said, “If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.” That was an implied threat to report him to Rome, and Pilate gave way. So he issued the order, from his judgment seat on what was called the Pavement, in Hebrew Gabbatha, for Jesus to be crucified immediately. He also wrote a title, which he commanded to be placed on Jesus’s cross: “JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.” It was written, at his direction, in Hebrew and Greek, as well as in Latin. Caiaphas protested, “Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.” Pilate refused: “What I have written I have written.”
Jesus was compelled, according to penal customs, to carry the heavy cross on which he was to be crucified to the place of execution, Golgotha, which meant “the skull.” It is not a long distance: you can walk it today, through the narrow streets of old Jerusalem. But Jesus, weak from shock, from loss of blood, having had no sleep and having been subjected to various cruelties, blows, and buffets, stumbled three times under his burden. So the soldiers escorting him compelled a passing stranger, Simon of Cyrene, to help him carry the cross. Luke says that a crowd gathered to watch: not the rehearsed Temple mob but ordinary citizens, “a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.” Jesus stopped in his via dolorosa and spoke to them: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (23 : 27-31). It is remarkable that Jesus, in his weakness and pain, should have become again the poet, delivering this hymn of warning, which was to be so abundantly justified a generation later in the terrible siege of the city. Many of those weeping women, and more of their children, were to be slaughtered.
In the final stages, indeed, the women took over. Jesus was nailed to the cross, and John, an eyewitness, says, “[T]here stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.” Nothing is said of the male disciples, or the apostles, save one. John himself was there, and Jesus from the cross commended him to his mother: “Woman, behold thy son!” He told John likewise: “Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home” (19:25-27).
There were others present. In Luke’s account (23 : 35ff.), the priests came to deride Jesus, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God.” The soldiers, too, mocked him, offering him vinegar to drink. Jesus was crucified between two thieves. One, according to Luke,railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man has done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
Jesus also spoke as a man, calling on his Father to behold his predicament and give him strength to endure it. His Aramaic words, as recorded by Mark 15:34, were “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,” interpreted as “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Some present said, “Behold, he calleth Elias” (Mk 15 : 35). Jesus also said, “I thirst” (Jn 19 : 28). He was offered vinegar mixed with water. John, the eyewitness, says that in the afternoon darkness fell. Jesus had been on the cross for three hours. According to Luke, he now cried “with a loud voice” and said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (23 : 46). He is also said to have uttered the phrase “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). Those were his last words, and (according to Luke 23:48 and John 19:30) “he gave up the ghost.” His death was edifying, even noble. The centurion commanding the guard “glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.” Other people, says Luke, “smote their breasts” (23:47-48).
The women were with him to the end and helped Joseph of Arimathaea, who obtained permission from Pilate to take the body down—after a soldier had certified death by plunging his spear into Jesus’s body, from which issued “blood and water”—and Nicodemus, who provided spices, to dress and anoint the corpse and lay it in a tomb. It was hewn out of the rock and had never been used. So Jesus’s body, wrapped in clean linen, was entombed, and “a great stone” was rolled to the door of the sepulchre. Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” were left “sitting over against the sepulchre” (Mt 27:60-61).
Jesus’s three hours on the cross were punctuated by sayings known from earliest times as “the seven words,” and eighteen hundred years after they were spoken, they were set to incomparable music by Joseph Haydn. One was given by Matthew and Mark conjointly, three by Luke, and three by John. All embodied love: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” “Woman, behold thy son. [Son,] behold thy mother.” “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” “I thirst.” “It is finished.” “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” His suffering, his thirsting, his triumph seem to sum up his life, which was devoted to expressing his love for humanity. The cross, and the speaking of these words, mark the conclusion of his sacrificial mission on earth.
IX
The Resurrection and the Birth of Christianity
JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED, and died, on the Friday. On the third day, Sunday, very early, “when it was yet dark,” Mary Magdalene came to the sepulchre. She found the stone had been taken away. She ran back to find Peter and John (who gives this account in chapter 20 of his Gospel) and said, “They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” The two apostles went back with her, running. John, being younger, ran faster and got there first. He stooped down, looked in through the low hole into the tomb, and saw the linen clothes scattered about the floor. But he did not dare go in. Peter then arrived and went in. He found the napkin, which had been wrapped about Jesus’s head, neatly folded, “in a place by itself.” John now went in, too. But neither man yet grasped that Jesus had risen from the dead. They went home, baffled.
But Mary remained, weeping, standing outside the tomb. Then she stooped and looked into it, and saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the foot of where Jesus had lain. They spoke to her: “Woman, why weepest thou?” She replied, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” She then turned about and suddenly saw Jesus there. But she did not recognize him. He, too, asked, “Woman, why weepest thou?” She thought he must be the gardener and asked, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” He said to her, in tones she recognized, “Mary.” She realized it was Jesus and said, “Master.”
But he said to her, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” So Mary Magdalene, the former sinner who believed in and worshipped Jesus as God made man, was given the unique privilege of being the first to see the risen Son of God and to announce the Resurrection to the world. She ran back immediately and reported what she had seen, and the words Jesus had spoken to her.
The other three Gospels have little essential to add to this account. Luke confirms that Mary Magdalene was there, but adds that Joanna and Mary the mother of James were also present, as well as “other women.” When Peter and the men were told Jesus’s body had disappeared, they dismissed the news as “idle tales” and refused to believe the women (24:10). Only when Peter went to the tomb to see
for himself did he accept the fact that no body was there. Matthew says that Mary Magdalene “and the other Mary” were greeted at the empty tomb by an angel, whose “countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.” Matthew adds that “for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.” According to his account, they must have been lying there, immobile and unconscious, when the Marys arrived.
The angel said to the Marys, “Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you” (28 : 1-8). Mark confirms this account, though he says Salome was with the two Marys, and that the angel, described as “a young man . . . clothed in a long white garment” (16 : 5), spoke to them as in Matthew’s account, telling them Jesus had gone ahead into Galilee and that they were to tell Peter. Mark also confirms John’s information that Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene but that the apostles refused to believe her (16:9-11).
