Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

by Reza Aslan

  For the use of crucifixion among the Jews, see Ernst Bammel, “Crucifixion as a Punishment in Palestine,” The Trial of Jesus, ed. Ernst Bammel (Naperville, Ill.: Alec R. Allenson, 1970), 162–65. Josef Blinzler notes that by Roman times there was some sense of uniformity in the process of crucifixion, especially when it came to the nailing of the hands and feet to a crossbeam. There was usually a flogging beforehand, and at least among the Romans it was expected that the criminal would carry his own cross to the site of the crucifixion. See Blinzler, The Trial of Jesus (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1959).

  Josephus notes that the Jews who tried to escape Jerusalem as it was besieged by Titus were first executed, then crucified; The Jewish War 5.449–51. Martin Hengel writes that although crucifixion was a punishment reserved for non-Roman citizens, there were instances of Roman citizens being crucified. But these were deliberately done in response to crimes that were deemed treasonous. In other words, by giving the citizen a “slave’s punishment,” the message was that the crime was so severe that it forfeited the criminal’s Roman citizenship. See Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 39–45. Cicero’s quote is from Hengel, 37. See also J. W. Hewitt, “The Use of Nails in the Crucifixion,” Harvard Theological Review 25 (1932): 29–45.

  Regarding Jesus’s trial before Caiaphas in the gospels, Matthew and Mark claim that Jesus was brought to the courtyard (aule) of the high priest and not to the Sanhedrin. Unlike Mark, Matthew specifically names the high priest Caiaphas. John claims that Jesus was first taken to the previous high priest, Ananus, before being transferred to Ananus’s son-in-law and the present high priest, Caiaphas. It is interesting to note that Mark treats as false the claim that Jesus will bring down the Temple and build another without human hands. As Matthew, Luke-Acts, and John make clear, that is precisely what Jesus threatened to do (Matthew 26:59–61; Acts 6:13–14; John 2:19). In fact, a version of that very statement can be found in the Gospel of Thomas: “I shall destroy this house, and no one will be able to rebuild it.” Even Mark puts Jesus’s threat into the mouths of the passersby who mock him on the cross. If the statement were false, as Mark contends, where would the passersby have heard it? From the closed night session of the Sanhedrin? Unlikely. Indeed, such a statement seems to have been part of the post–70 C.E. Christological foundation of the Church, which considered the Christian community to be the “temple made not with human hands.” There can be no doubt that whatever Jesus’s actual words may have been, he had in fact threatened the Temple in some way. Mark himself attests to this: “Do you see these buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” (Mark 13:2). For more on Jesus’s threats to the Temple, see Richard Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence, 292–96. With all this in mind, Mark’s apologetic overlay in the trial before the Sanhedrin comes across as a ridiculously contrived attempt to show the injustice of those who made accusations against Jesus, regardless of whether those accusations were true, which in this case they most certainly were.

  Raymond Brown lists twenty-seven discrepancies between the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and later rabbinic procedure; Death of the Messiah, 358–59. D. R. Catchpole examines the argument against the historicity of the trial in “The Historicity of the Sanhedrin Trial,” Trial of Jesus, 47–65. That nocturnal trials were, at the very least, unusual is demonstrated by Acts 4:3–5, in which Peter and John are arrested at night but must wait until daylight to be judged before the Sanhedrin. Luke, who wrote that passage in Acts, tries to fix his fellow evangelists’ blunder by arguing for two Sanhedrin meetings: one on the night Jesus was arrested and another “when day came.” In Acts 12:1–4, Peter is arrested during Passover but not brought before the people for judgment until after the feast is over, though Solomon Zeitlin takes exception to the idea that the Sanhedrin could not meet on the eve of the Sabbath; Zeitlin, Who Crucified Jesus? (New York: Bloch, 1964). One could argue here for John’s sequence of events, wherein the Sanhedrin met days before arresting Jesus, but considering that in John, Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his cleansing of the Temple, which all scholars agree was the impetus for his arrest, were among the first acts of his ministry, John’s logic falls apart.

  On the argument about whether the Jews had the right under Roman occupation to put criminals to death, see Raymond Brown, Death of the Messiah, vol. 1, 331–48. Catchpole’s conclusion on this issue is, in my opinion, the correct one: “The Jews could try [a death penalty case], but they could not execute.” See “The Historicity of the Sanhedrin trial,” The Trial of Jesus, 63. G.W.H. Lampe suggests that an official record of Jesus’s “trial” before Pilate could have been preserved, considering the preservation of similar acta of Christian martyrs. Apparently several Christian writers mention an Acta Pilati existing in the second and third centuries. But even if that were true (and it very likely is not), there is no reason to believe that such a document would represent anything other than a Christological polemic. See G.W.H. Lampe, “The Trial of Jesus in the Acta Pilati,” Jesus and the Politics of His Day, 173–82.

  Plutarch writes that “every wrongdoer who goes to execution carries his own cross.”

  PART III PROLOGUE: GOD MADE FLESH

  The evidence that Stephen was a Diaspora Jew comes from the fact that he is designated as the leader of the Seven, the “Hellenists” who fell into conflict with the “Hebrews,” as recounted in Acts 6 (see below for more on the Hellenists). Stephen’s stoners were freedmen, themselves Hellenists, but recent émigrés to Jerusalem theologically aligned with the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. See Marie-Éloise Rosenblatt, Paul the Accused (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1995), 24.

  The earliest sources we have for belief in the resurrection of the dead can be found in the Ugaritic and Iranian traditions. Zoroastrian scriptures, primarily the Gathas, present the earliest and perhaps most well-developed concept of the resurrection of the individual when it speaks of the dead “rising in their bodies” at the end of time (Yasna 54). Egyptians believed that the Pharaoh would be resurrected, but they did not accept the resurrection of the masses.

  Stanley Porter finds examples of bodily resurrection in Greek and Roman religions but claims there is little evidence of the notion of physical resurrection of the dead in Jewish thought. See Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs, Resurrection (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). Jon Douglas Levenson disagrees with Porter, arguing that belief in the resurrection of the body is rooted in the Hebrew Bible and is not, as some have argued, merely part of the Second Temple period or the apocalyptic literature written after 70 C.E.; Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Levenson argues that after the destruction of Jerusalem there was a growing belief among the rabbinate that the redemption of Israel required the flesh-and-blood resurrection of the dead. But even he admits that the vast majority of the resurrection traditions found in Judaism are not about individual exaltation but about national restoration. In other words, this is about a metaphorical resurrection of the Jewish people as a whole, not the literal resurrection of mortals who had died and come back again as flesh and blood. Indeed, Charlesworth notes that if by “resurrection” we mean “the concept of God’s raising the body and soul after death (meant literally) to a new and eternal life (not a return to mortal existence),” then there is only one passage in the entire Hebrew Bible that fits such a criterion—Daniel 12:2–3: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” The many other passages that have been interpreted as referencing the resurrection of the dead simply do not pass scrutiny. For instance, Ezekiel 37—“Thus said the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live again …”—explicitly refers to these bones as “the House of Israel.” Psalm 30, in which David writes, “I cried out to you and you healed me
. O Lord, you brought me up from Sheol, preserved me from going down into the pit” (30:2–4), is very obviously about healing from illness, not literally being raised from death. The same holds true for the story of Elijah resurrecting the dead (1 Kings 17:17–24), or, for that matter, Jesus raising Lazarus (John 11:1–46), both of which fall into the category of healing stories, not resurrection stories, as the person “resurrected” will presumably die again. Charlesworth, however, does find evidence of belief in the resurrection of the dead into immortality in the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially in a scroll called On Resurrection (4Q521), which claims that God, through the messiah, will bring the dead to life. Interestingly, this seems to fit with Paul’s belief that believers in the risen Christ will also be resurrected: “and the dead in Christ shall rise” (1Thessalonians 4:15–17). See James H. Charlesworth et al., Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine (London: T&T Clark, 2006). Those scrolls that seem to imply that the Righteous Teacher of Qumran will rise from the dead are speaking not about a literal resurrection of the body but about a metaphorical rising from disenfranchisement for a people who had been divorced from the Temple. There is something like a resurrection idea in the pseudepigrapha—for instance, in 1 Enoch 22–27, or in 2 Maccabees 14, in which Razis tears out his entrails and God puts them back again. Also, The Testament of Judah implies that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will rise to live again (25:1). With regard to ideas of the resurrection in the Mishnah, Charlesworth correctly notes that such passages are too late (post–second century C.E.) to be quoted as examples of Jewish beliefs prior to 70 C.E., though he admits it is conceivable that “the tradition in Mishnah Sanhedrin defined the beliefs of some pre-70 Pharisees.”

  Rudolf Bultmann finds evidence for the concept of the dying and rising son-deity in the so-called mystery religions of Rome. He states that “gnosticism above all is aware of the notion of the Son of God become man—and the heavenly redeemer man.” See Essays: Philosophical and Theological (New York: Macmillan, 1995), 279. But I think Martin Hengel is right to note that the great wave of interest in “mystery religions” that arose in the Roman Empire, and the synthesis with Judaism and proto-Christianity that resulted, did not take place until the second century. In other words, it may have been Christianity that influenced the dying and rising deity concept in gnosticism and the mystery religions, not the other way around. See Martin Hengel, The Son of God (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 1976), 25–41.

  Other important texts for the historical and cultural study of resurrection in the ancient world include Geza Vermes, The Resurrection: History and Myth (New York: Doubleday, 2008) and N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).

  There can be no question whatsoever that Psalm 16 is self-referential, as the first person singular form is used from the beginning: “Preserve me, O God, for in thee I take refuge.” The Hebrew word translated here as “godly one” is chasid. It seems obvious to me that David’s reference to himself as “godly one” has more to do with his piety and devotion to God than it does with the deification of either David himself (which would have been unimaginable) or any future Davidic figure. Of course, Luke would have been using the Septuagint of Psalm 16:8–11, which translates the Hebrew chasid into the Greek hosion, meaning “holy one,” which, given the context and meaning of the psalm, should be seen as synonymous with “godly one.” It may be a huge stretch of the imagination to consider this psalm to be about the messiah, but it is ridiculous to interpret it as predicting Jesus’s death and resurrection.

  Stephen’s lengthy defense in the book of Acts is obviously Luke’s composition; it was written six decades after Stephen’s death. But it bears scrutiny, nonetheless, as Luke was himself a Diaspora Jew—a Greek-speaking Syrian convert from the city of Antioch—and his perception of who Jesus was would have aligned with Stephen’s.

  Among the more egregious errors in Stephen’s slipshod account of the biblical story: Stephen speaks of Abraham buying the tomb at Schechem for his grandson Jacob to be buried in, whereas the Bible says it was Jacob who bought the tomb at Schechem (Genesis 33:19), though he himself was buried with Abraham in Hebron (Genesis 50:13). Stephen contends that Moses saw the burning bush on Mount Sinai, when in fact it appeared to him on Mount Horeb, which, despite some arguments to the contrary, was not the same place as Sinai (Exodus 3:1). He then goes on to state that an angel gave the law to Moses, when it was God himself who gave Moses the law. It is possible, of course, that Luke has been influenced by the Jubilean tradition, which claims that Moses was given the law by the “Angel of the Presence.” Jubilees 45.15–16 states, “and Israel blessed his sons before he died and told them everything that would befall them in the land of Egypt; and he made known to them what would come upon them in the last days, and blessed them and gave to Joseph two portions in the land. And he slept with his fathers, and he was buried in the double cave in the land of Canaan, near Abraham his father in the grave which he dug for himself in the double cave in the land of Hebron. And he gave all his books and the books of his fathers to Levi his son that he might preserve them and renew them for his children until this day.” Interestingly, Jubilees also suggests that the Torah was written down by Moses, which is the oldest witness to the tradition of Mosaic authorship for the Torah.

  For more on the significance of the phrase “the right hand of God,” see entry in David Noel Freedman et al., Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000). Per Freedman, the signet ring was worn on the royal right hand (Jeremiah 22:24); the elder son received the greater blessing via the right hand (Genesis 48:14, 17); the position of honor was at one’s right hand (Psalm 110:1); and the right hand of God performs acts of deliverance (Exodus 15:6), victory (Psalms 20:6), and might (Isaiah 62:8). Thomas Aquinas’s remarks are from Summa Theologica, question 58.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: IF CHRIST HAS NOT BEEN RISEN

  There were, in actuality, two (though some say three) veils that divided the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple: an outer veil that hung at the entrance to the inner sanctuary, and an inner veil within the sanctuary itself that separated the hekal, or portal, from the smaller chamber within which the spirit of God dwelt. Which veil is meant by the gospels is irrelevant, since the story is legend, though it should be noted that only the outer veil would have been visible to anyone but the high priest. See Daniel Gurtner, Torn Veil: Matthew’s Exposition of the Death of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

  Although the historical evidence and the New Testament both clearly demonstrate that the followers of Jesus remained in Jerusalem after his crucifixion, it is interesting to note that the gospel of Matthew has the risen Jesus telling the disciples to meet him back in Galilee (Matthew 28:7).

  Oscar Cullman, The State in the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956); The Christology of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959); John Gager, Kingdom and Community: The Social World of the Early Christians (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1975); and Martin Dibelius, Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956), have all demonstrated that the early followers of Jesus were unsuccessful in persuading other Jerusalemites to their movement. Gager notes correctly that, in general, “early converts did not represent the established sectors of Jewish society” (26). Dibelius suggests that the Jerusalem community wasn’t even interested in missionizing outside Jerusalem but led a quiet life of piety and contemplation as they awaited Jesus’s second coming.

  Gager explains the success of the early Jesus movement, despite its many doctrinal contradictions, by relying on a fascinating sociological study by L. Festinger, H. W. Riecken, and S. Schachter titled When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), which, in Gager’s words, demonstrates that “under certain conditions a religious community whose fundamental beliefs are disconfirmed by events in th
e world will not necessarily collapse and disband. Instead it may undertake zealous missionary activity as a response to its sense of cognitive dissonance, i.e., a condition of distress and doubt stemming from the disconfirmation of an important belief” (39). As Festinger himself puts it in his follow-up study, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957): “the presence of dissonance gives rise to pressures to reduce or eliminate the dissonance. The strength of the pressure to reduce the dissonance is a function of the magnitude of the dissonance” (18).

  There is a great deal of debate about what exactly “Hellenist” meant. It could have meant that these were gentile converts to Christianity, as Walter Bauer argues in Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Mifflintown, Pa.: Sigler Press, 1971). H. J. Cadbury agrees with Bauer. He thinks the Hellenists were gentile Christians who may have come from Galilee or other gentile regions and who were not favorably disposed toward the Law. See “The Hellenists,” The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. 1, ed. K. Lake and H. J. Cadbury (London: Macmillan, 1933), 59–74. However, the term “Hellenist” most likely refers to Greek-speaking Jews from the Diaspora, as Martin Hengel convincingly demonstrates in Between Jesus and Paul (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 1983). Marcel Simon agrees with Hengel, though he also believes (contra Hengel) that the term had derogatory connotations among the Jews of Judea for its Greek (that is, pagan) accommodations. Simon notes that Hellenism is numbered among Justin Martyr’s list of heresies in Trypho (80.4). See St. Stephen and the Hellenists in the Primitive Church (New York: Longmans, 1958).