One other difference between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John is that John depicts Jesus as being crucified on the day of preparation for the Passover, which is the day before Passover, as John was focused on portraying Jesus as the sacrificial lamb slain for the sins of humankind (see 19:31). However, the Synoptic Gospels depict Jesus as eating the evening Passover meal with his disciples (Luke 22:15) and then being crucified the morning after the Passover meal was eaten (Mark 15:25). Thus although the Gospels do not agree on the day on which Jesus was crucified, they all agree that he was tried and crucified in Jerusalem.
And of course for Christians it is the miracle of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead that solidifies Jerusalem as the center of the world around which the fate of humankind revolves. The resurrection and ascension of Jesus in Jerusalem make the city the epicenter of the Christian movement. The church in Jerusalem was led by the disciples-turned-apostles who were with Jesus during his ministry until the apostle Paul (who was not with Jesus during his ministry) took over the spreading of the religion to Gentiles throughout the Roman Empire. This, some argue, transformed the Jesus movement from a largely Jewish phenomenon into one that could attract and incorporate Gentile members.
THE JEWISH REVOLT AND THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM IN 70 CE
The Roman general Titus destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE during the Roman effort to suppress the Jewish Revolt, which had begun four years earlier. The Jewish historian Josephus chronicles the events of this conflict in his book The Jewish War. The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple is commemorated in a panel on the triumphal Arch of Titus erected in the Roman Forum. The panel depicts the menorah and other objects from the Temple being carted off to Rome.
As Roslyn and I stood beneath the Arch of Titus and gazed upon its depiction of the destruction of Jerusalem, my mind wandered to the southern end of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which is now a park serving as an archaeological memorial to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. As I stared at the menorah on the arch, I recalled standing on the massive stones that once stood atop the Temple platform in Jerusalem. I felt I was in two places at once—Rome and Jerusalem—attempting to reconcile the catastrophic event from these two very different points of view. Rome celebrates. Jerusalem wails. And in that singular moment in history—the second destruction of the Jerusalem Temple—everything changed.
The Arch of Titus on the Via Sacra (the main road in ancient Rome) just southeast of the Roman Forum. Constructed around 82 CE by the Roman Emperor Domitian, it commemorates Titus’s victories.
The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE fundamentally altered Judaism and Christianity; it brought to an end all of the Jewish sectarian groups that were centered on sacrifice at the Temple. For instance, we hear very little of the Jerusalem priesthood and the Sadducees after 70 CE. However, those Jewish groups who had already begun the transition from worship involving ritual sacrifice at the Temple to other forms, like prayer and study of the Hebrew Scriptures, and who congregated in smaller local meetings in synagogues and house churches were able to survive the destruction of the Temple. Most notable among these survivors were the Pharisees, who became the tradition we know today as Rabbinic Judaism, and another Jewish sect who believed that a prophet from Nazareth was the promised Jewish messiah: the Christians.
The sects of the Pharisees and the Christians were able to survive the destruction of the Temple, because they were not tied to Jerusalem and were popular religious movements among the lower classes of the Jewish people. Thus, when Jerusalem was destroyed, many Jews and Christians fled to other cities and countries, inadvertently spreading Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity throughout the region. There, just as the exiled Judahites had done six centuries earlier, both groups began to write down the experiences and the teachings of their respective leaders, and both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity began to look to their new writings for authority and inspiration in addition to the Hebrew Scriptures.
Thus, like the destruction of the Solomon’s Temple, the destruction of the Second Temple directly led to the writing down, compilation, and editing of each group’s religious traditions, eventually leading to the Mishnah and the Talmud for Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament for Christians. In this way, the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE was the literal impetus for the building of the Bible.
THE EMPRESS HELENA’S QUEST FOR EVIDENCE OF JESUS
Jerusalem is best known to Christians as the place where Jesus was tried, crucified, buried, and resurrected from the dead. This is the central tenet of the Christian faith. All four of the Gospels place Jesus’s death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead as the climax of their accounts of Jesus’s life. But despite being arguably the most referenced and written about event in human history, there is absolutely no archaeological evidence that supports the life, death, or resurrection of Jesus. None. To be sure, there is written evidence that his followers believed that Jesus lived, died, and overcame death, and later on we find some non-Christian literary references to Christians and Jesus, but there is no archaeological evidence of his life, death, and resurrection beyond the physical remains of certain places in Jerusalem that provide the context for the literary accounts of Jesus’s life.
The lack of evidence for Jesus is not just a problem for modern Christians and scholars; it was an evident problem in antiquity as well. The early church needed evidence of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and who better than Helena (250–330), the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (272–337), to find that evidence.
ROMAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE (SUPPOSED) EVIDENCE OF JESUS
Empress Helena traveled to Jerusalem in 324 in order to identify the locations of the events that took place in Jesus’s life and memorialize them by constructing monuments there. She believed that doing so would provide hard evidence that the biblical claims made about Jesus were true. While in Roman Palestine, Helena dedicated the Church of Nativity in Bethleḥem and the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives and oversaw construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was also claimed that she discovered the “True Cross” on which Jesus was crucified at the site where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre had been uncovered. The legends told about how Helena came to identify many of these places range from straining credibility to comic gold, particularly the story of the discovery of the True Cross.
According to Eusebius of Caesarea,20 a temple to the Roman goddess Venus had been built over the site of Jesus’s crucifixion following Emperor Hadrian’s suppression of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE, after which he banned all Jews from Jerusalem and renamed the city Aelia Capitolina in an effort to transform Jerusalem into a more standardized Roman city. Eusebius says that the now Christian emperor Constantine ordered the temple destroyed, the tomb of Jesus uncovered, and a church (today known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre) to be built in 325 to commemorate the site of Jesus’s death and burial.
Socrates of Constantinople added in his account that Helena actually discovered three crosses—one for Jesus and the other two for the thieves crucified with him—as well as the titulus, or the wooden plaque affixed above Jesus’s head that read “King of the Jews,”21 all beneath the destroyed temple to Venus.22 According to Socrates of Constantinople, Helena ran an experiment, which is hilariously satirized by Mark Twain in his epic Holy Land travel guide, Innocents Abroad, to determine which of the three crosses actually belonged to Jesus. Rather than give you Socrates of Constantinople’s account, I thought you’d enjoy Mark Twain’s version of this early “scientific” experiment:
The entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the church built atop the tomb complex in Jerusalem commemorating the traditional site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.
The Edicule (Shrine) of the Tomb inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre houses the stone remains of the tomb traditionally believed to be the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth (cf. Matt. 27:59–60).
A noble lady la
y very ill in Jerusalem. The wise priests ordered that the three crosses be taken to her bedside one at a time. It was done. When her eyes fell upon the first one, she uttered a scream that was heard beyond the Damascus Gate, and even upon the Mount of Olives, it was said, and then fell back in a deadly swoon. They recovered her and brought the second cross. Instantly she went into fearful convulsions, and it was with the greatest difficulty that six strong men could hold her. They were afraid, now, to bring in the third cross. They began to fear that possibly they had fallen upon the wrong crosses, and that the true cross was not with this number at all. However, as the woman seemed likely to die with the convulsions that were tearing her, they concluded that the third could do no more than put her out of her misery with a happy dispatch. So they brought it, and behold, a miracle! The woman sprang from her bed, smiling and joyful, and perfectly restored to health. When we listen to evidence like this, we cannot but believe. We would be ashamed to doubt, and properly, too. Even the very part of Jerusalem where this all occurred is there yet. So there is really no room for doubt.23
Twain’s humorous account mirrors the skepticism felt by many scholars about Helena’s so-called evidence. Socrates of Constantinople also claims that Helena discovered the “holy nails” used to fasten Jesus to the cross. Helena reportedly sent the holy relics to her son, Constantine, who had the magical talismans fashioned into bridle bits for his horses and a helmet, which kept him safe during battle. Today, the twelfth-century Armenian Chapel of St. Helena, in the basement of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, stands over the place where Crusaders claimed Helena discovered the True Cross.
Thus, because of the “verification” of the power still contained within the holy relics of Jesus and the endorsement of Constantine the Great’s mother (and be honest, who’s going to mess with the emperor’s mother?), evidence of Jesus and the claims about him were “authenticated” by Rome, and Jerusalem became a place of pilgrimage for Christians throughout the empire. Galerius’s Edict of Toleration (311) may have ended the state-sponsored persecution of Christians and legalized Christianity, and the Edict of Milan (313) may have returned property confiscated by the state to churches, but it was not until well after Helena’s visit to Jerusalem in 324 that Rome issued the Edict of Thessalonica (380), which made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire. All Roman subjects were to espouse the Nicene confessions of faith professed by Pope Damasus I (who we’ll discuss in Chapter 11) and Peter II, the bishop of Alexandria.
THE LEGACY OF JERUSALEM TODAY
Jerusalem lies at the heart of the Bible. It is the focal point of much of the Hebrew Bible, serving as the capital of Israel and later of Judah. It was home to the ark of the covenant and to the First and Second Jewish Temples, all of which represented the presence of God among his people. For Jews, Jerusalem was, and is, the city of God, and the tale of Jerusalem’s rise to glory and its destruction inspired the formation of the Bible.
For Christians, although Jesus spent most of his ministry in the Galilee, Jerusalem became inextricably associated with Jesus and Christianity. The fact that his crucifixion and resurrection took place in Jerusalem and that the early church was centered around the apostles Peter and James in Jerusalem made it the city of God for Christians as well.
Today, Jerusalem is home to Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and Ḥasidic Jews; Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian, and all flavors of Protestant Christians; and Shi‘a, Sunni, and other Muslim groups. It is a beautiful mess of an eternal city that will always have a place in my heart, not only because it is the home to so many of my friends and colleagues, but because it is the place that truly built the Bible. It is not enough simply to pray for Jerusalem; we must continue to work hard for the peace of Jerusalem.
CHAPTER 9
Qumran
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the greatest archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. They were discovered in caves near the ancient settlement of Qumran, and despite never being mentioned in the Bible, Qumran and the scrolls changed the way we read and understand the Bible. The discovery of the first scrolls in 1947 signaled the beginning of the end for the long since debunked, yet lingering concept of what many called “biblical inerrancy,” which is the notion that the Bible is the perfect, verbatim, inerrant, noncontradictory Word of God. The scrolls provided us with tangible handwritten evidence that the text of the Hebrew Bible has, in fact, changed throughout the years and that there were different, some say “competing,” versions of the biblical books early on in history.
The scrolls provided modern Bible translators and publishers access to versions of the books of the Hebrew Bible that were a thousand years older than any previously known copies of these books. The fact that the text of the books of the Bible discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls is different from that in many of our modern Bibles is evidence itself that the text of the Bible—the Word of God—has changed over the past two thousand years. Thus, we can say that Qumran has become a key city in the development of the modern Bible we know today, as many versions of the Bible published since the 1950s have taken into account what we’ve learned from the scrolls; newer versions of the Bible often side with the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls when traditional versions of biblical books preserve variant textual traditions.
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
In 2010, I was fortunate enough to host a National Geographic Channel documentary entitled Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the show, I explored the question of who really wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. While filming Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls, I met Adolfo Roitman, the curator of the Shrine of the Book on the campus of the Israel Museum, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed and displayed. I had been in the shrine before, but Dr. Roitman led me to a place that few people have ever been: the underground vault where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept.
Behind a nondescript door inside the Shrine of the Book lies a highly secure hallway protected by multiple secured gates and doors, including a thick blast-proof door that protects these national treasures from a bomb attack. The high-tech hallway leads to the archaeological Holy of Holies: the Dead Sea Scrolls vault. Following Dr. Roitman through door after door reminded me of the title sequence of the classic TV show Get Smart, only the doors in the Dead Sea Scrolls vault required any number of keys, passwords, and codes from Dr. Roitman in order to open them. And each door locked behind us as we passed through, just to ensure that no one gets out without proper authorization.
I got the shivers as I followed Dr. Roitman into the vault— and not only because of the temperature-controlled climate. For an archaeologist, this was an exhilarating experience. These were the actual Dead Sea Scrolls. Fascination turned to veiled giddiness when Dr. Roitman asked me to help him remove the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) from the vault and place it on the examination table. I did so, careful to touch only the foam board on which the priceless scroll was mounted. It might as well have been the ark of the covenant, such was the feeling of nearly overwhelming enthrallment I was experiencing in that vault. And the ark is an apt comparison in that the same penalty—death—awaits anyone who touches the scrolls with their hands (or so I learned with a wink from Adolfo).
The author in the underground scroll vault with Dr. Adolfo Roitman, the curator of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed.
Just then, to complete my fantasy experience, Dr. Roitman invited me to read from the Great Isaiah Scroll with him while the camera crew filmed us. He asked me if I could make out some letters toward the beginning of the scroll. As I worked through the ancient script and read the words he was pointing to aloud, I found myself reading Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; and nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
I had chills. I had just read in the original Hebrew from the oldest copy of any biblical manuscript known to humankind.
As we cut and ou
r cameraman, Lawrence, lowered his camera, I exhaled. I fought off tears, stunned at what I had just experienced.
Dr. Roitman looked at me and said, “Not bad.”
I replied, “That is an important verse. Do you think we’ll ever experience this?”
He looked me in the eye and replied hopefully, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”
The author reading the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) in the underground scroll vault with Dr. Adolfo Roitman, the curator of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed.
As we exited the vault, I didn’t notice the gauntlet of doors. I had just been behind the proverbial curtain with the “high priest” of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I had just read from a twenty-two-hundred-year-old copy of the book of Isaiah. There are no words.
These Dead Sea Scrolls help us better understand the origin of our Bible. But before we examine how the discovery of the scrolls affects how we read our modern Bibles (and what our modern Bibles actually say), let us first look at the (often comical) story of the discovery of the scrolls as well as the controversies that have surrounded the archaeological interpretation of Qumran.
The Cities That Built the Bible Page 19
