The Mysteries of John the Baptist

by Tobias Churton

  Defeated by Aretas, Herod Antipas’s begging letter to Tiberius came in the context of both Roman success and continued threat from Parthia. Tiberius meant to show iron will on the eastern border and was determined to teach Aretas a final lesson for daring to go war with Rome’s approved Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. Flush from a propaganda coup in Syria, Vitellius received orders from Tiberius to deal with Rome’s enemy in the south. Everyone who served Rome in the region was sensitized to the need to quell the least signs of rebellion; Tiberius was watching. If John had made a case that suited Aretas, then John would have to go; it was a question of authority.

  Pontius Pilate doubtless felt discomfited by all the news pouring into his Judean and Samarian jurisdiction. If he could avoid it, Pilate probably did not want to have to call on Vitellius’s legions to deal with unrest in his territory. He would have sought the emperor’s approval not by calling on his aid, but by showing he could be trusted to do the right thing with the resources allotted him. He had kept insurrection down for ten years by brutal force. With the emperor’s eye on Syria, with fighting between Aretas and Antipas to the north, east, and south, with the threat of more instability, an occasion soon presented itself that called for Pilate’s firm hand.

  It is at this point in Josephus’s record of events that his narrative begins to mirror the instability of the times. This is partly because he has two chapters dealing with two separate political stories, which happened at roughly the same time (Antiquities, Book 18, chapters 4–5). The first is an atrocity wrought on Samaritans by Pontius Pilate. The second is the war between Aretas and Antipas. The problem is that for Josephus’s narrative, the consequences of both accounts are the same, and in both narratives, the death of Tiberius in 37 CE spoils the intended plans that conclude each story. Not only that, each account involves a visit to Jerusalem by Vitellius, governor of Syria, both involving attendance at Jewish religious festivals, both involving news of the death of Tiberius, and both posing a question mark over the future, and indeed the whereabouts of Pontius Pilate. It looks quite possible that one visit to Jerusalem by Vitellius has been split into two because the journey to Jerusalem was bound up with two crises. If the crises were more or less simultaneous, then it is likely that there was one visit, though not all the details match. There is a discrepancy over the names of high priests appointed and disappointed. In trying to deal with two separate sources for the accounts, Josephus is clearly himself not exactly sure of the precise course of events.

  This matters because it is highly likely that Vitellius’s approach to, or brief (three days) residence in, Jerusalem marked a moment when a breakdown in order left Jerusalem in a state of volatile flux as to who was really governing it, and who would be governing it in the future. For the messianic movement, it would have been a time of heightened, even hysterical expectation, a blessed moment of opportunity; for the authorities, a time of crisis as happens when the old gives way to the new. Collaborators might have cried, “We have no king but Caesar,” but Caesar was dead (murdered) and there was some doubt about the succession.

  In short, the historical record provides us with the best explanation for why Jesus was probably crucified in Jerusalem in March 37 CE, and how that event was linked to the beheading of John the Baptist, most likely in 36 CE.

  THE REAL DATE OF JESUS’S CRUCIFIXION

  Josephus in Antiquities 18, chapter four, recounts the cause of Pontius Pilate’s downfall in an account set sometime between late 36 and March 37 CE.

  Josephus records how a Samaritan, much given to deception, announced to a multitude that if they assembled on Mount Gerizzim, the Samaritans’ holy mountain, he would show them all the “sacred vessels” secreted under it by Moses. Armed crowds gathered at a village called Tirathaba; Pilate’s cavalry and infantry appeared, blocking the roads to the holy mountain. Seeing armed men and supposing a rebellion, the soldiers fell on the crowd, slaying some and capturing others. Pilate ordered the fittest of the captured to be killed.

  This atrocity may be identical to that reported to have befallen “Galileans” in Luke 13:1–5. According to Luke’s report, it was rumored in Jesus’s circle that Pilate’s victims had “asked for it” on account of sin:

  There were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, “Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

  Superficially, there is the hint that Jesus bore sympathy for the supposed “rebels”; perhaps he knew the facts. However, the statement amounts to saying no more than that those dead Galileans were really no worse than the rest of their countrymen, and if they too refused to “repent” then they too would die in the same manner. One can smell the embers of the Jewish Revolt of 66–73 CE behind this barbed judgment attributed to Jesus. One should not, I think, make too much of the term Galilaeans in this context. At the time of the Jewish Revolt, the term Galilaean was for Romans practically synonymous with rebel, following Judas the Galilean’s savagely suppressed rebellion against Quirinius’s tax imposition of 6 CE. Besides, Pilate did not govern Galilee; Antipas did, though Pilate sought Antipas’s military help in suppressing insurrection, as we shall see. The Samaritan incident may have been incited by Galilean zealots, perhaps persons familiar to Jesus’s—or indeed John’s—entourage. Josephus’s Samaritan “given to deception” sounds very much like the heresiarch Simon Magus of Gitto. Simon’s later followers claimed he was so close to John the Baptist that he would have been his successor, but was away at Alexandria at the time of John’s execution.

  In fact, the Tirathaba atrocity was highly significant. So incensed was the Samaritan senate that its members sent an embassy north to Vitellius in Syria (probably Antioch). They petitioned that contrary to what Vitellius might have heard, no one had gone to Tirathaba to rebel against the Romans. Rather, they went to “escape the violence of Pilate.” According to Josephus, Vitellius sent a friend, Marcellus, to “take care of the affairs of Judea” and ordered Pilate to go to Rome “to answer before the emperor to the accusations of the Jews.” Josephus then says that Pilate made haste to Rome, “but before he could get to Rome Tiberius was dead.” Tiberius died on March 16, 37 CE.

  This leaves it rather an open question as to how far Pilate got, or if indeed he actually left Jerusalem. With favorable winds, it took only nine days by sea from Puteoli in Italy to Alexandria, and if Pilate actually did leave Jerusalem and heard about Tiberius’s death on the way, it is just as likely that he returned, as it was a practice of Tiberius at his palace at Capri to keep supplicants in such cases locked up before dealing with them, first, to show displeasure at their possible incompetence, and second, to indicate to their accusers that Roman justice was impartial, and that “something was being done,” while in the meantime, the tumult that caused the appeal should cease. This was Tiberius’s known method, and if Pilate knew anything about Tiberius’s likely successor, Gaius “Caligula” (and Caligula’s supporter Macro), he had good reason to sit tight, given the fundamentally altered circumstances of an imperial era’s end.

  When an emperor died, much of the previous emperor’s business became void, since so much depended on the emperor’s personal will; the new emperor might have very different ideas. If Vitellius ordered Pilate to go to Tiberius, and Tiberius no longer lived, the original order ceased in effect. Like so much else, Pilate’s status would be in a kind of limbo until the new emperor established fresh policy. If Caesar had not made a decision to remove Pilate from his prefectship, Pilate was still prefect. Vitellius himself would encounter this fact of imperial life shortly.

  There is, furthermore, something fishy about Josephus’s account. It shows Vitellius as a reasonable man, guarding against excesses in Roman administration. However, if Vitellius was disposed to calm Samaritan and Judean nerves about Roman intentions, there
was a practical reason for it. After all, Pilate had been an effective, dependable prefect who had kept the peace. The reason for Vitellius’s reasonableness soon becomes clear. On Tiberius’s instructions, Vitellius was preparing to teach Aretas IV a singular lesson in what happened to those who opposed Rome’s appointees; a punitive march to Petra was planned. The emperor had demanded Aretas’s head. If Antipas could not deliver it, Vitellius would. Vitellius needed Judeans and Samaritans to keep quiet while the job was accomplished. Pilate was probably told to “keep out of the way” for a time, pending Tiberius’s “considered judgment” on the matter. But events probably got in the way of the process; Tiberius’s death changed everything.

  Josephus recounts that after the Samaritan atrocity, Vitellius entered Judea, going up to Jerusalem around Passover time, apparently to assert imperial authority over a restive populus. If this was Passover 37 CE, then the date would be toward the end of March, just about the time news would have arrived announcing the emperor’s death, caused, so the Roman mob believed, by the hand of Caligula’s ally, Naevius Sutorius Macro, prefect of the Praetorian Guard. These were tense times. Vitellius, “magnificently received,” according to Josephus, sought support. In a bid to pacify the population with unaccustomed Roman generosity, Vitellius removed taxes on food bought and sold. He even gave instructions for the high priests’s vestments to be removed from the Antonia Tower after years in Roman custody and returned to the priests. Formerly released only with Roman permission for special events, the concession was regarded by Josephus as greatly important to his people. Was this notable concession granted in response to a “We want the vestments!” cry akin to the familiar “We want Barabbas!” mob demand?

  Josephus does not mention Vitellius’s friend Marcellus, who was supposed to be taking care of affairs in Judea, nor indeed does he tell us specifically why Vitellius made this visit to Jerusalem in person, or why, during it, he also “deprived Joseph, who was also called Caiaphas, of the high priesthood, and appointed Jonathan the son of Ananus, the former high priest, to succeed him.” Caiaphas, of course, is the name given in the Gospels to Jesus’s principal accuser. One wonders what Caiaphas had done to make him so unpopular as to give Vitellius a means to appease the population by removing him. Josephus’s account concludes with the words, “After which, he [Vitellius] took his journey back to Antioch.”

  In his next chapter, Josephus recounts the battle between Herod Antipas’s and Aretas’s armies, lost, “the Jews” believed, because Antipas had taken the life of a righteous man: John. Antipas stood under divine judgment.

  Vitellius was under orders from Tiberius: Aretas, dead or alive.

  Josephus’s chronology is difficult to fix precisely in relation to the Samaritan atrocity recounted previously. The sequence of events makes best sense if we see the actual battle between Aretas and Antipas as having taken place before the Samaritan episode, since there must be time allowed for Herod to have written to Tiberius about it, for Tiberius to have ordered Vitellius to annihilate Aretas, and for Vitellius to have organized an invasion force properly equipped for the long march south to Petra in Nabataea. Josephus says as much himself with the words, “So Vitellius prepared to make war with Aretas, having with him two legions of armed men; he also took with him all those of light armature, and of the horsemen, which belonged to them, and were drawn out of those kingdoms, which were under the Romans, and made haste for Petra, and came to Ptolemais.”

  That phrase of Josephus’s “make haste” should not be confused with being “hasty” or “hurrying.” He is signifying intention above all: an outcome. Vitellius “came to Ptolemais.” Well, that is not very far from Syrian Antioch, Vitellius’s administrative base. Ptolemais, on the coast ten miles west of Herod Antipas’s tetrarchy of Galilee, was still in the Roman province of Syria. The army had another two hundred miles to go.

  Pilate would have known of the preparations no doubt, and would have been anxious to make sure there would be no resistance to the passage of the legions through his jurisdiction of Judea and Samaria. This could well account for Pilate’s anxiety about armed religious Samaritans (or “Galileans,” that is, Zealots) gathering near Mount Gerizzim, and also for the uncompromising manner in which he responded to it.

  Josephus then recounts that Vitellius’s army, having left Ptolemais to make their way through “Judea,” the number of images (of the emperor) on the troops’ ensigns offended religious sensibilities. Vitellius was persuaded by the people’s leaders that to avoid offense, his army should march down the Great Plain. Usually understood as the Plain of Esdraelon, the plain runs just southeast of the Galilee-Samaria border on the Samaritan side. That might make the offended “Judeans” into Galileans, under Herod Antipas’s jurisdiction. Alternatively, the issue could have been bound up with the Tirathaba atrocity—possibly a move on Pilate’s part to protect Vitellius’s flank from possible Zealot sabotage. Indeed, the geography makes most sense if the objection to Vitellius’s troops came from Samaria, for if the troops were to avoid the heart of that region, they could either march due south down the Plain of Sharon near the coast or head down the Great Plain toward the Decapolis, which though a diversion, would keep the legions out of both Judea and Samaria. Thus, Pilate’s atrocity in Samaria makes historical sense as having taken place very shortly before Vitellius’s march south to engage with Aretas. The complaint about ensign images could then have come from the Samaritan senate along with demands for justice as regards Pilate’s violence at Tirathaba. Vitellius would have been keen to avoid situations, which could threaten his rear supply lines, during his imperial mission to humble Aretas. Pilate’s peremptory action in Samaria may have annoyed Vitellius as an inconvenient case of unnecessary “overkill,” or, alternatively, secretly pleased him.

  This scenario may contribute then to our understanding of why, in the middle of his campaign against Aretas, Vitellius, according to Josephus, along with, most interestingly, “Herod the tetrarch and his friends” went up to Jerusalem “to offer sacrifice to God, an ancient festival of the Jews being then just approaching.” As with Josephus’s previous account of a possibly earlier visit to Jerusalem, Vitellius was “honorably entertained by the multitude of the Jews.” Vitellius apparently stayed “for three days.” In that time he “deprived Jonathan of the high priesthood, and gave it to his brother Theophilus.” Not explained, the removal of Jonathan was almost certainly a decision to court popularity. It is the only serious difference between the two accounts of Vitellius’s visiting Jerusalem. The period, as recounted by Josephus, was marked by a very high turnover of high priests, so great in fact that ex-high priests were still called “high priests” even though there was only one officially accepted as such at any time. This fact has caused much confusion and this discrepancy may be an instance of it.

  Josephus now tells us that on the fourth day of this visit to Judea’s capital, letters arrived informing Vitellius of the death of Tiberius. Realizing that this highly sensitive news could incite the Jerusalem mob, Vitellius demanded that the “multitude” immediately make a public oath of fidelity to Caius, the new emperor (nicknamed “Caligula” or “Little Boots”). Such an occasion might well have elicited that now fateful cry, “We have no king but Caesar!” (John 19:15) attributed to the multitude on being asked if they cared to save the “King of the Jews” from death.

  The presence of Galilee’s tetrarch, Herod Antipas, in Jerusalem is recorded in the Gospels only in Luke (23:7–12). The occasion, note, is the trial of Jesus. Remarkably, Antipas appears in Luke in the company of his “men of war.” Since he was not in his own territory, and was therefore a guest in a territory under Roman jurisdiction, the presence of men of war should strike us as incongruous to the normal run of events. Luke does not explain Antipas’s presence in Jerusalem, though Josephus’s account offers both evidence and cause for it. According to Luke, Pilate finds it convenient. Hearing that Jesus has allegedly been stirring up the Galileans, Pilate requests Antipas to j
udge the matter. All of this is curious.

  We then hear that Herod is “exceedingly glad” to make Jesus’s acquaintance, at last. He asks him many questions and hopes for a miracle. Did he think he was looking at John the Baptist’s “angel?” He should have known more about Jesus, for according to Luke (8:3), Herod’s own steward, or minister, Chuza had a wife, Joanna, who was funding Jesus’s activities! It is especially incongruous if Pilate was in full command at the time, for if he had been, it is hard to think of him giving over legal authority to Herod, or even for being hesitant in judging Jesus one way or another. Admittedly, the chief priests and scribes keep accusing Jesus “vehemently,” so much so that Herod himself gives in: “And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate” (23:11). For some reason, Luke records that on this day, Herod and Pilate became friends, having long been at enmity. Pilate wants nothing to do with the case and, having assembled the “chief priests and the rulers and the people” (the “rulers” might well have included the Syrian governor and his entourage), Pilate states his intention of releasing Jesus. Herod does not seem to object. Like Pilate perhaps, he too had had enough of the consequences of executing religiously motivated “troublemakers.” He was doing his best to earn back political points with his Roman masters after the battle that followed the death of John.

  The extreme reluctance of Pilate to execute his will has long been commented on. The main explanation is that the gospel writers wanted Gentile readers to understand that Jesus had not been put to death as a rebel or terrorist by Roman authority, but as a prophet denied by his own people. Crucifixion was reserved for those who challenged Rome’s authority; how had the Son of God died from a Roman form of execution? Answer: “the Jews” demanded it with threat of breakdown of order and were prepared to shoulder the responsibility for it.