37 CE
The year 37 CE was a pivotal one in the history of the Near East for the Mosaean culture of the time and ultimately for the formation of Christianity. Several dramatic changes occurred within the political landscape of Jerusalem and in Roman leadership that, in retrospect, can be viewed as the opening steps towards the later First Jewish Revolt. The gulf between the Roman oppressors and the Mosaean oppressed that had closed somewhat with Tiberius’ decree of 31 CE, reopened gradually and violently with his successor, Caligula. Within a very short space of time, the Mosaeans lost the leadership of Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Joseph Caiaphas, John the Baptist and Jesus, all men who had been of great political influence in Jerusalem, Judaea and beyond for well over a decade. The impact of the loss of so many men of influence within months of each other can hardly be calculated on the popular psyche, and it can hardly be underestimated what the concurrent loss of political stability meant to the region and why the relative calm of the preceding years deteriorated so quickly under Caligula. By 37 CE, Tiberius had been Roman emperor for 23 years; Pilate had been governor of Judaea for 10 or 11 years and Joseph Caiaphas had been high priest of the provincial Sanhedrin for 18 years, unprecedented tenures for those positions at the time. While that age was not without conflict or upheaval, it stands as a time of control and continuity in political leadership in Mosaean society that was truly remarkable. Yet all these prominent men were either dead or removed from power by early 37 CE, some within weeks or months of one another. The first to go was John the Baptist, a prophet and leader of great popularity among the common people and consequently a perceived threat to those in power.
The death of John is somewhat problematic within Christian tradition due to the uncertainty regarding the exact date he died. Some sources indicate his death as early as 30 CE while others date it later in 34 CE, but there are problems with both of these dates. One of the firm historical markers that his death has been tied to, was the war between Herod Antipas and his ex-father-in-law, King Aretas of Petrea that took place in 36 CE. Many Judeans associated Antipas’ complete defeat by Aretas (Ant. 18; 5:2) with John’s death, saying that because Antipas had executed a man of God, God had shown retribution by causing Antipas’’ defeat. The association of John’s death as a contributing factor in the outcome of the Aretas/Antipas war creates problems with the traditional dating of his death. If 30 CE is accepted as the correct date, it requires that the Judeans maintained the connection between John’s death and the outcome of the war for six years, a remarkably long time for a population to make and hold such an association, especially since Jesus, another popular prophet and leader, may have been executed between John’s death and the war, thereby denigrating Jesus’ position to beneath John’s. If the population held Antipas’ defeat as retribution for John’s execution, why wouldn’t they also have used Jesus’ execution as an explanation for the same event as well? Either John was far more important politically than Jesus, making his execution a greater tragedy and loss, or Jesus was not executed by the time of the war in 36 CE.
The problem with a date of 34 CE for John’s execution in Christian tradition is that it comes after the latest date suggested for Jesus’ execution in 33 CE, and the Gospels do not support such a possibility. The Gospel stories indicate that John was arrested and executed while Jesus was still preaching, so that according to tradition, John must have been executed sometime before 33 CE or possibly earlier, again creating a gap of a number of years between the event and the war and putting John’s prominence ahead of Jesus’, both highly unlikely scenarios. The type of association the Judean population made between John’s death and Antipas’ defeat must have been based upon the time proximity of the two events. The defeat must have closely followed the execution, within weeks or months so that the two events were closely linked in everyone’s mind. Then, as now, it would have been a stretch of credibility to connect two disparate events that occurred years apart, especially in such a socially and politically active region such as the Middle East in the First Century when so many similar events were taking place and God’s involvement was associated with them all. As a result, John’s death must have occurred reasonably close in time to the war of 36 CE.
As previously indicated, Jesus was crucified in 37 CE, and according to Josephus, Pilate and Caiaphas were both removed from power in the same year. Tiberius died on March 17, 37, confirming that the most prominent leaders of Mosaean society at the time were all gone from power by the middle of March 37 CE. It is hardly coincidental that first John then Jesus and then Pilate and Caiaphas were all removed from power so close together. There must have been a reason that so many prominent men were removed from the political scene almost simultaneously, and through a careful reading of both Josephus and the Gospels the answer becomes clear. However, to first fully understand the historical record, it is necessary to refute the very contentious and controversial passage in Josephus known as the Testimonium Flavianum, purportedly the only extra-biblical contemporary account of Jesus known to exist.
The Testimonium Flavianum is a short passage in The Antiquities of the Judeans (18; 3:3) that records very briefly the career and crucifixion of Jesus. It is a scant 125 words long and is written in a rather florid and certainly pro-Christian style. The arguments both for and against its reliability have been hotly debated over the years by historians and biblical scholars with some claiming that it is completely accurate and fully attributable to Josephus, while some others completely refute its reliability and see it as nothing more than a later Christian interpolation, while still others accept only parts of it as original to Josephus’ work with only select portions standing as later Christian interpolations. The controversial nature of the passage stems entirely from the fact that (if true) it corroborates the existence of the historical Jesus in a work other than the Christian gospels. It records the historical Jesus in a specific time and place with other historical personages (Pilate) as recorded by a relatively trustworthy source (Josephus). However, there are many problems with its veracity, not the least of which is that if it was in fact written by Josephus, who was staunchly Mosaean and very much against any Mosaean leader who was seditious, rebellious or nationalistic, it is difficult to resolve the pro Christian tone of the piece. Some scholars have mitigated this apparent contradiction by excising those segments of the passage that they deem too Christian in tone to have been written by Josephus, thus reducing the length of the passage even more.
In addition to that apparent discrepancy is the fact that the passage itself seems to have been injected into the chapter somewhat at odds with the surrounding passages. If the passage is removed entirely, the flow of the narrative continues smoothly and sensibly without any awkwardness at the loss of the passage. Josephus, at this point in his work, was detailing some of the calamities that had befallen the Judeans under Pilate’s prefecture, yet this reference to Jesus was hardly written as calamitous to anyone but Jesus. Below is the relevant passage with the purported Christian interpolations in bold and bracketed.
Antiquities of the Judeans 18; 3:3; (Whiston)
3. (63) “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, [IF IT BE LAWFUL TO CALL HIM A MAN] for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many Judeans and many of the Gentiles. [HE WAS CHRIST]. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; [FOR HE APPEARED TO THEM ALIVE AGAIN THE THIRD DAY, AS THE DIVINE PROPHETS HAD FORETOLD THESE AND TEN THOUSAND OTHER WONDERFUL THINGS CONCERNING HIM. AND THE TRIBE OF CHRISTIANS, SO NAMED FROM HIM ARE NOT EXTINCT TO THIS DAY].”
Removing the obviously Christian interpolations from the text leaves a passage of only 73 words of dubious purpose to Josephus’ overall text:
“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Judeans and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at first did not forsake him.”
The passage becomes pointless in the broader context of the work and inherently contradictory in that it begins by praising Jesus and ends by condemnation by prominent Judeans and execution by Pilate without any explanation or mention of his crime, all within 73 words. There is no other passage in any of the works of Josephus that would match this one for brevity or lack of purpose in the text. Even in its complete version, the passage fails to introduce any motive for its inclusion in the chapter. Without the mention of a crime as the reason for Jesus’ crucifixion, there is no way to determine whether or not the event was calamitous to the Judeans that was the theme of Josephus’ work at that point. Yes, the passage makes clear that he drew many Judeans and Gentiles to him, that might indicate his death may have been viewed as a calamity, but without the mention of a specific crime or reason for his execution such a view is merely supposition. Perhaps he was turned over by the prominent Judeans for blasphemy and crimes against God, actions that would have lost him many of his followers and would have been seen by Judeans as justifying death on the cross.
To fully appreciate the brevity of Josephus’ account of Jesus it is important to compare the passage with Josephus’ account of John the Baptist that is recorded two chapters later. John and Jesus were contemporaries, preached basically the same message and were equally popular with the people, which meant that they posed the same threat to Antipas. The account is brief, though still twice as long as the unabridged Testimonium Flavianum and includes some background, the reason for his execution, the popular reaction to the execution (its association to Antipas’ defeat) and no overtly Christian interpolations. Consequently, its authenticity has gone largely unchallenged.
Antiquities of the Judeans , 18; 5:2 (Whiston)
2. (116) “Now some of the Judeans thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God and that very justly as a punishment of what he did against John that was called the Baptist: (117) for Herod killed him, who was a good man and commanded the Judeans to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another and piety towards God and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only] but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. (118) Now when [many] others came in crowds about him, for they were very greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too late. (119) Accordingly he was sent as a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the fortress I before mentioned and was there put to death. Now the Judeans had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod and a mark of God’s displeasure to him.”
The differences between the two passages, as mentioned above, are clear. The John passage is twice as long (at 251 words, not counting bracketed insertions) as the full Testimonium, with no Christian interpolations but with an explanation of why Antipas felt it necessary to execute him. There is an explanation of his beliefs which helps provide the reasons for his popularity and why that popularity was perceived as a threat to Antipas. It is a brief but concise recounting of a known historical event that impacted the political setting of the day. Had Josephus, in fact, written the account of Jesus, we might have expected it to sound much more like his account of John, a concise explanation of Jesus, his beliefs and why those beliefs posed a threat to both the leading men of Judea and Pilate. What the Testimonium records is that Jesus was a teacher and doer of wonderful works, vague terms that might have defined any number of similar miracle workers, prophets and teachers. John however is specifically associated with baptism and its power to purify the body and his understanding that righteousness would purify the soul. Either Josephus was unaware of Jesus’ teachings or saw him as such a minor character that his teachings were insignificant but such views seem contradicted by the inclusion that Jesus brought to his preaching many Judeans and Gentiles. Yet these followers did not associate the destruction of Antipas’ army with Jesus’ execution, even though, according to the Gospels, Antipas had access to him before the crucifixion.
More than that, both the complete version and the abridged version of the Testimonium are laced with inaccuracies and mistakes that seem to indicate that the passage was written at a later date and added to Antiquities when Christians were viewed in a different light. At the time Josephus wrote the original version of the work, sometime in the early 90s CE, the term ‘Christian’ was a term of derision and would hardly have been used in a passage that extolled the virtues of its founder. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in his Annals near the end of the First Century, almost contemporaneously with Josephus, related that “…by vulgar appellation [they were] commonly called Christians.” A similar view was also recorded by Pliny the Younger in correspondence with Trajan at about the same time. Such usage is similar to various terms today that can be either derogatory or friendly depending upon whether the point of origin is within or outside a particular group. The use of ‘Christian’ may have been a term of familiarity and brotherhood within the early followers of Jesus, but it also may have been used by outsiders as a derogatory epithet. Josephus, as an outsider, would have understood ‘the tribe of Christians’ as a derogatory association and so it is difficult to resolve the apparent contradiction between the initial laudatory tone of the passage with his use of what for him would have been a derogatory insult.
Early Christians, because of what most people of the time saw as their rather strange beliefs (the Eucharist or sharing of Jesus’ body and blood at the communion meal was seen by many outsiders as a form of cannibalism, among other oddities), were seen as abnormal and beneath contempt. It wasn’t until much later that the term ‘Christian’ lost its derogatory implication and took on the positive meaning that we know today. Added to this apparent aberration in Josephus is the point that the passage refers to ‘the tribe’ of Christians, a term that Josephus used most frequently to denote people of a distinct race, not a schismatic sect of a known race that the early Christians were to the Mosaeans. Coupled to these anomalies is the statement that “those that loved him at first, did not forsake him” an observation that is clearly contradicted by the Gospel accounts that indicate that Jesus’ followers did in fact forsake him immediately after the crucifixion.
Taking all the various arguments for and against the authenticity of Josephus’ passage about Jesus into account it is difficult to accept that any of it is genuine. The whole insert is in contradiction to what we know of Josephus’ character and political views. He was strongly Mosaean in his outlook and spent years extolling the philosophical and political virtues of his race and religion to a largely Roman audience that had spent decades in direct control over Judea and had decimated Mosaean society and culture in the First Jewish Revolt. His combined works were not much more than a detailed collection of apologetics for Mosaeanism, and he would hardly have included a very brief mention of a supposed Mosaean Messiah, tucked into his broader apologetics without either refuting the claims made for Jesus or fully explaining why the expected Messiah failed in his prophecised agenda and was crucified, or at the very least, touting the arrival of the longed for Messiah in the form of Jesus. The person of the Mosaean Messiah was too important a figure in Mosaean society for Josephus to gloss over his reference to him in 125 words (or 73) and while out of necessity Josephus tried to downplay the importance of such men to his Roman audience he did not ignore them completely or fail to write some small biography of their movement. No other messianic claimant received such short shrift from Josephus anywhere else in his works, and although many others were mentioned they were invariably referred to by Josephus derisively. For the most part their passages were concluded by the intervention of the Roman military and the death of both the claimant and his movement.
With that in mind, is there any other passage in Josephus that might refer to the historical Jesus? Surprisingly, there is and it goes a long way to explaining why so many influential men were removed from power in so short a time. The passage comes in Chapter 4, following the Jesus passage of Chapter 3 and before the passage concerning John in Chapter 5. This placement is important in that it explains the insertion of the Testimonium as preceding the actual account of Jesus thereby superseding it, and it precedes the explanation for the death of John and therefore explaining why Antipas feared his popularity. Chapter 4 deals with much that was pertinent to the Gospel stories and helps to explain certain episodes that have confused historians and biblical scholars for some time. It has been misunderstood over the centuries because the main protagonists were un-named by Josephus, leaving the story ambiguous and ungrounded in the events of the time. Generally referred to as the “Samaritan Uprising” or the “Samaritan Taheb,” the passage recounts the initial push towards rebellion by John and Jesus and their final days and the last days of Pilate and Caiaphas. It has been long overlooked as an historical source for Jesus because it was presaged by the Christian interpolation of him in Chapter 3 and the resultant controversy regarding the Testimonium. By disregarding the Testimonium’s authenticity and by realizing the political importance Jesus placed upon the Samaritans, the Samaritan uprising can be seen in a fresh light.
Antiquities of the Judeans, 4:1 (Whiston)
1 (85) “But the nation of the Samaritans did not escape without disturbances. The man who excited them to it was one who thought lying a thing of little consequence and who contrived everything so that the multitude might be pleased; so he directed them to get together upon Mount Gerizim, which is by them looked upon as the most holy of mountains and assured them that when they were come there he would show them those sacred vessels which were laid under that place, because Moses put them there. (86) So they came there armed and thought the discourse of the man probable and as they abode at a certain village, which was called Tirathaba, they got the rest together to them and desired to go up the mountain in a great multitude together; (87) but Pilate prevented their going up by seizing the roads with a great band of horsemen and footmen, who fell upon those that were gotten together in the village and when it came to an action, some of them they killed and others of them they put to flight and took a great many alive, the principal of which and also the most potent of those that fled away, Pilate ordered killed.”
On its own, this passage is just another account of the calamities that befell the Mosaean citizens under Pontius Pilate’s rule, but it is historically interesting for several reasons. Josephus, though he was clearly familiar enough with the leader of this uprising to remark about his ability to lie and control the multitudes, fails to name him. The omission is curious since generally Josephus made it a point to name names in his works, especially if the individual referred to was particularly troublesome or politically radical and therefore someone to be scorned or dismissed. The suggestion made by Josephus in this account is that he very well knew the individual’s name but contemptuously refused to use it, invoking a case of damnatio memoriae against the man while still recording the historical event. Josephus’ animosity towards the leader of the Samartians must have been so great that the very mention of his name was more than he cared to record. It would be hard to imagine that Josephus would have known so many of the details of the event, including something of the leader’s personality without also knowing his name and while it is possible that Josephus’ source for the event may have failed to record the man’s name, the overall tone of Josephus’ entry seems to suggest a more personal reaction to the event indicating a deeper, more complete knowledge of who was involved.
Of secondary interest is the fact that Josephus’ conclusion to the episode is somewhat ambiguous regarding the immediate fate that befell the leadership of the uprising. Some of the Samaritans were killed outright by Pilate’s men while others were taken prisoner and still others fled. Consider Josephus’ final comment, “…the principal of which and also the most potent of those that fled away, Pilate ordered to be killed.” The ambiguity lies in the uncertainty as to whether those important members of the group were immediately recaptured and killed or whether they escaped for a time leaving the intention of Pilate’s orders to be based upon the future recapture and execution of the individuals involved. The intention of ‘to be killed’ would seem to indicate that at least some of these rebels were to be captured and killed at a later time having fled the initial assault by Pilate’s men and gotten away. This ambiguity leaves open the possibility that the Samaritan leader escaped and was recaptured later.
The location of the episode carried great significance, although Josephus only briefly touches upon that fact with his mention of Mount Gerizim. Mt. Gerizim was the holiest place in Samaritan culture, a place where it was supposed that Moses had caused to be secured the sacred vessels of the Tabernacle and perhaps even the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets. The fact that the Samaritans were meeting in the shadow of Mt. Gerizim should have been enough to indicate the depth of importance associated with the event, that this was no ordinary meeting of local people as Josephus presents, but was a meeting of deeply religious significance to a ‘multitude’ of Samaritans. Josephus’ gloss of this point again confirms his agenda as an apologist rather than an historian. By downplaying the significance of the event he was attempting to downplay to his Roman audience the depth of the schismatic nature of Mosaean society as a whole as well as the disparate and chaotic philosophical nature of the region. His goal was to present to his audience the strength and solidarity of Mosaean culture, very much the equal to Rome’s. To give full credence and respectability to all the different Mosaean sects of the time would have diluted his message and given the impression that Mosaeans were nothing more than cultish sectarians incapable of overcoming their differences to the general benefit of all, a fact that was painfully obvious during the First Jewish Revolt. However, what was truly important in determining its significance and in consequence its association with Jesus, John and their movement of reunification, and what for anyone with any knowledge of Mosaean history showed seditious overtones, was that they had gathered the people together in the village of Tirathaba as a prelude to ascending Gerizim.
The village of Tirathaba was historically important for Mosaean society and for the nation of Israel, both past and present in the First Century. Again, Josephus either wasn’t fully aware or chose not to detail the significance of the place to his audience, but for Jesus and John it would have been chosen carefully as the launching point for their rebellion. Though obscure to today’s historians and perhaps even to Josephus, the village of Tirathaba was the place that saw the disintegration of David’s United Monarchy after his son, Solomon had died, and the kingdom was left in the hands of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. The investiture of Rehoboam as king of Israel occurred in Shechem, in Samaria and was followed almost immediately by dissension among the tribes of Israel as they presented the new king with an ultimatum; “Your father was a hard master,” they told Rehoboam. “We don’t want you as our king unless you promise to treat us better than he did.” (1 Kings 12:4). Rehoboam, after consulting with both his old and young advisors, told the people of Israel, who were led by Jeroboam, that he would treat them even more harshly than had his father. In response to such a declaration and realizing that Rehoboam meant what he said, the ten northern tribes of Israel broke away from the United Monarchy forcing Rehoboam to his own tribe of Judah and consequently to Jerusalem. The ten tribes then became the nation of Israel. This dissolution of the monarchy took place in and around Shechem, then the capital city of Israel, and no doubt involved the taking of a vote or the reaching of a consensus among the ten tribes before they broke away. It is that event that gave name to the village of Tirathaba.
According to Josephus’ account, Tirathaba must have been reasonably close to Mt. Gerizim since the multitude gathered there and were in a position to climb at once to the top of the mountain, though its exact location has never been substantiated. It could have been close to Shechem (just east of modern Nablus) that was located between Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal and would have provided a location outside the capital city where the ten tribes could have gathered after submitting their ultimatum to the king. What seems to confirm such a possibility is the etymology of the name Tirathaba. Taken from the Hebrew tirat (town, village, place) and haba’at (vote) and used in the vernacular as ‘the place of the vote’, Tirathaba represented the geographical place where the ten tribes had made their decision to separate from the United Monarchy. For Jesus and John, no place could have had more significance to their efforts to reunite the Davidic kingdom than the place where it had originally fallen apart. The political symbolism would not have been lost on the Samaritans or the Judeans for that matter, since Tirathaba was the seat of the beginning of the animosity between the two groups. Jesus’ role as the Samaritan Taheb or ‘restorer’, offering to reconnect the Samaritans with the religious objects of their spiritual past as a sign of their future greatness within the restored kingdom, could have only driven home the significance of the place even more.
With such an openly seditious act having occurred in the face of Roman domination it is not hard to understand why Josephus would have downplayed the historic importance of the event and glossed over its deeper meanings. Such acts were anathema to his sense of propriety and his agenda of apologetics and pacifism. There may have been other messianic claimants or nationalistic movements that he wrote about, but none had the audacity to connect with Mosaean history so clearly and immediately as did Jesus and John. Most claimants proposed a nationalistic agenda in some form or another and were all familiar with the messianic criteria that needed to be met. They were generally freedom fighters, men who had grown tired of the yoke of oppression and had managed to gather enough in the way of a following to create threats to the Roman and Herodian power structure, but few had tried to make the cross cultural connections that Jesus and John had employed. None had had the political vision to understand the necessity of reunifying the tribes as a means of gaining independence, yet it was the scope of their vision that ultimately brought Jesus and John down.
Jesus’ association with the Samaritans is made clear throughout the Gospels in parables such as the “Samaritan Woman at the Well”, “The Good Samaritan” and even “The Ten Healed of Leprosy” (Luke 17:11-19) and they all point to the political agenda he advanced regarding the reunited kingdom. Mostly, they show a willingness on the part of the Samaritans to rise above old animosities in the face of overwhelming disinterest from the other tribes and provinces. Jesus did all he could to convince the other groups of this Samaritan willingness, but ultimately with little or no affect. Luke 17 provides a further example of this teaching.
Luke 17:11-19;
(11) “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. (12) As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance (13) and called out in a loud voice, Jesus, master, have pity on us! (14) When he saw them, he said, Go, show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. (15) One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. (16) He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. (17) Jesus asked, Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? (18) Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? (19) Then he said to him, Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
The metaphors in this parable are clear and straightforward, the number ten and the Samaritan reference the keys to understanding the political intention of the piece. The ten lepers of the parable stand for the ten northern tribes of the original monarchy separated from the Levites and the tribe of Judah by their ritual impurity called leprosy in the passage. Their leprosy made them untouchable and distinctly heretical metaphorically to the audience. They were outcasts of true Mosaean society and because of their unclean state, they were forbidden to worship in Jerusalem or enter the Temple. Such was the view of the Judeans towards what they considered the apostate tribes of the north. The parable confirms that the audience for which the parable was written was Judean by calling the Samaritan a ‘foreigner’ when in fact Jesus was the foreign Judean in the lands of Samaria and Galilee. The parable takes place on the border between Samaria and Galilee so the Samaritan was close to his own land and could hardly have been considered a foreigner there, but Jesus calls him a foreigner because that was how Judeans viewed Samaritans. Jesus cured the ten and commanded them to show themselves to the priests, a metaphor establishing the fact that the ten tribes had to make amends to the Temple priesthood by making it clear that they had been cured of their apostasy (they were cleansed on their way to the priests) through Jesus’ intervention. However, even though the ten tribes (actually the remnants thereof) initially understood Jesus’ message of reunification and were thereby ‘cleansed’, only one, the Samaritan[s], fully embraced the concept (he threw himself at Jesus’ feet) and received Jesus’ approval. The parable ultimately condemned the other nine tribes for not joining with the Samaritans in the reunified kingdom which was the meaning behind Jesus’ final comment to the Samaritan, ‘…your faith has made you well’, as though by exclusion the others were not truly well.
Jesus, as the literal son of Joseph Caiaphas, was also seen by the Samaritans as a figurative ‘son of Joseph’, a self-designation used by members of the tribe to stress their connection to the patriarch Joseph. Jesus was accepted by the Samaritans, (through his teachings and his understanding of their history, both recent and ancient), as their Taheb, which translates more correctly as ‘restorer’ rather than ‘messiah’. He was seen by the tribe as a leader who could not only restore those objects of veneration, the sacred vessels of Moses’ tabernacle, which had been lost to them, but also as someone who could restore Samaritan primacy in the Mosaean world as the original and continuous ‘keepers of the Torah’. In fact, the name Samaria derives from the Hebrew shomer (to keep), so that Samaria in Hebrew is Shomeron and Samaritans as Shomeronim (keepers) while in the Dead Sea Scrolls a self designation often used by the community is shemrei ha brit (keepers of the covenant). The Old Testament downplays the Samaritans’ ancient connection to the patriarchs and the covenant and their continuous and faithful observance of Moses’ law by the fanciful account in 1 Kings 16:23-24, which indicates that when Omri began his rule over Israel he bought a hill from one Shemer and built a city atop it, naming it Shomeron (Samaria, the city) in his honor. This story, however, was nothing more than an example of the victors writing the history of the times, as the Judeans wrote much of the Old Testament and in so doing, excised the true role of the Samaritans in their common history. The Samaritans argued that they had a direct, uninterrupted and more faithful association to Moses, his teachings and traditions than did any other Mosaean tribe. In their minds, they were the original keepers of the covenant.
For Jesus, in his efforts to rebuild Israel as a unified nation, the Samaritan argument carried sufficient weight that he not only saw them as an integral part of the new nation but he was prepared to accept his role as their Taheb. John, in his role as co-messiah, understood the same necessities for reunification as Jesus and promoted the Samaritan position as well. Although Josephus did not give names in his passage on the Samaritans at Mt. Gerizim, it seems clear from his account that while there was a single individual leading the multitude there were other prominent (Josephus uses “potent”) leaders there as well. Still, it is difficult from the account to determine who among the leaders was killed outright, who escaped and who was killed later. From the Gospel accounts and from Josephus’ passages immediately following, it can be surmised that John must have been captured at once and that Pilate, as he would do later with Jesus, offered him as a captive to Antipas who, seeing their popularity (from Pilate’s account of Tirathaba and the multitude assembled there), had him executed rather quickly. Jesus, for reasons that will be made clear later by way of the Gospels, escaped and was free until the Passover of 37 CE. This would seem to indicate that this episode must have taken place early in 36 CE to account for John’s death being linked to Antipas’ defeat also in 36 CE.
The rather fanciful Gospel story concerning John’s beheading at the hands of Antipas to fulfill his promise to his stepdaughter (Mark 6:14-29) again must be understood through metaphor. While John almost certainly spoke out publicly against Antipas’ marriage to his brother’s widow Herodias, because Antipas first divorced his own wife (King Aretas’ daughter) in order to be free (Jesus spoke out against divorce), it is less certain that Antipas would have offered ‘up to half his kingdom’ (and consequently John’s head) to Herodias’ daughter for her dancing abilities. The metaphors lie in the persons of the two women, mother and daughter and in the two halves of Antipas’ kingdom and the impact of the Mt. Gerizim incident on the security of that kingdom. Antipas’ kingdom was literally divided into two segments; Galilee and Perea, and figuratively into two populations; a much more politically radicalized yet staunchly orthodox group (the Galileans) that had more direct ancestral links to the nation of Israel and a newer, more Hellenized group (the Pereans) that were not so closely linked to Israel and the Davidic kingdom. Geographically, these two segments of Antipas’ kingdom were separated by both the Jordan River and by Samaria making them two distinct and separate pieces of a single kingdom.
The figure of Herodias in the Gospel story stood for the Galilean population. Her marriage to Antipas was unconventional (radical) enough to draw public scrutiny and yet she was the granddaughter of Mariamne I, a Hasmonean princess with a long and prominent ancestral lineage. Her daughter, the real focal point of the story, represented the Perean population, her youth a metaphor for the lack of strong ancestral ties to Israel and the greater ties the population had for the newer, more Hellenized society of Mosaeans east of the Jordan. Both populations would have been impacted by news of the uprising at Tirathaba since it took place equally in both their backyards. The Galileans would have viewed the event as a threat because it was a symbol of Samaritan unity and ascendancy and just like the Judeans, the Galileans feared and distrusted the Samaritans, for many of the same reasons. The Pereans would have been just as threatened by the event but for different reasons. They would have viewed the uprising as a challenge of Samaritan orthodoxy to the Hellenism of the lands east of the Jordan. John’s call to repentance through baptism was much less of a threat to the orthodoxy of the Galileans (a policy that in many ways they could embrace) than it was to the Hellenized Mosaeans of Perea whose quality of life under a Greek model had moved them away from Mosaean orthodoxy. Herodias’ daughter, as the metaphor for that population, was more threatened by John’s activities than was Herodias herself, and it was because of this greater threat to the social stability of Perea that Antipas determined it was necessary to execute John and remove him from the public stage.
John’s involvement in the Tirathaba incident, his capture by Pilate and his execution by Antipas were all factors in the historical records of both Josephus and the Gospels that indicated that Antipas was afraid of John’s popularity. John’s radical political activism in going to Mt. Gerizim with Jesus and the Samaritans was a very real threat to the stability of the region, much more so than his outspoken attitude towards Antipas’ marriage or his call to repentance. If Antipas had taken exception to John’s views on his marriage, he could have silenced him by putting him in prison and separating him from his followers. The same would have been true of his preaching for reform and repentance, but it was John’s popularity that Antipas feared and not just his popularity, but also his popularity as a sign of militant, widespread activism, which Tirathaba certainly was. That a preacher and wise man of John’s reputation had become mobilized to such a degree could not have been ignored by Antipas and must have alarmed him greatly. Preaching against divorce or for repentance were based upon an individual’s behavior; Tirathaba was a sign of a broader movement based upon collective goals and as such required that its leaders be silenced permanently.
Immediately following the Tirathaba incident, Josephus records several other events that occurred during late 36 CE and early 37 CE that had direct bearing on the lives of Caiaphas, Pilate and Jesus and that correspond to the Gospel stories. The chronology of these events in Josephus is somewhat muddled and somewhat misinformed by that historian but can be understood clearly with the help of the Gospels. The first of these episodes recounts the Samaritan reaction to Pilate’s military response to Tirathaba and their embassy to Vitellius, the Roman military commander and therefore the highest Roman authority of Syria and the surrounding regions.
Antiquities of the Judeans 18, 4:2; (Whiston)
2 (88) “But when this disturbance was appeased, the Samaritan senate sent an embassy to Vitellius, a man that had been consul and who was now president of Syria and accused Pilate of the murder of those that were killed; for that they did not go to Tirathaba in order to revolt from the Romans but to escape the violence of Pilate. (89) So Vitellius sent Marcellus, a friend of his, 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 Judeans. So Pilate, when he had waited ten years in Judea, hurried to Rome and this in obedience to the orders of Vitellius, which he dared not contradict; but before he could get to Rome, Tiberius was dead.”
There are several telling points in the preceding passage that seem to indicate that Josephus either made mistakes while recording it, was not fully familiar with the events to record them accurately, or (more likely) was playing with the facts to suit his agenda. The first and foremost of these is Josephus’ inclusion of the Samaritan motive for going to Tirathaba. Josephus makes the claim that the real motive the Samaritans went to Tirathaba was in direct reaction to the Romans: “…they did not go to Tirathaba in order to revolt from the Romans but to escape the violence of Pilate.” Josephus makes no mention (as he did in the previous passage) of the fact that ostensibly, the Samaritans were gathered at Tirathaba as a sort of religious pilgrimage to the top of Mt. Gerizim to find Mosaean artifacts. Josephus equates their gathering specifically and directly to the Romans, either in the negative context that they were NOT against the rule of Rome in general, but rather, that they WERE against the violence of the Roman governor Pilate. He also introduces the idea that the gathering was NOT a ‘revolt’, an odd and unnecessary inclusion for an event that supposedly had religious meaning (as was his odd inclusion in the preceding passage that the Samaritan multitude were armed). In one passage, Josephus relates the story of a multitude of mislead and armed Samaritans seeking religious relics, while in the next he recounts that the Samaritans were not revolting against Rome itself but apparently only Pilate without explaining why a visit to Tirathaba would save them from his violence.
Clearly, Josephus was playing with the facts of the event and tailoring them to suit his needs. Either the Samaritans were armed at Tirathaba and were engaged in some religious activity that could have been misconstrued as seditious or rebellious by Roman authorities or they were not. Josephus tells us in the first passage that they were armed and in the second that there was some chance that what they were engaged in what might have been construed as seditious or rebellious under Roman authority. The search for Moses’ sacred vessels, even a search for the Ark of the Covenant, would not have been automatically considered seditious or threatening on its own unless some political significance had been attached to their discovery and retrieval, yet this is precisely what Josephus leaves out of his account. Was there any political or religious significance to the gathering at Tirathaba that would have made the Romans consider it a threat? The Romans were often on edge during the major religious festivals of the Mosaean calendar when large groups gathered and political tensions could be expected to be at their peak but they seldom were required to capture and kill large numbers of the participants. The gathering at Tirathaba must have been threatening in some manner, a seditious movement of some sort that Pilate was already aware of, since the participants felt the need to escape his violence. Was it a larger movement not endemic to Samaria?
Josephus tips his hand inadvertently in the piece by referring to the Samaritans as Judeans (Jews). While this slip may have been an honest mistake that was never edited out of the work or it might have been a type of short hand to refer to the Samaritans as Judeans since both provinces were joined bureaucratically under Iudaea (Judaea), the feel of the two passages and the suggestion that Jesus and John were intimately involved would seem to argue against an author’s error and for the fact that at least some of the members of the multitude at Tirathaba were Judeans. It would be difficult to believe that Josephus would consciously mistake Judeans for Samaritans, their differences were so great and their political ambitions so diverse that confusing the two or mistaking one for the other seems unlikely. Josephus used Judeans because he understood that they had also lodged complaints against Pilate, or that some of them had been directly involved in the gathering and were therefore associated with the complaints.
Further problems arise with the passage when Josephus indicates that once informed of the problems the Samaritans had had with Pilate, Vitellius sent his friend ahead of him into Judea to report on the situation and also ordered Pilate to Rome to answer to Tiberius. While Vitellius might have sent Marcellus ahead to observe and report on conditions within the province, it is highly unlikely that he would have given Marcellus the authority to remove Pilate, a political appointee of the emperor’s, and send him off to Rome. Such an abrogation of his own political power would have been extremely rare for someone in Vitellius’ position. It is also extremely unlikely that Vitellius would have removed one of Tiberius’ own political appointees from power. Stepping on the authority of the emperor was never a good idea as evidenced by the execution of Sejanus in 31 CE. Tiberius was not one to be ignored or one to have his power subverted. Unless there was some tacit agreement between Tiberius and Vitellius giving him an almost carte blanche authority in his posting or if the situation called for an immediate response from the Roman authority on the spot, the idea of allowing Vitellius to make such decisions on his own and without Rome’s approval seems unlikely, and Josephus’ account does not match up with what is known of Imperial Rome and its workings.
More importantly, it seems unlikely that Pilate was removed by the Roman authorities solely on the basis of complaints by the indigenous people. Josephus’ record of the event does not ring true in that regard. It is hard to imagine that Pilate was removed from authority for doing the very job he was sent there to do, namely keep the peace and prevent large gatherings of the populace from developing into rebellious mobs. Again, it makes sense that Vitellius would send Marcellus ahead to assess the situation and determine the specifics of the case, but it is hardly likely that Marcellus would have removed Pilate from his position for doing his job. Either Josephus has misrepresented the facts in his account or he has confused the sequence of events. It seems more likely that Pilate was not removed from power until Vitellius arrived on the scene; perhaps sometime in the spring of 37 CE, and that his removal must have been based on more than his handling of the Samaritans at Tirathaba. Rome could be a difficult and at times capricious taskmaster, but Pilate had already modified his approach to the local population in response to Tiberius’ decree of 31 CE, and by putting down the Samaritans he was only doing what was expected of him. The Gospel story of Barabbas (below) helps to clarify the matter.
The next passage in chapter four of Josephus’ work relates how Vitellius came into Judea and how he was received in Jerusalem--- at Passover. This reference by Josephus is important to understanding the Gospel stories about Jesus, the crucifixion and its dating to 37 CE because it fixes the time of Vitellius presence in Jerusalem during Passover. Josephus records that “Vitellius was there magnificently received and released the inhabitants of Jerusalem from all the taxes upon the fruits that were bought and sold and gave them leave to have the care of the high priest’s vestments with all their ornaments and to have them under the custody of the priests of the Temple, which power they used to have formerly…” Josephus then goes on to explain how the priesthood had lost control of the high priest’s vestments in the first place although without informing the reader of the supreme importance of those vestments on both the priesthood and the Mosaean population in general. The high priest’s vestments were nearly as important to the practice of Mosaean theological ritual as were the Temple, the Temple vessels and altar. The vestments were essential for the high priest to officiate at any and all of the major religious festivals during the year and while the Romans allowed access to the robes to the high priest a week before each major festival, it was still galling for the priesthood to have to go begging for them, especially to the hated, impure Romans. Vitellius’ relinquishing of control over the vestments was a sign of great magnitude towards the Mosaeans and more than just a simple peace offering bestowed to the populace by a powerful man on his visit to their capital city. It was an acknowledgement that they had regained autonomy over their religious rites again and were free to practice their rituals without fear of interference.
Vitellius’ release of the high priest’s vestments and his suspension of taxes no doubt occurred either upon his entry into Jerusalem or very shortly thereafter. It was no doubt accompanied by other such gestures, both large and small, in a similar vein of friendship and tolerance that Josephus failed to mention. These conciliatory measures offered by Vitellius seem at odds with the ostensible reason for his visit that was to remove Pilate from power. Historians indicate that his visit to Jerusalem at this time was an incidental visit that he made in conjunction with his military maneuvers against Aretas (the rest of the Roman army had bypassed Jerusalem while Vitellius broke away to go to the city). The important point is that he was in Jerusalem during the Passover of 37 CE, that he was conciliatory and magnanimous with the priesthood and the populace and he was interested in the events of the Samaritans at Tirathaba. Also, while he was there he met with Antipas, and equally important to the Gospel stories of Jesus and his crucifixion, Vitellius removed Joseph Caiaphas from his role as high priest of the provincial Sanhedrin. All of these events occurred within days, if not weeks, of one another and the Gospels confirm the reasons why they occurred.
For example, regardless of Josephus’ sequence of the events, the removal of Pilate from power was not based upon his military action against the Samaritans that was within the purview of his job, but came as a result of his later treatment of Jesus and the Mosaean citizens of Jerusalem in the presence of Vitellius. This is recorded in the Gospels as the story of Barabbas. To fully appreciate the connection, it is first necessary to understand that Barabbas was the Greek rendering of the Aramaic bar abba (the ‘s’ was added in Greek to form the masculine gender) or ‘son of the father’, a name associated with and used as a self-designation by Jesus. Also, as has been noted, Vitellius’ visit had engendered an episode of conciliation and gift giving by the Roman president of Syria towards the Mosaeans, that was evidenced in this story by the release of prisoners, specifically, Barabbas. This act has often confused scholars in the past since no such tradition existed in Mosaean law, and the release of prisoners, (as written in the Gospels), was conditional upon the Passover festival. The release of Barabbas was predicated upon the arrival and subsequent generosity of Vitellius during Passover. It was another sign of his willingness to ameliorate the Roman relationship with the population. Pilate, no doubt on Vitellius’ order, offered to the Mosaean crowds the gift of the release of a political prisoner. Stung by the Samaritan embassy to Vitellius complaining about him to his immediate superior and worn down by years of his frustrated anti-Semitism, Pilate reacted badly to the order to release one whom he considered a leader of the gathering at Tirathaba. The ‘Barabbas’ story records his reaction. It is found in all four Gospels, though with textual variations in each succeeding gospel that added important facts.
It is also important to remember that since Mark was assembled as a complete gospel shortly after the crucifixion of 37 CE, and that Luke was written sometime between 37-39 CE with Matthew following shortly after in 39 CE (after the removal of Antipas), Pilate already had been removed from power and so could be named outright in the works while Lucius Vitellius, who remained in power as governor of Syria until sometime during 39 CE could not be named for fear of reprisals and fear of his discrediting the stories had he become aware of them while still in the region. The story of Barabbas, while trying to downplay the impact of the Romans on Jesus’ execution for obvious political reasons by sublimating certain aspects and by using a misleading ending, actually retains the factual essence of the incident and preserves the truth of some of the smaller details. It was not meant as a metaphorical parable or pericope but as a whitewashing of an incident that actually took place. Its inclusion in all four Gospels was a very pointed question to all Judeans at that time using the historical event to frame an essential Mosaean question; were they looking just for a new king of Judea (in place of the Romans) or were they looking for the anointed one, the son of God, to lead them to the reunited Israel?
Mark 15:6-15; (also; Luke 23:13-25, Matthew 27:15-26 and John 18:38-40);
(6) “Now at the feast [Passover] he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. (7) And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection there was a man called Barabbas [bar abba, son of the father]. (8) And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. (9) And he answered them, saying, Do you want me to release for you the King of the Judeans? (10) For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. (11) But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. (12) And Pilate again said to them, Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Judeans? (13) And they cried out again, Crucify him! (14) And Pilate said to them, Why, what evil has he done? But they shouted all the more, Crucify him! (15) So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.”
That the subject of the story is a single individual is suggested by the fact that during his ministry, Jesus frequently referred to God as abba , which is the Aramaic equivalent of ‘daddy’. It was a term of familiarity and while not completely unique to the time, it was unusual enough to draw attention. Because of this, some scholars have suggested that Jesus was known as bar abba during his lifetime. Certainly, such an informal form of address to God was not the normal way to speak of a deity for whom such reverence was held that the full name was never written or spoken out loud, as a sign of piety. There is some suggestion also that such a familiar term as abba was not always directed at the deity, but may have been intended for Jesus’ real father, Joseph Caiaphas. Knowing their true relationship and Caiaphas’ involvement in Jesus’ life and especially in his last hours, such a claim is not unreasonable. Jesus beseeching Joseph as abba at various points of suffering or uncertainty would not have been unexpected of a son whose father was a man of prestige and who had laid out the life course for his son. In addition to bar abba truly representing Jesus, there is the fact that in several early Greek copies of Matthew, Barabbas was recorded initially as Jesus Barabbas, thus solidifying the idea that the two men were one and the same and hinting at an ancient tradition. Early copyists would have hardly included the name Jesus on their own let alone connected it to a known criminal so that the inclusion unintentionally suggested a connection between the two men. Quite the contrary, early Christian writers would have excised the name Jesus coming immediately before Barabbas in order to avoid just such a misunderstanding. As a result, the inclusion of Jesus before Barabbas in a few very early texts suggests that either the original story or a very early tradition understood Jesus and Barabbas to be the same man.
Furthermore, Mark’s inclusion of Barabbas’ description as a rebel “who had committed murder in the insurrection” (Mark 15:7. Luke adds: “insurrection in the city” at 23:19, Matthew has only ‘notorious prisoner’ at 27:16 and John indicates only “Barabbas was a robber” [Greek: lestes ] 18:40), seems to indicate involvement by Barabbas in an event infamous enough to be known by his intended readership and indicates that the Gospel story was recorded not long after the original incident took place. Luke adds, “in the city” as a further designation of the event and that it took place in Jerusalem. Since Josephus did not mention the occurrence of any insurrection in Jerusalem at about this time, the episode must have been relatively small and of a local nature and connected directly to Jesus to be mentioned within the Gospels, as though the intended audience for the story would have been familiar with a small, local insurrection. If there had been an insurrection within Jerusalem during that time that was large enough to have resulted in murders, deaths or military intervention, no doubt Josephus would have included the event in his work, especially since he had also included Tirathaba, that took place outside the holy city of Jerusalem and was Samaritan rather than Judean in nature. The fact that he did not include such an incident means that he was either unaware of it or it was too small to mention. Matthew’s ‘notorious prisoner’ is too vague to define Barabbas much, although Jesus certainly would have been viewed as notorious after Tirathaba and John’s inclusion of ‘robber’, or lestes in Greek, is interesting in that it echoes Josephus’ most frequent term for the Zealots, which Jesus certainly was. Mark was more direct in that he called Barabbas a rebel, again, a term for a Zealot.
There was only one incident in the historical record that could have been connected to the ‘insurrection in the city’ referred to by the Gospels that was small enough to be overlooked by Josephus, local enough to be familiar to a Gospel audience and that connected to Jesus directly enough to deserve inclusion in the Gospels, and that was Jesus’ attack on the money changers in the Temple. Known also as the cleansing of the Temple, the incident was recounted in all four Gospels (Mark 11:15-19, Luke 19:45-48, 20:1-8, Matthew 21:12-17, 21:23-27 and John 2:13-16) and is sandwiched between (in Mark) the two halves of the parable of the fig tree. It takes place upon Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and is a clear message of his displeasure at the Temple leadership, the Temple itself and the leaders of Judea. The placement of the fig tree parable on either side of the account reinforces the fact that the story is meant as a rebuke of more than just the moneychangers and has a broader target as its intention. After Tirathaba and John’s execution, Jesus’ anger was directed at not only the Romans but at the Mosaean leadership in general for failing to understand and participate in the opening moves of the rebellion. Their inability to grasp the significance of (and perhaps even their collusion with Pilate in stopping) the Tirathaba insurrection coupled with the loss of John frustrated and angered an already keyed up Jesus to the point that he was ready not only to risk his life by faking his death but was also ready to make plain his feelings about the apathy of Mosaean leaders in the face of a possible nationalistic movement. His feelings are denoted in Mark in the accounts of the fig tree and the Temple cleansing.
Just as the cedars of Lebanon symbolized an important cultural identity, so fig trees symbolized the cultural identity of Israel. They were living icons representing the nation and as such Jesus used them symbolically to specifically condemn the Mosaean leadership for its failure to revolt against the Romans and the Herodian hierarchy.
JewishEncyclopedia.com; ‘fig tree’:
“The fig tree (ficus carica) and its fruit are designated in Hebrew by the same word, te’enah (Deut. viii. 8; Judges ix. 10; Num. xiii.23; II Kings xx. 7); the plural, te’enim indicating the fruit as distinct from the tree. According to Lagarde (‘Mittheilungen ’ i. 58 et seq.), the fact that the name is not found originally in any other Semitic language indicates that the fig is indigenous to the territory occupied by the Hebrew-Aramaic Semites (see also, Guidi, ‘Della Sede Primitiva dei Popoli Semitici ’, pg.35).”
In Mark 11:12-14, Jesus curses a fig tree as he travels from Bethany to Jerusalem. The tree is in full leaf but bears no fruit, indeed, it is remarked that it was not then the season for figs. Jesus oddly curses the tree and even commands that no one should ever eat from the tree again. It is a severe rebuke to an innocuous fig tree and the story’s placement in the Gospel is curious unless it is directly associated with its historical context and with the cleansing of the Temple. It comes after the fiasco of Tirathaba and before the Temple cleansing. The fig tree, as Israel, is in full leaf (fully ready) but bears no fruit (cannot nourish anyone) in other words, Israel is capable of unifying and standing against Rome but is either unable or unwilling to do so. To emphasize the intention of the parable, the Gospels remind the audience in the cleansing of the Temple, through a reference to Isaiah 56:7; “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” that all the tribes, even the Samaritans, should be welcome to pray at the Jerusalem temple (the Greek word used for ‘nations’, ethnos , can also refer to ‘tribes’ or any ‘multitude of people’ with shared customs, etc.) This inability to unify and participate in Jesus’ nationalistic movement so infuriates him that he curses Israel (the fig tree as metaphor for the ten tribes) with the admonishment that he hopes that no one will ever look to Israel again for political leadership and military support (nourishment).
Immediately after the cursing of the fig tree, Mark goes into the account of the cleansing of the Temple and Jesus’ assault on the moneychangers (Mark 11:15). Because the compilation of Mark was very early (36-37 CE) and Jesus and his followers were still alive and in the region, the true violence of the event was downplayed and to an extent whitewashed to protect others of his group from criminal prosecution. By the time of John, however, some of the original violence was retained in the story in the reference to “making a whip of cords.” Regardless, such an action by Jesus was violent by its very nature. The moneychangers and dove sellers could not have been expected to give ground easily to anyone entering the Temple and moving amongst them, overturning their tables and seats. Jesus would have had to have been physically violent to roust those men from their places, and as the parable of the fig tree shows, he was angry enough to commit assault that may have led to the deaths of one or more of the moneychangers. Though tradition waters down the violence attached to this episode, the reality was that in the theocracy of First Century Judea, Jesus was attacking the very foundations of the Temple (temple sacrifices) and of Judean culture. His actions would have been viewed as an insurrection, a political assault on the existing ruling government and not as a philosophical assault on the theology of the day.
The conclusion of the episode, known as “The Lesson of the Withered Fig Tree” (Mark 11:20-26), has Jesus explaining the meaning of the parable to his followers. However, the true meaning of the story is not in the overt explanation provided by Jesus but in its reverse sense. To the disciples, Jesus teaches the lesson that full and complete faith in God can move mountains and that forgiveness is essential to obtain God’s forgiveness, but the lesson makes no sense in regard to the fig tree, since Jesus did not forgive it for being barren of fruit and his curse to see it withered was hardly of the same importance as the faith required to move a mountain. What Jesus was trying to teach, when considered in light of the cleansing of the Temple, was that the opposite was also true; that the ten tribes, because they had no true faith in God could do nothing. They had not forgiven the Samaritans and so could not expect God’s forgiveness and because they did not believe, they would wither and die. Seen in this light, the three pericopes taken together teach the message that was foremost on Jesus’ mind at that point; that the inability of the ten tribes to reunite would cause them to wither and die under the oppression of the Romans and that at the core of that inability was the unwillingness of the Temple and the Jerusalem elite to mend fences with the Samaritans. Consequently, Jesus was prepared to wage insurrection against the Mosaean ruling authority in order to foment the revolution, even if it meant killing moneychangers and dove sellers to do so.
Pilate in the story of Barabbas was clearly baiting the crowd in a sadistic and cruel way and one can almost hear the mocking tone of his voice when he asks them, ‘Why, what has he done?’ Pilate must have known that Jesus had been involved at Tirathaba and he must have snickered inwardly as he played ignorant before the crowd. Even his claim that he ‘saw no guilt in this man’ must have been aimed at mocking the citizens of Jerusalem and frightening them with the idea that he might actually release Jesus. While many people listened to Jesus and believed in his nationalistic message, many more did not and most of those lived in Judea and especially in Jerusalem where the standard of living was quite high compared to the rest of the region and where a comfortable existence was to be appreciated and preserved, even if it meant accepting the Romans. Pilate must have known all this, yet couldn’t resist the opportunity to needle these people, although he continued to honor the intent of Tiberius’ decree of 31 CE in the matter of the scourging. He also couldn’t resist the chance to very subtly thumb his nose at Vitellius for questioning his response to the Tirathaba incident by way of Marcellus. The scene and Pilate’s actions are very much in keeping with what we know of his character and behavior, especially from before Tiberius’ decree. He was anti-Semitic towards the Mosaeans (no doubt part of the reason for his posting in Judaea thanks to Sejanus), he could be cruel and confrontational with the local population and he was determined to show them Rome’s superiority at virtually every opportunity. He must have felt that with the arrival of Vitellius in Jerusalem, his (Pilate’s) days as governor must have been numbered. Consequently, his overt baiting of the crowd, probably done directly in front of Vitellius, was (in his mind) a last act of defiance and a show of superiority to the lowly Judeans, regardless of the personal cost. He no longer cared to hide his anti-Semitism and so presented to Vitellius a show of fairness and objectivity while he presented the crowd with a great conundrum: whom would they rather save, the king of the Judeans, a descendent of David and a royal heir or the son of the father, the son of God, the expected Messiah? They were two sides of the same man and no matter whom the crowd chose the man would be executed. Pilate washed his hands of the affair, in the Mosaean fashion, not just for the Mosaeans to let them know that what happened to Jesus was by their choice not his, but also for Vitellius’ enlightenment so that if the Jerusalem Passover crowds erupted into revolt at the execution of one their popular teachers, Pilate would not be to blame. The release of a murdering rebel found guilty of insurrection would not take place on Pilate’s watch. Vitellius could find another prisoner to release and he could take responsibility for the execution of this one. Pilate had washed his hands of it all. The irony of the situation would not have been lost on Pilate. Nor would Pilate’s recklessness; his impolitic behavior and his clever subversion of Vitellius’ Passover offer to release a prisoner as a sign of good will have been lost on Vitellius.
What Pilate could not have known was that the question was easier to answer than he considered. Caiaphas, as the high priest of the provincial and therefore criminal Sanhedrin, wanted his son, Jesus, to be crucified. That worked directly into their plans and was in effect, the goal of their agenda. Mark remarks about the high priests stirring up the crowd to achieve just that end result. It was Caiaphas’ intention, once John had been killed, that Jesus should enter Jerusalem and manipulate himself (with his help) into just such a situation. Besides, Pilate’s phrasing of the question made it easier still. Given a choice between condemning to death (even hypothetically) either the ‘son of the father’ (a euphemism for the son of God and consequently the messiah) or the king of the Judeans, Mosaeans could only make one choice; they could not in all good conscience condemn bar abba , their reverence for God was too great to admit to any such thought. They would always choose to save ‘Barabbas’, a more direct link to God than the ‘King of the Judeans’.
In contradiction of what the Gospels say, Barabbas was not freed. There was no Barabbas to free; Barabbas and the King of the Judeans were one and the same. Pilate had had his moment of sadism and retribution, small payback for ten years of governing the difficult and obstinate Mosaeans, and Caiaphas had stirred the crowd in a final act of manipulation designed to get Jesus on the cross. In a very real sense, both men were finished in Judea and they probably knew it. The fact that they had played out their roles in front of Vitellius only hastened their ends politically. Vitellius was not a foolish or stupid man and he must have wondered, as he watched the episode unfold before him, why so much was being made of the release of a single prisoner. With what he knew of Tirathaba and the Samaritan reaction and Pilate’s baiting of the Mosaean crowd at Passover during the most dangerous and unsettled time of the Mosaean year, he must have concluded pretty quickly that it was time for Pilate to go. As for Caiaphas and his determination to have the prisoner executed by crucifixion, it must have made Vitellius wonder at the vehemence of the crowd’s reaction and the high priest’s involvement and the necessity for a crucifixion rather than some other form of capital punishment, some even that the Mosaeans could have executed. It would not be until after the turmoil of the resurrection that Vitellius would recall Caiaphas’ suspicious actions before Pilate and ultimately remove Caiaphas from power. Vitellius might not have had certain proof in Caiaphas’ involvement with the resurrection, but he had enough suspicion to make a change in the office of high priest. For Vitellius to witness a high priest agitating for the crucifixion of a man who within a matter of hours would disappear from his tomb would have been enough for him to remove Caiaphas and more.
What had started for Vitellius as somewhat of a triumphal entry into Jerusalem on his way to confront Antipas’ enemy and ex-father-in-law and with conciliation towards the Mosaeans as part of his agenda, the events leading to Jesus’ capture, scourging and crucifixion quickly changed the mood of his arrival. All of his concessions, gifts and tax breaks were quickly overlooked by the upheaval instigated by Jesus’ arrival in the city and the tension that followed. Pilate was taken from power and told to return to Rome, mostly in response to the affair with Jesus, and Caiaphas was replaced at once with a son of Annas, the high priest of the Great Sanhedrin also because of his apparent involvement in the Jesus affair. In spite of Vitellius’ best efforts, the Mosaeans were closer to revolt than they were before his arrival. Added to all that was the political uncertainty Jerusalem now faced after the removal of four long-term political leaders in John, Pilate, Caiaphas and Jesus, not to mention the ascension to power of a new emperor after the death of Tiberius. Vitellius would have had his hands full restoring order and a sense of calm to the citizenry. Those efforts would have been complicated no doubt by the politically awkward disappearance of an executed criminal from his tomb. The Gospels say nothing about the post resurrection activities of the Roman and Herodian authorities regarding the disappearance of Jesus body and whether or not they were aware of the post resurrection sightings. Whatever official investigation took place, if any, has been lost to history.
Finally, after some period of time and with matters in hand in Jerusalem and Marcellus installed, at least temporarily as the new governor of Judaea, Vitellius was free to continue his military campaign against King Aretas. However, before he could set out, word reached him of Tiberius’ death (March 16, 37 CE) and so he cancelled the assault on Aretas until new instructions might arrive from the new emperor, Caligula. Given the speed of communications back then, it might have taken weeks if not a month or more for the news of Tiberius’ death to reach Jerusalem. The news had also reached Pilate before he had reached Rome, according to Josephus, indicating that (and Josephus remarks that Pilate ‘hurried to Rome’) he probably had not left for Rome before the Passover of 37 CE that very nearly coincided with the date of Tiberius’ death (five days separated the events). Had Pilate been removed from power in 36 CE as Josephus and some historians suggest he would have reached Rome before Tiberius died in mid-March of 37 CE. Pilate might have been relieved and hurried to Rome very early in 37 CE and received the news of Tiberius’ death en route, but such a scenario would have removed him from the Passover of 37 CE and involvement in Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. The Gospels are clear in their inclusion of Pilate in the events of Jesus’ arrest and execution, so Pilate must have been removed shortly thereafter.
The year 37 CE had brought about striking changes in the region and in Mosaean society. John the Baptist had been executed sometime in 36 CE but it was really the early months of 37 that saw the greatest changes, partly as a direct result of John’s death and partly because of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The worst that might have happened to the Mosaean world had happened; Jesus and John were gone, as were Pilate and Caiaphas. The tolerant hand of Tiberius was also gone and over a decade of relative calm and political control had come to an end. Such political stability had been remarkable in that time and place and the people must have felt the stirrings of great changes in their future. Certainly Jesus and his father, Joseph, who desperately wanted such change and were prepared for such change, must have welcomed the instability. They had already decided, upon John’s death, that the time was right to start the rebellion. It was only a question of setting it all in motion and Jesus’ resurrection would accomplish that.
PART III
HOW IT WAS DONE
MAGIC n. 2 a) an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source.
adj. 2 a) having seemingly supernatural qualities or powers.
FAITH n. b 1) firm belief in something for which there is no proof.
WISHFUL THINKING n. 1) the attribution of reality to what one wishes to be true and the tenuous justification of what one wants to believe.
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
THE PLAN
The seeming harshness of the above definitions may strike some readers as uncomfortable, unfounded or unrealistic when associated with any study of the historical Jesus but it is only through our understanding of human awareness and belief that we can come to the correct interpretation of the historical record of this most influential man in Western thought. To shy away from the definitions of the methods and means that he used to accomplish his goals is to turn a blind eye to his humanity and to his very human nature. Jesus was a man that wanted freedom for the righteous and pious poor of his nation. He wanted to restore a kingdom that had once had strong ties to his God and that had stood among the nations of the earth as an example of what righteous, pure and God fearing men could do. He was not encumbered by doubts or the uncertainty of the use of deception and his ultimate goal was always the end that justified the means. In many ways he was a true believer in the ancient Cynic philosophy, embracing poverty and a simple life lived simply while condemning wealth, power and fame. Virtue and righteousness were essential to the Cynic philosophy, but to Jesus they were essential to the reunited kingdom. They were a standard of morality that was required to rebuild man’s covenant with God.
For Jesus to use magic or to count on the human need to believe in something without proof or to anticipate the human need to attribute truth to what one wishes to be true does not make him a cynic in the modern sense or mitigate or cheapen what he wanted to accomplish. He was a student of human nature and more than that he was an expert on Mosaean nature. He knew what moved people and what motivated them. He knew how to manipulate them and how to fool them, but these were not tools used for his own benefit. They were tools used to energize people towards a better future. If turning water into wine helped put him into a position of leadership from which he could help the poor, so much the better. If faking his death and resurrection could inspire the holiest men of his time to revolt against their common enemies, then that was what was necessary. His righteousness and his need for communion with God went far beyond food purity laws or contact with sinners, the unclean or some magic and misdirection. He was fully committed to re-establishing the Davidic Monarchy, to creating a new Israel from the old and to regaining God’s trust. His integrity was a distant second to his righteous piety. God’s covenant required that.
From as early as he could remember the plan had always been that he, as a descendent of David and the child of two prominent and royal families, would someday ascend the throne of Israel. It was his birthright and his parents would do everything they could to secure it for him, but more than that his parents recognized in his birth an historic social obligation to restore the throne of David. It was not enough that Jesus would someday be the king of Judea, as he eventually became known, Joseph and Mary saw in him the fulfillment of all the messianic hopes of their people and knew that their son was destined to be the king of all Israel. He would drive the Romans and the Herodians from the land and rebuild God’s kingdom. For Jesus, the Romans were his Goliath.
Although Joseph educated himself and Jesus with as broad an education as was possible, learning magic, medicine, politics and history, both in Judea and with the Therapeutae in Egypt, this had more to do with providing his son with the wisdom to be a great ruler rather than acquiring the means to fake his death and resurrection that he would find so useful later on. Initially, there was only the plan to get Jesus to the throne and so he had been groomed to be a king of great military prowess, like David, and with great wisdom, like Solomon. Joseph could have taken the family anywhere to escape the threat of Herod, but he took them to Alexandria, Egypt, that had the largest library of the ancient world and also to Lake Mareotis where the Therapeutae camped just miles from Alexandria. There was no better place in the world at that time to acquire the best and broadest education.
With the arrival of John the Baptist on the scene and with exposure to the Essenic philosophies that taught a dual messiah ship as the government of the coming kingdom of God, Joseph and Jesus had no need to concern themselves at first with the subterfuge that ultimately became necessary. Jesus and John would rise to power together and rule jointly as the Davidic conqueror and the priestly Messiah. Even so, Joseph’s planning for a future rebellion was in depth and thorough as he considered all contingencies. This can be seen in the Gospels by Jesus’ embracement of publicans/tax collectors. Jesus not only welcomed them into his audiences, he defended them as sinners who needed to hear his ministry in order to be saved he also accepted one or more (Matthew/Levi) as apostles (Matthew 9:9, 10:3, Mark 2:14-15, Luke 5:27, 19:1-10). What is of interest in his relationship with these tax collectors and what historians have seemingly glossed over is that these individuals were reasonably well to do financially. They legally kept a percentage of the taxes that they collected as their fee or income and if they were dishonest at all (which many were) they kept more than their share. They were not the righteous poor, whom Jesus praised as the first in the kingdom of God and whom he recruited so intently. They were a form of what today would be considered the middle class. They had money and positions of limited power in society and enjoyed a higher standard of living than the vast majority of people. According to Jesus’ teachings, they were on the cusp of not being allowed into the new kingdom. Just as in any society, the poor, from their perspective, often view the middle class as wealthy. As far as Jesus and the poor were concerned, they were wealthy.
Why then did Jesus embrace their presence and include one in his group of closest followers? If their wealth was not a hindrance to their entry into the kingdom, or at the very least access to Jesus’ preaching, why were other wealthy individuals excluded? If Matthew could serve as an apostle, if Jesus could eat dinners with publicans, if Jesus could make the claim that he had come not to heal the healthy, but the sick, if only the poor were to be members of the kingdom then why couldn’t the wealthy young man (Mark 10:17-31, Luke 18:18-31, Matthew 19:16-30) take his place alongside Jesus in the hopes of learning the importance of poverty? Why did he feel the need to run away? Why were tax collectors exempt from his exclusions? The answer is both simple and profound; tax collectors controlled the flow of money.
While the truly wealthy of the region owed their wealth to both the taxes on the poor and the Romans for ensuring the stability of the economic environment, tax collectors were dependent only on the system. The Herodians had collected taxes before the intervention of the Romans and they collected taxes during the Roman occupation. Some of the taxes went to the Herodian leaders and some went to Rome. The Roman census of 6 CE (after the removal of Archelaus) was not a new census or counting of the citizenry, in the modern sense, it was simply an inventory of the tax base that already existed. The Romans wanted to know, now that they had taken over, what Archelaus had already known; who owed what taxes? Judas of Galilee wasn’t incensed that he was going to be paying new taxes, he was angry that he was going to be paying the taxes he had already been paying to a foreign occupier. Taxes paid to a Mosaean ruler were one thing, those same taxes paid to Rome were another.
Regardless of the final coffers the taxes were bound for, the one constant was that the money had to be collected by the tax collectors. They were the officials on the spot, in the towns and villages and cities who physically collected the taxes. As such, they were a key element in Joseph’s plan from its earliest inception as a means of controlling the flow of the money. Courting the tax collectors, men who were despised and shunned by local populations, and having them on your side in the event of a rebellion might mean that the flow of tax money up the chain to the men in power might be interrupted or stopped altogether. The tax collectors would have been in the right positions to redirect the money away from the ruling authorities and to the army of the poor. Jesus, consequently, made a show of embracing tax collectors as part of his mission. They may not have been the poor of the new kingdom, but they were an important part of the coming rebellion.
Joseph’s plan for Jesus’ ascension to the throne of Judea would have taken into account many such situations, not the least of which would have been the Davidic heir’s confrontation with the ruling Mosaean elite of region, specifically the remaining Herodians in power. Joseph could have expected widespread Mosaean support against the Romans, but conflict with other Mosaeans leaders was another matter. Fortunately, Archelaus was removed from the scene early due to his own violence and ineptitude, leaving only Herod Antipas and Philip the Tetrarch in positions of direct, autocratic control. Philip, whose lands were made up of Gaulanitis, Batanea, Trachonitis and Auranitis that were comprised of a population of largely Syrian or Arabian descent with some Greeks and Romans in the cities and a minority of Mosaeans, ruled his predominately nomadic subjects almost as if he were a nomad too. He traveled the land with a small entourage, dispensing justice on the fly, as it were, deciding cases as he came across them. He was thoroughly Hellenized, as shown by the images on one the coins minted during his reign. On one side was a representation of a Greek (pagan) temple with his name surrounding it while on the other was an image of Tiberius. These images would have been blasphemous to any pious Mosaean of the time and would have instigated immediate social unrest among a large enough Mosaean population. The fact that no such uprising was recorded in the historical accounts of Josephus would seem to indicate that there were few Mosaeans in Philip’s tetrarchy and that he was not concerned with Mosaean orthodoxy. His reign of 37 years was one of relative calm and peace for his subjects and he died without leaving an heir.
Consequently, Philip would have been seen by Joseph as a small threat to Jesus’ rise to the throne of Judea, and would not have raised too much concern. Antipas, on the other hand, was a different matter entirely. His ambition for greater authority and a kingship (rather than an tetrarchy) would have put him in direct opposition to Joseph’s plans for Jesus. Antipas controlled Perea and Galilee, areas more closely linked to Judea and Jerusalem and populated largely by Mosaeans and, especially in the case of Galilee, by radical Mosaeans who were politically active. Antipas would have been certain to confront the rise of Jesus as king, challenging him at every step up to and including military confrontation that if it failed (as it did with King Aretas), calling on Rome to intervene. Political connections aside, the determining factor in such a confrontation might have come down to the people themselves to choose between Antipas and Jesus and as a descendent of David, Jesus stood a far better chance of winning such a popularity contest. Nevertheless, Joseph addressed the possibility by having John publicly slander Antipas by making disparaging remarks about his marriage to his brother’s wife and to his divorce. This war of words was meant to discredit Antipas in the eyes of orthodox and pious Mosaeans should a contest for the throne of Judea ever arise, and the slander, voiced as it was by the popular John, would have carried substantial weight.
It wasn’t until later, however, once Joseph, Jesus and John realized the reticence of the Essenes to act without first receiving some sign from God, that they began to explore other means of achieving power outright or of inspiring the Essenes to action. As has been mentioned above, the Essenes were some of the holiest men around who saw themselves quite literally as the keepers of the covenant. Without their support and the ancillary support that they would engender, any rebellion was almost certainly doomed to failure. It was with that realization in mind that Joseph and Jesus developed their plan to fake his death, using his resurrection as the sign from God that the Essenes required as a catalyst.
There hardly can be any doubt that the events leading up to the crucifixion were managed and manipulated by Jesus and Joseph. Even a cursory reading of the Gospels makes it clear that there were people in place who were loyal to Jesus, and prepared to help him move things along. Aside from the earlier help he had received in performing the trick of changing water to wine, Jesus had the assistance of people already in Jerusalem making arrangements for accommodations and such during Passover, the busiest and most crowded time of the year. The population of the city could have easily quadrupled during the time of the festival and yet Jesus had accommodations waiting for himself and his disciples. Even if the most innocuous point of view is taken regarding this convenience, that Jesus had merely planned ahead and made some sort of agreement with someone in Jerusalem for food and shelter for his followers during the Passover, it still indicates a level of planning and forethought on Jesus’ part about his visit. Seen together with later events, the planning seems more conspiratorial, and a piece of a greater plan, as evidenced by events that unfolded in a timely and well ordered manner, just as he had intended. Regardless of intent, Jesus had people behind the scenes.
Two of the most obvious pericopes indicating Jesus’ careful co-ordination of events are his “Triumphal Entry” (Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-32 and Matthew 21:1-6) into Jerusalem and his “Passover with the Disciples” (Mark 14:13-16, Luke 22:7-13 and Matthew 26:17-19). While apologists might argue that these episodes are examples of prophecy fulfilled and divine intervention, a more rational and reasonable explanation of the events takes into account the human element involved in their occurrences. Jesus simply made arrangements for these things to happen.
Mark 11:1-3,
(11) “Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethpage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent for two of his disciples (2) and said to them, Go into the village in front of you and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. (3) If anyone says to you, Why are you doing this? say, The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.”
Tradition indicates that the story of the colt/foal is an example of Jesus’ divine prescience and the fulfillment of prophecy, but there is no reason to suspect that such is the case. The easiest and most reasonable understanding of the event is that Jesus knew of the prophecy and had planned to have the colt/foal stationed in the village by one of his followers so that he could fulfill the prophecy as he entered Jerusalem. The Gospel accounts carry no hint of divine intervention or a miraculous appearance of the colt. The stories are simply a recounting of the event. Jesus knew that the colt would be tied there. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem riding the colt/foal was planned to fulfill the prophecy; it was a staged event. Any other reading of the text requires a desire to inject a miracle where there was none. The disciples are told what to say because the friends of Jesus who have tied the colt have been told to ask such a question. It was meant as a way to ensure that the right people (the disciples) were the ones untying the colt. The disciples untied the colt, were asked the question and answered correctly, thereby confirming that they were, in fact, from Jesus. The disciples themselves did not have to know that the tied up colt was a set-up. It was only necessary that Jesus and the people attending to the colt knew. As far as the two disciples were concerned, Jesus had correctly predicted the sequence of events. They could honestly tell people that Jesus had predicted what would happen and what needed to be said.
Another example of such manipulation is found in the pericope regarding the preparations for the Passover with the disciples that later follows the incident with the colt, (Mark 14:13-16, Luke 22:7-13 and Matthew 26:17-19). The scenario is basically the same as that of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem whereby Jesus sends two of the disciples ahead, telling them that they will be met by a man who will direct them to a room where they will have the Passover meal. Again, Jesus directs the disciples in what to say and what the man will do in response. It is a pre-planned encounter, except that the two disciples are unaware before hand of the arrangements.
Mark 14:13-16,
(13) “And he sent for two of his disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the city and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him (14) and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, “The Teacher says, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ (15) And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” (16) And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them and they prepared the Passover.”
If one disregards the miraculous elements that have been attached to these stories by tradition, it is easy to understand them as nothing more than signposts indicating the way in which things were accomplished. There is nothing miraculous in having a home owner prepare an upper room for the Passover, or in having a man with a jar of water stationed outside looking and waiting for two of Jesus’ disciples in order to guide them to the correct house. The traditional supposition has been that Jesus had not been to Jerusalem in the recent past and therefore had not planned these encounters but had predicted their occurrence and their outcomes. He had counted on the wishful thinking of the two disciples to see the encounters as such without suspicion and to use the encounters to explain why, at Passover in Jerusalem, Jesus could stroll into the city and have both a colt and a room ready for his needs. The colt and the room were there and ready because Jesus or Joseph had made prior arrangements to have them there and ready. There was no miracle involved in these incidents. The fact that Jesus consciously chose to enter Jerusalem in an attempt at fulfilling prophecy confirms that his actions throughout these stories were pre-planned and purposeful and that there were people behind the scenes orchestrating the events. That would be the case throughout the Passion and the crucifixion.
The most telling Gospel references that indicate Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion were planned events are those that refer directly to his own predictions regarding his death (Mark 10:32-34, Luke 18:31-33 and Matthew 20:17-19), in which he announces, for the third time in the Gospel stories what will take place.
Mark 10:32-34
(32) “And they were on the road going up to Jerusalem and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, (33) saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. (34) And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”
Fulfilling prophecy when the prophecy has been known and recorded for many years is hardly prophetic fulfillment. Had Jesus not known about the prophecy regarding the arrival of the Messiah in Jerusalem, his fulfillment of the specifics of the event might have been seen as miraculous, but he was fully aware of the prophecy. It was written in the Book of Isaiah. All Jesus had to do was to recreate the circumstances and the specifics of the prophecy, that were already written in the Old Testament. Predicting the circumstances leading up to and following his death and resurrection was no less difficult because he and his father had arranged the events to unfold as part of a plan. For Jesus to tell the disciples what would happen in the immediate future regarding his capture, torture and death was, for him, a simple recitation of what he and Joseph had already planned. There was no miracle there, no prophetic fulfillment, no predicting of future events. Jesus could repeatedly tell the disciples about what was to come because he had manipulated things to unfold that way. His predictions about his capture and death are the clearest examples of the human agency involved in what transpired. To imagine them as divine knowledge of the future is to suspend rational belief in favor of a desired alternate reality, i.e., wishful thinking.
The question is not whether these events were divinely foreseen incidents on Jesus’ way to fulfilling prophecy, but rather why were they recorded in the first place? Obviously, it was essential for Jesus and his group to spread the word about his messianic fulfillment and to impress upon his audiences his divine power to foresee future events. Such an association between Jesus and his ability to predict future events would have served him well in winning over converts to his cause, but many in those same audiences would have been sophisticated enough to see these stories for what they were, propaganda and aggrandizement, and would not have been swayed by their artificially divine inspiration. Enough people would have seen Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem as a manufactured fulfillment of prophecy and would have suspected manipulation in his predictions about his death and resurrection to make recording the episodes in the Gospels as a dangerous and thoughtlessly provocative act. Why would the Gospel writers call attention to acts that even the least knowledgeable Mosaean might question as suspiciously convenient?
The answer is that the Gospel records of these events were not just intended for a Mosaean audience, but for a Roman one as well. Again and again, the historical record indicates that the Romans were willfully ignorant of Mosaean customs and theology. Pilate’s misguided attempts to introduce Roman iconography into the Mosaean landscape is but one example of their contempt and ignorance regarding the depth and intensity of Mosaean religious fervor. Had the Romans been even marginally familiar with Mosaean theology and history they would have understood the provocative nature of such acts and would have avoided them entirely. It is one thing to impress upon a subjugated people where the real power lies, it is another to goad them to the point of rebellion, that Pilate very nearly did on several occasions. It seems clear that the Romans consistently underestimated Mosaean feelings regarding their faith and history and remained consistently ignorant of the details of their messianic prophecies. The Gospel stories relating to the triumphal entry and predictions of Jesus’ death and resurrection were recorded as a means of flaunting their beliefs to the Romans. The stories were not only a record of Jesus’ activities for Mosaean audiences but were acts of defiance designed to humiliate the Romans for their lack of knowledge.
While Joseph Caiaphas and his wife, Mary, envisioned their son as the king of Judea as the natural result of his Davidic heritage, they also had a greater plan in mind that saw Jesus as not only the king of Judea, but also as the messianic leader of the Kingdom of God. Along with John the Baptist in his role as the priestly Messiah, Jesus, as the military Messiah, would drive the Romans and the unbelievers from the borders of David’s original kingdom. It was to that end that Joseph took the family to Egypt and educated Jesus in the arts of politics, magic and healing in preparation for the day when God’s kingdom would be re-established in Israel. Had it not been for John’s capture and execution after Tirathaba, no doubt the two messiahs would have reigned together. As it was, without John it became imperative for Jesus and Joseph to incite the revolution on their own. Tirathaba had been neatly put down by Pilate, but Joseph had contrived another way to incite the masses, through Jesus’ resurrection. It only required a small, political outrage to start things moving and Jesus’ attack on the moneychangers in the Temple was sufficient. The Gospels record this as a singular and limited event, but they also record that Barabbas was imprisoned for his involvement in an insurrection and murder in Jerusalem. The two events were one and the same and Jesus’ attack on the moneychangers was a violent act that may have included a physical attack on one of the men leading to his death, and would have been seen anyway as an act of insurrection by the Temple authorities and ultimately the Romans. With his father as the high priest of the civil Sanhedrin and with the crimes occurring on Temple grounds, Jesus had no fear of the outcome. He would face crucifixion just as he and Joseph had planned.
DRUGS
Christian tradition and its view of Jesus’ character as above reproach in sublime perfection has made it difficult, if not impossible, to correctly evaluate the use and impact of drugs on the Gospel stories of Jesus. Added to this is a modern cultural egotism that seems to pervade most historical research that insists that older cultures are automatically more primitive, less refined, less sophisticated and less knowledgeable about their environment than are the later, or more complex and technologically advanced societies. This however is far from the truth. Earlier cultures (pharaonic Egypt, for example) often had vibrant, inquisitive and effective widespread knowledge of pharmacopoeia, surgery and medicine and, as the Pyramids attest, had engineering skills far in advance of our own. In many ways their civilizations were as complex and intelligent as ours, lacking only the efficient means for the storage and transmission of information to equal our own. Had they discovered the moveable type face and wood pulp paper making techniques as a means of recording and storing information there is no telling how far they might have advanced technologically and how much of their knowledge might have been handed down to us.
Drugs were common in the ancient world and while many of the remedies in use then seem distinctly unique, crude or misplaced to us today, much of their pharmaceutical knowledge was surprisingly useful and accurate. As understood today, the use of substances to heal and affect bodily functions is best described by Wikipedia:
Wikipedia.com; ‘Ancient Egyptian Medicine:
“Ancient Egyptian medicine refers to the practices of healing common in Ancient Egypt from c. 33 century BCE until the Persian invasion of 525 BCE. This medicine was highly advanced for the time and included simple, non-invasive surgery, setting of bones and an extensive set of pharmacopoeia. While ancient Egyptian remedies are often characterized in modern culture by magical incantations and dubious ingredients, research in biomedical Egyptology shows they were often effective and sixty-seven percent of the known formulae complied with the 1973 British Pharmaceutical Codex. Medical texts specified specific steps of examination, diagnosis, prognosis and treatments that were often rational and appropriate.”
Mandragora officinarium (mandrake root) was described by Theophrastus, (Aristotle’s successor, c.371-287 BCE and author of Enquiry into Plants ), as a treatment for wounds, gout and sleeplessness and as a love potion. By the First Century CE, Pedanius Dioscorides, the Greek physician (c.40-90 CE and author of a five volume encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related pharmacopoeia) recognized wine of mandrake as an anesthetic for treatment of pain, sleeplessness, or to be given prior to surgery or cautery. The use of some solanaceae plants (mandrake, belladonna, henbane, tobacco, etc.) containing tropane alkaloids for anesthesia often in combination with opium persisted throughout the Roman and Islamic Empires until superseded by the use of ether, chloroform and other modern anesthetics in the late 19 Century. Atropine extracts, (from the Egyptian henbane plant), were used by Cleopatra in the last century BCE to dilate her pupils as a means of increasing her physical allure. Cannabis (marijuana) was also known in ancient times and was used as an analgesic and incense. Myrrh (camphora myrrha) was described as one ingredient in the holy anointing oil given to Moses by God (Exodus 30:23-33) and as an ingredient in the kingly anointing oil of Psalms 45:7-8. Modern scientific studies have concluded that it holds antiseptic, antibiotic and analgesic properties that might explain why it was considered worth more than its weight in gold in ancient times and why it was brought to Jesus at his birth and at his death.
It should not be too surprising to realize that drugs were available and used routinely during Jesus’ lifetime. Mosaean society, which owed much to Egyptian culture, up to and including possibly its monotheistic religious view, was not averse to the use of drugs. In fact the Old Testament makes several references to the use of both mandrake (Genesis 30:14-16, Song of Solomon 7:13) and possibly cannabis, though direct attestation to these plants cannot be guaranteed since the translations of their Hebrew terms is open to interpretation. Nevertheless, given its early association with Egyptian culture and the development of the Therapeutae as healers and experts in the use of drugs and herbal remedies, it would be highly unlikely that the Mosaean culture of Jesus’ time was completely unaware or refrained from using drugs and herbal extracts. Throughout history, most cultures have had at least a rudimentary connection to pharmaceuticals of one form or another, even if that connection was as limited as tobacco or alcohol use or as involved and complex as the use of hallucinogenics and psychotropics as part of their spiritual or religious traditions. The so called ‘cocaine mummies’ of the 21 Dynasty of Egypt tested positive in skin and hair samples for both cocaine and nicotine, suggesting that as early as three thousand years ago there existed some form of transoceanic trade route that accounted for the presence of cocaine (thought to exist only in South America at the time) in Egypt.
It is not a lack of drugs in First Century Mosaean society that has prevented New Testament scholars from drawing the connection between Jesus and drug use, but rather the traditional views that either: a) because of his divinity, contend that drug use was unnecessary; or, b) maintain that because of his character such usage was unthinkable. The historical Jesus as fully human was quite capable of using drugs to accomplish his goals and while Christian apologists continue to argue that his character elevated him above such activity, his use of magic, politics and violence argue to the contrary; that he was quite capable and ready to do whatever was necessary to succeed. Here again, tradition precludes the historical accounts in the Gospels. There are several episodes within the Gospels that strongly suggest that drugs were in fact part of the plan to manipulate events by facilitating Jesus’ ‘death’ and expediting his resurrection. Although it may be unrealistic to assume it is possible to determine the exact drugs that were used, a careful study of the Gospel record and Jesus’ family history can help point to some strong possibilities. His health and his corresponding reactions to certain situations as noted in the Gospels seem to indicate the presence of a certain class of drugs.
One of the most striking accounts in the Gospels records Jesus’ anguish in the garden of Gethsemane and his physical response to it by sweating blood (Luke 22:44). This occurrence of hematohidrosis is a rare medical condition generally brought about by extreme stress. This is notable in the case of Jesus because it also occurred in his mother, (as Aseneth), during a period of great stress. That two members of the same family might suffer the same very rare medical condition and have their separate occurrences recorded in ancient documents is not only remarkable, but is undocumented in any modern medical literature. The obvious assumption that might be drawn from two such similar occurrences widely separated in time to members of the same family is that Mary and Jesus shared a genetic proclivity towards hematohidrosis. Yet no such genetic link between family members has been found, nor has any genetic factor that is directly associated with the condition. Those few, unusual cases of hematohidrosis recorded in the medical literature seem to be spontaneous, singular and stress induced events that occur in response to external stimuli and not from some genetic condition that has been conclusively established. Both Mary and Jesus suffered bouts of hemtohidrosis coincidentally and independently of one another under similar circumstances years apart; the odds of such coincidence happening without a genetic component and in consideration of the rarity of the condition, are staggering.
However, there is a genetic link between mother and son that would have exacerbated the hematohidrosis in both of them, thereby causing each to manifest bloody sweat in each of them. The particular genetic deficiency present in both Jesus and Mary was glucose-6 phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency or G6PD or G6PDH. G6PD is an inherited enzyme deficiency that currently affects 400 million people worldwide, predominately in populations scattered around the Mediterranean Sea, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, although sporadic cases are present in all populations. In the Middle East, it is estimated that approximately 1% of the population is affected by the disorder. It is characterized primarily by bouts of hemolytic anemia and its concurrent symptoms (fatigue, shortness of breath, etc.) that are instigated by exposure to certain causative agents, either specific foods (especially fava beans and their pollen), certain oxidative drugs or infections and can be mild, moderate or severe, depending upon the individual. Because exposure to fava beans is one of the most dramatic triggers for hemolytic anemia in people with G6PD, a sub-group of affected individuals who are highly sensitive to the fava bean is considered to suffer from favism. All people with favism have G6PD, but not all people with G6PD have favism. Favism has been known and recognized since antiquity, and it is sometimes suspected that the Pythagoreans’ ancient admonishment against eating fava beans was the result of this awareness, perhaps brought about by a large segment of that population that had G6PD. Jesus and Mary, because of certain historical markers, probably suffered from favism.
While the record of Aseneth’s hematohidrosis does not lend any other clues than that the episode took place “in the fourth month” (a summer month according to the Hebrew calendar) and under great anger, the record of Jesus’ occurrence is somewhat more suggestive. His bout took place in spring (Passover being celebrated in either March or April), when he was also under great duress, and was accompanied or preceded by his ingestion of certain foods and/or drugs. Chief among these was his possible ingestion of fava beans in the form of Ezekiel’s bread at the Passover Seder. The Gospels indicate that at the Last Supper, Jesus ate bread, although the Greek word used to describe it was artos (Mark 14:22), a mixture of flour and water that was baked. What is of interest is that artos comes from the root airo which means to ‘raise up, elevate or lift up’ suggesting the presence of yeast or leaven in the mix. Such a condition would have been impossible for a pious Mosaean during Passover since one of the most important regulations during that festival was to make absolutely certain that ALL yeast or leaven had been removed from each domicile. It was prohibited to allow even a speck of leaven on the premises let alone use any in the preparation of food. The possibility exists that the Greek artos was used in the Gospels by a writer unfamiliar with Mosaean tradition as a catchall term for bread, but that is highly unlikely since earlier in the same periscope (Mark 14:12) the Greek word azumos for unfermented, unleavened bread is used. Clearly, the intention of the writer was to signify that while Jesus was eating bread, it was not azumos or matzah (in Hebrew), but given the occasion, some other form of unleavened bread.
The only other type of bread that contained no yeast or leaven that Jesus might have had access to was Ezekiel’s bread or the bread of atonement. First mentioned in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 4:9), the ingredients of the bread were wheat, barley, beans, lentils and spelt. Since the Last Supper was in springtime, the beans referred to would have been the fava or broad beans that were grown throughout the Mediterranean area and would have been harvested earlier in the season. The ingredients would have been ground up together to make a flour and baked after water was added. Significantly, when Ezekiel was given this recipe by God he was also instructed to make the bread as he would barley cakes, in other words, without leaven. It would not have been unusual for Jesus or any other pious Mosaean to eat Ezekiel’s bread at Passover since the prohibition against leaven did not also require the substitution of matzah. Ezekiel’s bread would have been acceptable during the Passover meal and would not have seemed unusual, except for a writer unfamiliar with its ingredients or who did not wish to invoke Ezekiel’s name at that point in the narrative. The problem with the bread for Jesus was that it was made with fava beans and so was directly responsible for triggering the onset of his favism.
There were other drugs taken during the days and hours leading to his crucifixion that also might have exacerbated Jesus’ favism, but what is essential to understand are the textual proofs that suggest he had favism in the first place. There are four main references that tend to suggest that if he did not have favism, he had some other contributing physiological problem that led to his hematohidrosis. First and foremost, his mother suffered from the same physiological response to stress that he did. Secondly, the singularity that he ate a type of unleavened bread (other than matzah) that would have contained fava beans during the Passover meal. Third, certain drugs that he would have taken both before and during his time on the cross could have initiated a symptomatic response from his favism. Lastly, the Gospel record that indicates that when his side was pierced by the lance of the Roman soldier in an attempt to verify death, water and blood came out of the wound (watery blood or water and blood issuing from a wound would be a strong indicator that hemolytic anemia was present). These factors, when considered together, indicate that favism was a leading cause of Jesus’ hematohidrosis. Since the first two causative factors of Jesus’ hematohidrosis can be explained through the biblical record, the two other causative scenarios that indicate that Jesus may have suffered from this genetic disorder must be examined.
One group of chemicals that would have had an immediate impact on anyone with favism is the amines or organic compounds that are found in many animal and plant species. Of particular interest would be the compound tyramine, a naturally occurring monoamine compound and trace amine derived from the amino acid tyrosine. Tyrosine is present in at least two of the plants that Jesus would have ingested before and during his Passion; fava beans and Shepherd’s Purse (capsella bursa pastoris ), a common weed frequently used as an herbal remedy. Tyrosine acts as a catecholamine releasing agent, that is released from the adrenal glands as part of the sympathetic nervous system. Catecholamines are hormones that work as part of the fight or flight response and as such increase heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose and in general energize the sympathetic nervous system. Tyrosine can be ingested directly from dietary protein (certain meats, eggs, fish and dairy products and plants) and is converted to L-Dopa then to dopamine, norepinephrine and finally to epinephrine. Its importance here is that it initiates the hemolytic anemia of favism and through its increase of blood pressure, exacerbates hematohidrosis. In short, Jesus’ ingestion of fava beans in Ezekiel’s bread and his ingestion of any herbal concoction of Shepherd’s Purse would have encouraged his body’s tendency to break down red blood cells and to sweat blood, both reactions that are noted in the Gospel records.
As has been mentioned previously, the piercing of his side while on the cross could hardly have been intended as a coup de grace or ‘blow of mercy’ to end Jesus’ suffering. The whole point to the crucifixion, as far as the Romans were concerned, was to expose the criminal’s suffering to the populace as long as possible. The idea of ending the execution prematurely through the decisive killing thrust of the lance point, deep enough to pierce the lungs and rupture the pericardium, thus producing the “blood and water” (John 19:34), is unrealistic and designed to account for the abnormal discharge of blood and water from the wound. Traditionalists argue that if both blood and water flowed from Jesus’ side after being pierced by a lance thrust it must have been a deep enough wound to enter the heart and lungs, producing blood and pericardial fluid. The problem with such an argument is that as with all the physical torture Jesus endured, it has been overblown and fictionalized to explain the record without taking into consideration other possible explanations. For example, during an hemolytic anemia episode even the slightest cut may produce what appears to be blood and water because as the red blood cells are broken down to mix with the colorless blood plasma the mixture would appear as watery blood. This scenario would be in keeping with the idea that the Roman soldier merely pierced the skin of Jesus’ side with the intention of ascertaining whether or not the victim had died. The soldier was not intent on killing Jesus, only rousing him through painful stimulus. That blood and water exuded from the wound confirms that Jesus was in the throes of a bout of hemolytic anemia and not a sign suggesting the depth of the thrust.
That Jesus’ physical response to the scourging and to the crucifixion was abnormal was not only remarked in the Gospels by the soldier’s spear thrust. There is a suggestion in Mark that Jesus’ death was unusually quick given the circumstances and that things were not as they should be.
Mark 15:44-45
(44) “Pilate was surprised to hear that he [Jesus] should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. (45) And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph.”
The reason for Pilate’s surprise at the news of Jesus’ death was that Jesus had not been in such bad shape after the scourging and his relatively short crucifixion to justify his premature death. Had he been beaten so severely and lost so much blood, as modern chroniclers would emphasize, it would have been understandable to Pilate and others that Jesus had succumbed to his wounds, but he had not been brutalized. He had received the thirty-nine lashes required by Mosaean custom, and because he had previously taken an herbal anti-hemorrhagic his actual blood loss had been comparatively minor. Pilate was well aware of his condition when he had sent him to the cross, and it must have been perplexing to him that a man who had suffered only slight physical harm had died within hours of being placed on the cross. Pilate, who no doubt had seen many victims crucified and seen them die on the cross, was well aware of what physical condition a victim needed to be in before he died. His surprise at Jesus’ death indicates that Jesus must have been far from that condition when he died, and implies that something had been done to protect him.
If Jesus suffered from favism, it is medically accurate that his exposure to fava beans would have produced hemolytic anemia. That is what favism is; hemolytic anemia in response to certain external stimuli. However, favism on its own would not necessarily produce an episode of hematohidrosis. That would require the introduction of another causative agent in conjunction with favism, one that might increase his blood pressure to the point where hematohidrosis on top of hemolytic anemia might occur. Such an agent could be any source of dietary protein that included tyramine, even something as common and mundane as the weed Shepherd’s Purse. Herbally, Shepherd’s Purse is predominately used as an anti-hemorrhagic, through its role as a vaso-constrictor. It stops bleeding both internally and externally and can be administered orally in liquid form or topically as a tincture or salve. It is most effective in reducing excessive bleeding of the stomach, lungs, uterus and kidneys and it is also recommended for nosebleeds and wounds (the Germans used it in their field hospitals during World War I). Though a native species of Europe it spread quickly across the continents and since ancient times has had a widespread habitat and is found almost worldwide. It is a member of the mustard and cabbage family of plants, the brassicaceae or cruciferae (cross-like) plants. As knowledgeable as Jesus would have been in the medicinal uses of all plants after his education in Egypt with the Therapeutae, he no doubt would have been very familiar with Shepherd’s Purse and its uses.
Access to and familiarity with Shepherd’s Purse would have been of huge benefit to Jesus and Joseph in conceptualizing their plan for Jesus’ execution. They would have known that he would be scourged prior to his crucifixion, and their access to the herbal anti-hemorrhagic would have been essential to minimize Jesus’ blood loss during his torture and crucifixion. While traditionalists might scoff at the idea that Jesus would use herbal remedies to mitigate some of the physical punishment he was to endure, there are signs within the Gospels that such was the case. The pericopes that deal with his agony in the garden of Gethsemane on the night of his arrest and his concurrent references to “this cup”, should be understood on two levels; the figurative level that traditionally views the cup as a metaphor for whatever thematic lesson is being presented and the literal level that was a record of Jesus’ anguish and the part played in the drama by the actual cup.
Mark 14:36
(36) “And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will but what you will.’”
Luke 22:42-44
(42) “…saying ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours, be done.’ (43) And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. (44) And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
Matthew 26:39+42,
(39) “And going a little further he fell on his face and prayed saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as you will.’”
(42) “Again for the second time he went away and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it your will be done.’”
There are several points of interest in these three pericopes that seem to confirm that Jesus struggled with the idea of drinking whatever was in the cup. That he was loath to drink from the cup is made clear in each of the passages and that his father was responsible for his dilemma is also quite clear. The possibility that these passages were meant only as metaphor certainly exists, but it is difficult to ignore the very real tenor of the pieces that stress the association to his real father, Joseph Caiaphas, and the concrete reality of the cup (“…if this cannot pass unless I drink…”). The double affirmation in Mark that Jesus was talking to his biological father through the translation of the Aramaic abba as a means of reiterating the point was a very human way to call attention to the point that it was his father and not he who was responsible for bringing him to this crisis. Jesus here plays the dutiful son fulfilling his father’s political expectations for him, reluctant to take the final step towards what he knows will be a painful and life threatening conclusion, yet committed to honoring his father and their shared goals by risking his life and accepting the pain of torture he knew was only hours away. That he was addressing his biological father and not God can be surmised by the fact that later, in Mark 15:34, and under equally great stress and on the point of death, Jesus calls out, not to abba his father but to “Eloi, Eloi” , (My God, My God). If he could call out to his father to ask to be excused from his mission, why not then call out to his father in his moment of greatest need? Jesus was speaking to Joseph in Gethsemane and to God on the cross.
The curiosity of the metaphorical approach to this scene resides in the conundrum of explaining why the son of God should agonize so about a situation that he knows he has brought on himself, that he knows is necessary to complete his mission and that will end ultimately in his ascension to heaven and a return to his alter ego, God. Apologists would argue that Jesus’ anguish and suffering here are manifestations of his human side and that at this point in time his divine nature must have been in suspension allowing him to fully embrace and experience his human character. However, such an argument sounds more like the Gospel writers’ use of plausible deniability; a means to explain an event in terms that can be disassociated from reality in order to hide the truth, or in this case, to emphasize the divine. With the realization that Joseph Caiaphas was Jesus’ father and as a politically powerful and astute leader was driven to rid his nation of foreign oppressors and impious rulers to the point of risking his own son’s life, it is not difficult to read these passages as the strictly human story that they are. Jesus spoke to his father in his brief, tormented soliloquy as though to the one solely responsible for his situation in an attempt to be relieved of his mission, knowing full well that such relief was unlikely to be given. As the last act of submission to his father’s will, he drinks from a real (not metaphorical), cup, ingesting the potion of Shepherd’s Purse that he may have suspected would only intensify his physical suffering.
In Luke, the reaction is quick and clear. Jesus begins to suffer a bout of hematohidrosis almost at once. The hemolytic anemia brought on by the tyramine in the herbal extract begins to break down the red blood cells immediately, while the tyrosine releases the catecholamines that increase his heart rate and blood pressure. Under the tremendous stress of the occasion, Jesus begins to sweat heavily and his watery blood mixes with his sweat and flows out through his pores, falling to the ground like great drops of blood. Given that Luke records the episode of hematohidrosis, the question becomes just how human was the divine Jesus supposed to be? Did his humanity stretch to the inclusion of a genetic disorder? Was his divinity curtailed by the onset of his favism and subsequent hematohidrosis or supported by it? Why did the divine/human Jesus suffer the bout of hematohidrosis, an occurrence so rare that it neither reinforced his divinity nor (because of its rareness), supported his humanity? Regardless of what apologists and traditionalists might argue, Jesus’ hematohidrosis was brought on by a very human medical condition, and while such an occurrence can take place in the absence of favism, the fact that his mother also suffered through a similar bout suggests a genetic connection between the two that accounts for the hematohidrosis through human genetics and not divine happenstance.
Shepherd’s Purse was not the only drug or herbal concoction that Jesus took to mitigate his physical suffering. There are other Gospel accounts that suggest that other drugs were used at key moments before and during Jesus’ passion. The most obvious, and therefore the least contentious to Christian apologists, was the drink of sour wine or vinegar offered to Jesus while he was on the cross. There are several curiosities associated with this event that earmark it for more thorough examination. The incident is recorded in each of the four Gospels and each one adds a bit of information to the account that helps to clarify what happened and supports the possibility of Jesus using drugs.
Mark 15:23 & 36-37
(23) “And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh but he did not take it.”
(36) “And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ (37) And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.”
Luke 23:36
(36) “The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine…”
Matthew 27:34&48
(34) “…they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall but when he tasted it he would not drink it.
(48) And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink.”
John 19: 28-30
(28) “After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” (29) A jar full of sour wine stood there so they put a sponge full of sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. (30) When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
What is notable in these accounts is that aside from the inconclusive Luke, all four Gospels include the story and they share many similarities. All four Gospels indicate that Jesus was offered wine or sour wine either just before he was crucified or once he was on the cross. The Synoptics all record that Roman soldiers were the first to offer the sour wine that Jesus refused (John indicates that it was Jesus’ mother who offered it). Mark and Matthew both note that the sour wine was offered on a sponge on a reed a second time, by someone other than a soldier (John indicates a hyssop branch). Mark, Matthew and John all indicate that Jesus died almost immediately after the second offering of the wine soaked sponge (Luke and John indicate only a single offering of the sour wine).
The Gospels were not written haphazardly and the information contained within their stories is remarkably accurate concerning what was done and why certain comments were included. Again, the Gospel writers took great pleasure in recording as much of the truth as they could while still maintaining an essence of plausible deniability. Putting the truth down on papyrus or parchment for the Romans to read even though they could not fully grasp the truth was a means of pride and satisfaction to the writers, a chance to regain a measure of superiority over their oppressors. The episode of the sour wine was a classic example of this intention, and while a cursory reading of the various accounts might suggest that something more explosive might lie beneath the surface, there was no obvious evidence in the story to support such a claim. Closer examination of the individual stories, however, suggests that they contained a deeper meaning.
One of the oldest and most effective ways in which to perform any magic trick is to first allay the audience’s skepticism by proving to them that there is nothing to be skeptical about. It is often presented by a magician as the ‘nothing up my sleeve’ moment when the magician pulls up his sleeves and exposes his arms to the audience to prove that he has hidden nothing from them. It is used in virtually all magic tricks from card tricks to sawing someone in half and is an important part of misdirecting the audience’s attention and allaying their suspicions. It was just as important in Jesus’ day as it remains today for tricks to be effective. In the incident of the sour wine, the ‘nothing up my sleeve’ moment was established by the initial offering of the wine by the soldiers. If the Roman soldiers could offer sour wine, even doctored wine (Mark and Matthew) to their victim, then it must have been alright, or at least, not unusual. It established the fact that the sour wine was acceptable within its First Century context as a normal part of a crucifixion. Sour wine, or vinegar mixed with water was a typical drink of Roman soldiers, and mixed with myrrh (as an anesthetic) or gall (as a poison) was often present at crucifixions to either alleviate some of the victim’s suffering or to hasten their deaths. The soldiers would have had it nearby as a matter of course and their offering it to Jesus would have been a matter of routine, with little, if any, significance attached to it.
What was significant in Jesus’ case was that the sour wine was offered to him a second time by people other than the soldiers. It was during this second offering when the deception took place and when something else was added to the sour wine, something that produced a deep, almost comatose state that made Jesus appear dead. The fact that the accounts only indicate the presence of a sponge on a reed or hyssop branch during the second offering and not the first by the soldiers, indicates that something had fundamentally changed the nature of the sour wine between the two offerings. It is notable that the wine had been offered the first time without the benefit of a reed or branch, thus suggesting that it was safe to handle directly, while a reed was required to handle it the second time. The suggestion that Jesus was higher once on the cross might explain the need to extend the sponge to him by the use of a reed or branch for the second offering but it does not explain the intrusion of bystanders to make the second offering or explain Jesus’ ‘death’ immediately after receiving it. Something took place to alter the composition of the sour wine between the soldiers’ initial offering of it before Jesus was crucified and the second offering made by a bystander and presented to Jesus with the sponge at the end of a reed. The timing of his death immediately after receiving the second offering of sour wine is too close to be coincidental.
In Mark, Matthew and John, Jesus signals that he is ready for the second offering by calling out to the bystanders. In Mark 15:34 he calls out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” At once, a bystander fills a sponge with sour wine and puts it on the end of a reed to give to Jesus to drink. The same is true of the episode in Matthew 27:46, but in John 19:28, Jesus calls out, “I thirst,” and immediately the bystanders prepare the sponge and hold it to his mouth. In John 19:30, once Jesus had received the sour wine he said, “It is finished,” as though he knew that by ingesting the wine he would quickly lose consciousness. The point is that Jesus instigated the second offering by his spoken signal and that he knowingly lost consciousness once he had drunk the wine. Mark, Matthew and John agree on this sequence of events. Moving for a moment beyond the question of why Jesus accepted the second offering of sour wine and not the first, it becomes reasonably clear that he controlled what he would and wouldn’t drink. If it was incumbent upon him to endure the full human measure of suffering during his torture and crucifixion in order to atone for mankind’s sins, why then did he weaken at the end and end the suffering of his thirst by accepting a drink? And if it was not incumbent upon him to endure the full measure of human suffering brought on by the circumstances, why didn’t he accept the wine mixed with myrrh offered to him by the soldiers? Jesus did not accept the offering from the soldiers because the sour wine would not have done anything for him. Also, it was not yet time to drink the adulterated wine as the soldiers offered it to him before he was on the cross. He needed to be crucified and to visibly suffer on the cross before he could slip into unconsciousness and ‘die’ at a specific time so that he would be removed from the cross in time to bury him before the end of the day at sunset. He had to hang on the cross so that his ‘death’ would seem plausible, but not so long that his father the high priest, as Joseph of Arimathea, would be seen burying him after sundown at the beginning of the Sabbath. The timing of the details of his arrest, conviction and execution were critical elements that were drawn to their conclusions by his signal to give him the doctored wine, a drink that he hoped would convince the Roman soldiers that he was in fact dead.
It is one thing to suggest and be able to prove that such a deception could have been carried out by Jesus and an elite core of his followers, but it is necessary to confirm that such a deception would have been possible. Was a drug available to them that would have rendered Jesus insensitive to the thrust of a spear and appear dead? One family of plants is particularly pertinent to the current issue, the solanaceae family that includes mandrake, henbane, belladonna and tobacco. As a species of plants, the solanaceaes share many qualities that would have qualified them to be used under the circumstances required by Jesus and it was no doubt a concoction of one or more of these plant derivatives that were secretly mixed with the sour wine to produce a coma like state in Jesus. Some of the plants of this family include the datura (jimson weed), mandragora (mandrake), atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), hyoscamus niger (henbane), capsicum (paprika, chili pepper), solanum (potato, tomato, eggplant) nicotiana (tobacco) and the petunia (petunia). Some of the drug derivatives from these plants in use today include atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine. All of the plants of the family contain a diverse range of alkaloids, the most significant of which are the tropane alkaloids named from the atropa belladonna plant that was named after the ancient Greek fate, Atropos, who cut the thread of life. Pharmacologically, they are the most powerful known anticholinergics in existence, meaning, they inhibit the neurological signals transmitted by the endogenous neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, thus affecting the central, peripheral and autonomic nervous systems.
The historical record going back to ancient Egypt and on through the Greeks to the Romans is full of accounts of the uses of mandrake, henbane and other plants of this family as anesthetics, analgesics and pyschotropics. There is some suggestion that the Mystery Religions used derivatives of belladonna in their secret initiation rituals because the hallucinations produced by the drug (sense of flying and sense of divinity) were considered to be real experiences rather than false images. The use of caves during initiation by these cults may have stemmed from the fact that initiates under belladonna influence often incorporated inanimate objects into their ‘real’ hallucinations and animated the objects, often talking to them as if they were living things. Isolation within an empty cave while under the influence of belladonna may have prevented such occurrences and helped to focus the initiate on the divine aspect of the experience. Mandrake, mentioned by Josephus as baaras , from the Hebrew ba’ar to burn, (War , book viii, iv, 3) was used with wine under the name morion (death wine) to render insensible those about to suffer torture. Under the Roman Empire, Mosaean women would administer it to those about to be crucified to mitigate their suffering. It was due to the occasional recovery of a crucified victim after removal from the cross that Roman soldiers were ordered to mutilate the bodies before they were released to the family for burial.
In a 1996 article for the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) anesthetist Anthony John Carter made these observations:
“It is well known that extracts from the opium poppy, papaver somniferum, were used to dull the pain of surgery during ancient times but less well known that the extracts from plants with sedative powers often accompanied them, producing primitive anaesthesia. Most of these sedative plants were members of a large botanical family, the solanaceae…Seven months after the performance of the first operation under ether anaesthesia; the ‘Lancet’ [medical journal] published a short extract from a paper in a provincial French journal. The extract was entitled “A Substitute for the Vapour of Ether to Annul Sensations During Operations,” and this is what it said, “At midsummer, when vegetation is at its height, Solanum nigrum, Hyoscyamus niger, Cicuta minor, Datura stramonium and Lactuca virosa are gathered and a sponge is plunged into their juice, fully expressed. The sponge is then dried in the sun, the process of dipping and drying is repeated two or three times and the sponge is then laid up in a dry place. When the sponge is required for use, it is soaked for a short time in hot water; afterwards it is placed under the nose of the person to be operated upon, who is quickly plunged into sleep. The operation may then be proceeded with, without any fear that the patient has any sensation of pain. He is readily aroused from the stupor by a rag dipped in vinegar and placed to his nose.
M Dauriol records five cases [Lancet, 1847] in which he has successfully employed this means of bringing about insensibility during operations.
Although described as a ‘new procedure’, Dauriol’s method was in fact based on primitive anaesthetic techniques that had been in use from before the time of Christ until well into the middle ages.”
Aside from the long history of using anesthesia and its familiarity up to modern times, what is of particular interest to our study is the technique of loading the sponge with the appropriate drugs through repeated soaking and drying, and more importantly in this case, the ability to revive a patient easily and quickly with a rag soaked in vinegar. These are simple, yet effective ways to both sedate and revive patients who were to be surgically operated on, producing a sleep so deep that they felt absolutely no pain and restoring them to consciousness rather quickly. There was nothing technologically advanced or sophisticated enough to prevent knowledgeable people in the First Century from performing the same procedure, In fact, it is stated in the article that similar procedures were available even before the time of Jesus. Dr. Carter continues:
“It was the ability of henbane to induce prolonged unconsciousness that particularly impressed the 18 Century physician Sir Hans Sloane, who recorded the case of four children who accidentally ate henbane seeds. They slept for two days and two nights.
Although not used by Dauriol, one other solanaceous plant must be mentioned, for it is associated with the very earliest attempts at anaesthesia. Mandragora officinarium, popularly known as the mandrake, grows naturally around the Mediterranean and the plant’s anaesthetic power first came to attention during the time of the Roman Empire when a method for using wine to extract its active constituent was described by the Greek physician, Pediacus [sic] Dioscorides: “The wine of the bark of the root [mandrake?] be given to such as shall be cut or cauteri[zed]. They do not apprehend the pain because they are overborne with dead sleep.”
However, according to the writer Celsus, the Romans also knew that the anaesthetic power of solanaceous plants was increased when they were combined with extracts of the opium poppy, papaver somniferum; “There is another more efficacious way for producing sleep. It is made from mandrake with opium seed and seed of henbane bruised up with wine.”’
Such historical references make it clear that drugs derived from the solanaceae plants in combination with opium and wine could very well induce a deep, coma-like state in people that would leave them insensible to pain, and that those drugs were readily available in First Century Palestine. The method required incorporated the use of wine for greatest efficacy, and although it is not mentioned in the above references, required the use of reeds or branches for application since many of the solanaceae family can deliver their active ingredients transcutaneously or directly through the skin making it imperative for the person handling the wet drug soaked sponge to avoid direct skin contact with it. Moreover, a technique for delivering those drugs unobtrusively to Jesus through the use of a drug- laden sponge was available and easy to use even in the presence of Roman guards who had already handled their own wine soaked sponges. It would have been easy for one of Jesus’ inner circle, to pose as a bystander, and to rush forward at a given signal once Jesus had been on the cross for a given amount of time and unobtrusively drop a loaded sponge into the sour wine and retrieve it with a reed or branch and raise it to Jesus’ lips and nose while the Romans looked on. Since the mixture could be administered transcutaneously it would not matter whether or not Jesus was conscious enough to drink it as it only had to make contact with his lips or nose to be effective. It would have been the easiest and simplest of tricks to perform, and since no one suspected the sour wine was tampered with there would have been no concern when a bystander took a sponge from the same fluid and offered it to Jesus.
Further evidence that Jesus had been dosed with some form of anesthetic prior to the Passion and his crucifixion comes in the Gospels as the rather curious story of the woman anointing either his head (Mark 14:3-9, Matthew 26:6-7) or feet (Luke 7:41-43, John 12:1-8). Anatomically, the head and the feet are highly vascularized portions of the body with many small capillaries close to the surface of the skin and are more susceptible to the transdermal transmission of chemical compounds than are other areas of the body. The transcutaneous nature of the solanaceae plants, especially when in solution, made them difficult to handle and required extreme caution when dispensing them. Taken in the wrong doses or taken inadvertently, they can be very poisonous and deadly. In Mark, the woman breaks the alabaster flask of ointment and pours it on Jesus’ head rather than applying the mixture by hand, while in Matthew she simply pours the ointment on his head. In Luke, she pours the ointment on his feet, and in John, after anointing his feet she does something remarkable and spreads the ointment with her hair, thereby avoiding direct skin contact with the ointment. The herbal derivatives from the solanaceae plant family behave like the tobacco plant from the same family, and their physiological effect differs depending upon the method of transmission. Just as tobacco manifests a different reaction physiologically depending upon whether it is inhaled, ingested or absorbed transdermally (cigarette smoking, chewing tobacco or nicotine patch) so too, the other plants of the solanaceae family react differently. The transdermal or transcutaneous application of one of the drugs might take hours or even days to be absorbed to a sufficient level to produce any physiological reaction. The woman’s anointing of Jesus could have been an application of one of the solanaceae derivatives designed to anesthetize him many hours later at a time when he would most need it, but at a time when he would be scrutinized the most closely.
Other than unjustified stubbornness and tradition-based dogmatism there is no rational reason to cling to the idea that Jesus could not have used drugs as part of his plan to fake his death and resurrection. In a strictly rational methodology of re-examining the Gospel stories regarding such a possibility, it seems reasonable to assume that he and his followers must have been aware of the pharmaceuticals available to them, must have had at least a passing knowledge of their usage and had a motive strong enough and important enough to embolden them to use them. To put it in terms of modern police work, they had the motive, means, opportunity and ability to carry out such an elaborate deception through the use of the available drugs of the day. That Christian tradition continues to maintain that it was otherwise remains a question of faith and not history.
THE OPEN TOMB
Christian tradition holds that the linchpin of Christian faith must be and always has been the discovery of the empty tomb of Jesus on the first day of the week following his crucifixion and death. Apologists point to this ‘historical’ fact and its acknowledgement by nearly all historians, both ancient and modern, both Christian and non-Christian, as confirmation that something remarkable had transpired; either his body had disappeared or Jesus’ resurrection did in fact take place and as a consequence his divinity should go unchallenged. The claim of the empty tomb has more meaning for Christians than any of Jesus’ miracles, his virgin birth or any of his prophecies. It is used, almost exclusively, as the supreme apologetic, especially in light of the fact that no ancient sources seem to refute its reality. Modern apologists confidently point to this lack of historical refutation and to the numbers of ancient writers who accept the validation for the empty tomb as proof positive that the Gospel stories relating that Jesus’ tomb was found empty confirms in absolute terms the historicity of the resurrection. As some have said, including Paul, “Without the resurrection, the Christian faith would fall.” And without the empty tomb, the resurrection would come under intense scrutiny.
In spite of all of the historical advocacy for an empty tomb, however, the rational truth is that it just doesn’t matter. The empty tomb, as a symbol of Jesus’ resurrection, bears little consequence and for all the reasons one might imagine. There are several reasons why the tomb might have been found empty, from the very first suggestion found in the Gospels themselves, that his followers had whisked away the body secretly and reburied it elsewhere, to a case of mistaking the wrong tomb, to the possibility that it was only a temporary burial in a borrowed grave. An empty tomb proves only that; the tomb was found empty, nothing more. What is of great historical interest and more telling by far than the empty tomb is the fact, also confirmed by nearly everyone that the tomb was found open. Nothing, not the empty tomb or Jesus’ supposed miracles or his ability to fulfill ancient prophecy, says more about the human agency involved in the life and political ambitions of Jesus than does the open tomb. The apparent fact that it was found open does more to refute his miraculous resurrection than any other argument. It stands as a sign that nothing divine occurred there.
After Jesus’ ‘death’ on the cross his father moved quickly to beseech Pilate to grant him the body. The comatose state of Jesus’ body could not last for long and the suppression of his breathing and heart rate in such a state had to be addressed immediately to avoid permanent brain damage or death. Joseph then and other members of the inner circle were prepared, as soon as they heard the signal from Jesus and saw the sour wine reach his lips, to hurry to Pilate and ask for the corpse. It was Joseph’s admission to Pilate that he was Jesus’ father in order to obtain the body coupled with the Romans’ humiliation at the disappearance of Jesus’ ‘corpse’ at the resurrection that ultimately, after 18 years as the head priest of the provincial Sanhedrin, cost Joseph his position and removed him from the political spotlight. Until that moment, the Romans had no idea of the familial relationship between Joseph Caiaphas and Jesus, and the sudden realization that the Mosaean political leader with whom they had been so closely involved for more than a decade was the father of a popular yet subversive Mosaean leader could not have sat well with them. There is no historical record of what became of Caiaphas after his removal from the high priesthood only, according to Josephus, that he was summarily dismissed, but since the Romans were in control of the position of high priest for the provincial Sanhedrin it can be safely assumed that they were the ones to dismiss Caiaphas.
Jesus, as a Davidic heir and therefore as the legitimate king of Judea, would not have gone to a pauper’s grave (despite his crucifixion as a criminal), would not have been tossed on a trash heap (as some modern scholars suggest), nor left to rot on the cross (as other scholars suggest). He was a man of prominence from a powerful family who were descendents of King David. He would have been taken down from the cross carefully and quickly and as the tradition of the time allowed, followed to his grave by whatever family and friends were in attendance. In Jesus’ case, since he had been publicly executed for the crime of sedition and since he was known to have political followers, the group following the corpse to the grave would have been understandably small for a royal heir, perhaps only his father and mother and whatever men were necessary to carry the body. Fear of association with Jesus the criminal would have prevented a large gathering of his followers and disciples. Yet certainly at a minimum, six people accompanied the body though perhaps more. The Gospels indicate a few more as the women followers of Jesus were present at a distance and at least one disciple. It is reasonable to assume that as many as a dozen people may have been present either tomb side or at some distance. While the poor ended up in shallow, unmarked graves (Luke 11:44) or strangers in a communal ‘potter’s field’ (Matthew 27:7) or regular citizens like Lazarus in caves or rock hewn tombs with square blocking stones (John 11:38), Jesus as a member of the royalty would have been buried in a large, stone cut tomb with a round or circular blocking stone [See Fig. 5]. Of the hundreds of First Century tombs discovered in and around Jerusalem, only a handful (and only those of the rich or royal blood), have had round blocking stones. The Synoptics all indicate that a round blocking stone covered the entrance to the tomb (Mark 15:46, Luke 24:2, Matthew 27:60).
Even so, the openings of First Century Mosaean tombs were frequently small and close to the ground, requiring anyone entering to crawl on their hands and knees through a low, narrow opening. In order for a corpse to be buried, a person would have had to first crawl in through the opening, turn around and with the help of people on the outside, drag the body through the opening and into the tomb. Those outside would then crawl through the opening to assist in the burial rites. The confines of the tombs were such that only a few people could enter and it would have been difficult for those inside to stand upright due to the low ceiling. The space would have been exceedingly cramped. John’s Gospel indicates that the preparation of the body took place outside the tomb before the actual burial in keeping with the custom of the time but such an account refers to the traditional preparation for someone who had died at home and not someone taken down from a cross on the Sabbath eve. At that point, the two or three people in the tomb attending the corpse would have laid it out on a stone bench carved out of the rock and begun to prepare the body. Meanwhile, the remaining attendees would have stood around outside the tomb entrance waiting for the others to emerge. In the case of Jesus’ burial that took place so late in the day the light would have been fading as sunset waned and the women followers, including Jesus’ mother, Mary, standing at a distance would have begun to wail and cry.
Inside the tomb, things would have been happening quite quickly. What little he had on in the way of clothing would have been stripped from him and he would have been washed carefully. As a Nazirite, Jesus would have refrained from cutting or trimming his hair and beard during his life, but now those attending to him would have cut his hair and trimmed his beard so that he took on a new appearance. Medicinal herbs and lotions with antibiotic properties such as myrrh and aloe (John 19:39) would have been applied to his wounds. His hands and feet where the nails had pierced would have been bound up and the spear wound in his side would have been sutured closed. New clothing, smuggled in under the clothing of one of the attendees would have been put on him, so that lying in the tomb he would have looked like a completely different man. Finally, as a last step, a rag soaked in vinegar would have been held to his nose to revive him. Once he had regained consciousness enough to move, a signal would have been given to those outside to gather more closely around the entrance. With that, those inside the tomb began to make their way out. The last attendee inside took the remains of the 75lbs of myrrh and aloes that John indicated had been brought to the tomb and fashioned a crude corpse on the stone bench, covering it with a shroud, so that if anyone chose to look in the darkened tomb they would just make out the shape of a reclining body.
Outside, the evening had grown nearly dark. The Synoptics all agree that Jesus died shortly after the ninth hour of the Hebrew day or at three in the afternoon. Sunset would not have occurred until nearly 5:50 PM and full dark not for at least another hour after that leaving almost four full hours for Jesus’ followers to go to Pilate and request the body, remove the body from the cross, transport the body to the tomb, prepare and revive Jesus in the tomb before full dark and the beginning of the Day of Preparation for the weekly Sabbath. There would have been plenty of time for all that to be accomplished so that, just as according to plan, Jesus would painfully and awkwardly crawl from the tomb at the last of the daylight. Waiting for him outside was the gathered group of the attendees; their flowing robes blending to form a single mass. Behind him came the last of his attendees, so that he was circled and enclosed amidst the small gathering. The women nearby continued their wailing and wild demonstration of their grief as the people around Jesus closed their ranks and helped to physically support him in his weakened state as he exited the tomb. They helped him to his feet and at once, dressed as they were dressed, he became a part of their group. No one who had not been close enough to see clearly or to count the individuals involved could have determined under such circumstances exactly how many people had entered the tomb and how many had exited. Holding Jesus closely and supporting his weight, the group, huddled together in their misery, holding each other for comfort, and moved off away from the tomb and into the gathering darkness. Behind them, a single individual rolled the stone across the entrance to the tomb, sealing it shut. The tomb was empty.
Later that night with Jesus safely hidden away, Joseph returned to the tomb and ordered the Temple guards to open it. Pilate had disdained to order Roman troops to guard the Mosaean tomb and had directed Caiaphas to use his own Temple guards for the duty (Matthew 27:65-66). Although the guards were there ostensibly to prevent the tomb from being opened they were in the presence of their ultimate commander, the high priest of the provincial Sanhedrin, Joseph Caiaphas, and had to obey his orders. The stone was rolled away from the entrance and either Caiaphas or one of his trusted inner circle crawled into the tomb. While inside, they picked up and folded the face cloth that had helped form the ‘body’, and laid it aside and hurriedly collected the remnants of the herbs so that the stone bench was free of that debris. The shroud was left on the stone bench. They emerged leaving an empty tomb behind them. Caiaphas informed the guards that the body must have been taken before their arrival, but ordered them to remain on guard and to say nothing.
Aside from some minor discrepancies, the Gospels are fairly consistent in their accounts of what happened next. Mary the Magdalene, accompanied by one or more women, returned to the tomb on the morning of the first day of the week (Sunday). In three of the four Gospels the round blocking stone was found already moved away from the entrance of the tomb (Matthew indicates that an angel rolled the stone back). Either one or two young men, dressed in dazzling white are at the tomb, either sitting inside or just outside the entrance. In John, Jesus is present, although he is at first misidentified as a gardener. Either the women entered the tomb and saw for themselves that the body of Jesus was gone, or ran to get the disciples to tell them that the body was gone. What is essential in these stories is that the tomb was found open and there were male figures dressed in white present. As Josephus and other contemporary historians noted, the Essenes and the Zealots wore white and it was a matter of pride and ritual cleanliness that the white robes they wore were spotless and uncontaminated. The man or men at the tomb that Sunday morning were Zealots standing there to draw attention to the open and empty tomb. The fact that they were there indicates just how important they considered Jesus’ perceived resurrection. They were willing to risk ritual impurity, and the consequently tedious routine of cleansing that was required to restore their ritual purity, by being in close contact with a tomb. Some of their concern may have been mitigated by the fact that the tomb apparently never actually held a corpse and so was not truly defiled, and it is uncertain if there were other tombs in close proximity. If there were no other tombs nearby, the Zealots would have been at ease near Jesus’ tomb.
The Gospel of John records that Jesus was near the tomb, although he was at first mistaken for a gardener. Like the Zealots, ritual purity would have been important to Jesus and his presence near the tomb seems to confirm that it was a new, unused tomb and that there were no other tombs nearby. Contemporary audiences would have been shocked had the Gospel stories indicated that the risen Jesus was defiled by his close proximity other tombs. Alive or resurrected, there would have been a question of Jesus’ purity under such circumstances, which explains why the Gospels made such a point out of the newness of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb. If Jesus was going to be near any tomb, he could not risk defilement; the tomb had to be new and unused and separate from other tombs. If he had become ritually impure, Jesus could not have had contact with his mother and the disciples after his resurrection and would have been forced to isolate himself and begin the process of becoming ritually pure again. This was equally true for his father and mother and the others attending to his burial. Though Jesus seems to have taught against an over concern with ritual purity, the Gospel writers at least could not be sure of their audiences’ reactions to such a situation. As has been noted in other Gospel stories regarding situations of ritual purity (i.e. Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb and raising ‘the sleeping’ Jairus’ daughter), while Jesus may have spoken out against a too strict concern with certain matters of ritual purity, he has been consistently presented as abiding by the most serious purity laws.
It is interesting that in Luke as the Zealot explains to the women on that Sunday morning that what Jesus had earlier prophecised needed to happen does not mention his death.
Luke 24:6-7
(6) “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, (7) that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”
There was no mention of his death in Luke 24:7 because his actual death was not a necessary part of the resurrection scene. It has been assumed over the centuries that crucifixion meant certain death, but Jesus knew that such was not the case, that there were ways to circumvent the expected outcome of crucifixion and avoid death altogether. This comment in Luke is the clearest example that Jesus never intended to die and that the writers were thumbing their noses at the authorities. Both Jesus and the writers were overtly stating that the crucifixion was a sham and that he intended to survive it. To anyone outside his inner circle, his death on the cross would have seemed real. He would have carried the real wounds of his crucifixion for all to see but only a few would have known the truth.
That his wounds were indeed real has been recorded in various Gospel stories including the story of doubting Thomas and in the scene in John 20:17 when Jesus says to his mother, Mary, “Do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” Why Jesus should not be touched before he had ascended to the father is never fully explained within the Gospels, but within the context of the historical incident it is very clear. Although three days had passed since the crucifixion, the wounds that Jesus bore were still relatively fresh and painful, too painful to withstand a mother’s embrace. Jesus warned Mary off not because there was some theological reason to avoid contact with the resurrected Christ, but because it would have been too painful for the human Jesus. Later, when Jesus shows his wounds to Thomas, Thomas touches the real wounds and sees the holes left by the nails and places his hand upon the spear’s gash. These were not serious, life threatening wounds but the injuries of a scourged and crucified man. The ‘resurrected’ Jesus took pride in showing them to his disciples.
While his wounds may have been real, Jesus’ resurrection over death was not and so an open tomb was required to make it known that he had indeed risen from the grave. Christian apologists fail to account for the fact that the tomb was found open and while they are eager to proclaim the empty tomb as a sign of the risen Christ, their inability to account for the fact that Jesus/God required an open entrance to the tomb in order to manifest the resurrection is curious. An omnipotent God, a God with the power to restore life to the dead, and in control of space and time, should have had the power to resurrect outside the tomb without the necessity or convenience of an opening. The fact that this could not be done speaks volumes about the human agency involved with Jesus’ resurrection. The open tomb was necessary not only to let the very human Jesus out, but also to make it clear to any and all who might care that he was gone from the tomb. A continuously sealed tomb in the presence of a restored Jesus leads to severe scrutiny and skepticism. If Jesus is alive and outside the sealed tomb, how can anyone be certain it is he unless they open the tomb and verify that his body is gone? Could this living Jesus be a twin? A look-a-like? Someone masquerading as Jesus? Without an open tomb to verify the absence of a body, the resurrection of Jesus could not be confirmed. Even if a true miracle had taken place and Jesus had been raised from death, and taken bodily from a sealed tomb, the stone still would have had to be removed from the opening to verify the miracle.
The problem for Christianity is that the Gospels tell us that the tomb was already open and empty, the resurrection had already taken place and the scene was set for verification before the women and disciples arrived to verify it for themselves. Had the Gospels uniformly recorded that the tomb was found sealed (as in the correction made in Matthew) and that the disciples or guards or women had caused the stone to be removed, credence for the resurrection might have maintained a certain authenticity. Had Jesus been discovered outside the sealed tomb and the tomb found empty, the miraculous aspect of the resurrection might have retained its believability, as though Jesus had been resurrected through time and space from within the tomb to outside it without the necessity for an opening--- but such was not the case. The exigencies of the situation required Joseph to remove all doubt about a resurrected body and open the tomb as confirmation. Joseph was faced with the possibility that if the tomb remained closed, the resurrection might go unnoticed. To put it in the modern vernacular, “What if they held a resurrection and nobody came?” The Gospel writers recorded what had happened and what had to be done: the tomb was found open and then Jesus was discovered to have been resurrected. The inclusion of the moved stone was a reflection of the historical necessity; the resurrection of Jesus, the Davidic heir, had to be noted and accepted to be the catalyst for the rebellion. The historical accounts of an open tomb absolutely force a re-evaluation of the scene and the acknowledgement that only humans require the necessity of a means of egress and exit. Gods and miraculous resurrections should not.
EPILOGUE
The failure of Jesus’ resurrection to goad the Essenes into action and thereby spark the anticipated rebellion was a political catastrophe for his movement. For an event of such purpose and planning to have so little effect must have been devastating for all involved. The political and human impact on Jesus and his family must have been monumental, to say nothing of the long-term impact on Mosaean society and their continued subjugation by the Romans. It would be another thirty years before the wellspring of nationalism again gained enough momentum to spark the First Jewish Revolt in 66 CE. There is no historical record of the aftermath of the event, no hint in Josephus that a presumed resurrection of an heir to the Judean throne had failed to ignite a rebellion, and other than his rather succinct remarks that Pilate and Caiaphas had been removed from their positions of authority, he made no comments about the possible repercussions of their removals or of Jesus’ crucifixion. It had been an embarrassing event for all concerned. Once word of the missing corpse was spread around Jerusalem, the Roman authorities would have been livid and begun an immediate search for the body, but once word filtered out that there was no corpse and that Jesus was alive and somewhere outside the city, Roman anger would have quickly turned to confusion and embarrassment at being duped by an ineffective crucifixion and a feigned death. Without a body, what could they prove and whom could they accuse? Pilate and Caiaphas, the men from both the Roman and Mosaean sides chiefly in authority over the crucifixion and consequently the resurrection, were removed from power. What more could be done?
The Gospels record one small incident that seems to portray the despair, anger and frustration that must have been felt by members of Jesus’ inner circle, those who were complicit in the crucifixion and resurrection and understood the political importance of their possible success and known the fear of their final failure. The suicide of Judas Iscariot as recounted in Matthew 27:3-8 speaks to the despair prevalent in Jesus’ followers at that time. Despite tradition’s long held view that Judas was evil and a betrayer of Jesus and the movement, his historical role was one of treasurer and lieutenant within the group. There is some question today whether or not his Gospel label of ‘betrayer’ is accurate and fair since the Greek word, paradidomi used for betrayer can also mean to ‘hand over’ or ‘to give into the hands of another’. The suggestion is that since Jesus knew Judas was going to turn him into the Temple guards it can hardly be called a case of betrayal, and in reality may have been part of Jesus’ plan all along to have Judas (with Judas’ full knowledge and cooperation) have the priests and guards show up at a place and time of Jesus’ choosing in order to control events. If such were the case and Judas was merely acting in his role as Jesus’ friend and lieutenant and carrying out an agreed upon plan, the association with betrayal would be tenuous at best. As will be seen below, Judas was not deserving of such a label.
Matthew 27:3-8
(3) “Then when Judas, his betrayer saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, (4) saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” (5) And throwing down the pieces of silver into the Temple, he departed and he went and hanged himself. (6) But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver said, “It is not lawful to put them back in the treasury since it is blood money.” (7) So they took counsel and bought with them the potters’ field as a burial place for strangers. (8) Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.”
This pericope is often seen as a condemnation of Judas for his betrayal of Jesus, but when looked at more closely and with knowledge of its context and the geography of Jerusalem, a different story emerges. For one thing, Judas is in the process of repenting his betrayal and looking for redemption from the Temple priests who are dismissive of his contrition. Jesus and John were all about repentance and they would have honored Judas’ heartfelt realization of his mistake. Far from condemning Judas for his earlier betrayal, Jesus would have understood and accepted his remorse, as would the audience for this story. The villains of the piece are meant to be the priests who dismiss Judas and his declaration of Jesus’ innocence and focus on a point of law about the silver rather than embracing the larger picture of Jesus and his movement. This was the crux of the message; that the Jerusalem priesthood were too focused on the specifics of the law and not on its intent to bring the people closer to God. Jesus’ movement shared the same goal; to bring the people closer to God. A contemporary audience hearing this story would have incensed at the priests’ disregard for repentance and equally incensed at their myopic focus over a relatively insignificant point of law. The question of the pericope for the audience then became who was the bigger sinner, the betrayer who repents or the priests who dismiss a repentant sinner?
In the historical context of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, and its intended aim of igniting the rebellion, the story was meant as a metaphor condemning the Jerusalem establishment, especially the priesthood, for ignoring Jesus and his attempt to motivate the people. The failure of the Jesus movement to start the rebellion was also a failure of Mosaean authorities to seize the moment and incite the people. Jesus and his followers must have been shocked at the inertia of the Mosaean leadership in view of the movement’s attempts to restore the Kingdom of Israel and unite the people in a common cause and Jesus’ willingness to risk his life for the cause. Their frustration and anger are evident within the story as Judas leaves the priests and hangs himself. The place of his suicide was not a random selection in the pericope, and even though the Gospel suggests that the place was named in response to Judas’ action, it already existed as a location in Jerusalem when the story was first written.
The place called the ‘Field of Blood’ in Matthew (also ‘Akeldama’ in Acts 1:19) carried with it great significance at the time. It was named, not for the death or blood of Judas’ suicide, but rather from the deep red clay that was found there and that served as the basis for some of the local pottery making, hence the pericope’s reference to the “potters’ field.” More importantly, its location, in the lower Hinnom Valley put it adjacent to an area of expensive First Century tombs, one of which belonged to the family of Annas, the Herodian high priest, father of Mary the Magdalene, father-in-law of Caiaphas and grandfather of Jesus. Looking out from the entrance of Annas’ tomb, it would have been possible to look across the ‘Field of Blood’ directly towards the Temple. Judas chose to hang himself in front of Annas’ and other priestly tombs and between those tombs and the Temple. Anyone with any knowledge of Jerusalem in the First Century would have been aware of these locations and would have understood that Judas hanged himself as a sign of condemnation, accusation and guilt directed at the priesthood in a most obvious and public way. His body would have hung as a statement condemning the priesthood, silently proclaiming to them, “See what your inactivity has done?”
Whether or not Judas actually hanged himself (Acts 1:19 indicates that he threw himself down and burst open) or whether the story was simply a metaphorical device to drive home the perfidy of the priesthood and the Jerusalem authorities is difficult to determine. The story is out of chronological sequence and comes before Jesus’ death and resurrection and consequently before the political inactivity of the Mosaean leadership would have been known, but that probably has more to do with dramatic license than real time sequencing. The suicide of Judas would have been anticlimactic had it followed the resurrection in the Gospel, as must have been the case in real life and would have interrupted the narrative flow of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. The political point of the story was as easily made with it out of historical sequence as it would have been had it been written in its correct sequence. Then too, the desperation and despair of Jesus’ followers, especially a committed and close personal friend like Judas, may have driven some to the ultimate sacrifice. They had spent years preparing for the moment, years traveling and sacrificing, years threatening and cajoling the disparate groups of the original kingdom to forget their differences in order to reunify only to see the movement collapse from the fear, apathy and greed of the men in power. Such a realization might drive even the strongest follower to suicide.
Tradition has not only misrepresented the historical view of Judas, but it has also skewed our view of Paul and in consequence early Christianity. The preserved tradition of the early Christian movement is really based upon the teachings of Paul and not Jesus. This dichotomy in the fundamental teachings in the early church has been viewed traditionally as a matter of theology. Basic differences in the perceived message of Jesus between Paul and members of the first Jesus movement like James, Peter and other apostles, with Paul’s interpretation ultimately gaining the greatest following and over time becoming the accepted orthodoxy, while the original voice of Jesus became lost or obscured and his original followers became marginalized and then ignored. The problem with this scenario for many students of early Christianity is that it raises several important questions. For one thing, how could someone (Paul) who had never met the living Jesus have usurped his philosophy and altered it to such a degree that it very nearly became antagonistic to the original members of the movement, and why did Paul quickly and steadily change the message from a strictly Mosaean political propaganda to a universal message of faith and peace, altering Jesus from Judean king to divine Christ in the process? Many modern scholars see the transition from the historical Jesus to the Christ of faith as so severe and so abrupt through Paul’s manipulation that they have argued that the historical Jesus never existed and that Paul’s Christ is merely a mythic god man, a divine figurehead, artificially created as a front man for a new theology.
The confusion over the historicity of Jesus is hardly surprising given the distortion of the man as rendered by Paul. In the entire corpus of Paul’s letters there are only two references to biographical details of Jesus’ life; that he was crucified and that he had a brother named James. Given that Paul knew and spoke with James, Peter and others who had known the living Jesus, this lack of biographical detail in Paul’s writing is curious, if not sinister. To exclude or ignore pertinent details of the life of the ostensible founder of a theology for which you have undergone a miraculous conversion is more than odd or suspicious, and to fail to avail himself of the opportunity to learn from those who had been taught by Jesus directly seems counterintuitive. While the argument is often made that such biographical details were of less importance to First Century audiences than were the theological details of Paul’s Messiah, that argument is weakened considerably in the face of Paul’s complete lack of interest in any human connection with either Jesus or his immediate followers. Paul goes out of his way, especially in letters such as Galatians, to divorce himself in no uncertain terms from the man Jesus and his apostles. Paul was not interested in associating himself with Jesus, James, Peter and the others and repeatedly claimed that his knowledge of the teachings of the Christ were divinely inspired and were not from human agency. This separation between Paul and the original founders of the Jesus movement while confusing as theology, is perfectly understandable within the political context of the time. Paul usurped and redirected the political ambitions for rebellion of Jesus and his movement.
Paul’s redirection of the Mosaean nationalist movement encouraged by Jesus began almost immediately after the resurrection failed to produce the results that had been expected. In the wake of the event, in the days and weeks following Jesus’ miraculous resurrection, the political climate in Jerusalem must have been in turmoil. Accusations no doubt flew between the Jerusalem hierarchy and his followers, followed by accusations from the Romans and the Herodian leaders demanding to know what had taken place. The Romans and Herodians would have had little patience and tolerance for the missing body of a condemned and crucified criminal. People would have been questioned and searches made. Word of the miracle must have spread rapidly among the people and the political nature of the resurrection must have been examined. Unlike the spirituality and theology accepted in the Gospels today, people of First Century Judea and its environs would have understood the Jesus movement to be political and nationalistic. The death and resurrection of the leader of the movement would have been understood to represent some sort of political statement. Jerusalem was a theocracy and Mosaeans viewed almost all public events as a matter of God’s will that could politically impact how the society was governed. Jesus’ resurrection was less a confirmation of a spiritual afterlife as it was a political affirmation of God’s acceptance of Jesus and the movement. Again, that was the original intent of the resurrection to politically motivate the Essenes, not reassure them of an afterlife.
The corpus of Paul’s writings in the New Testament is full of the details of his conversion from Herodian Mosaeanism to the Christology he created. He makes it clear that he is not a follower of Jesus’ nationalistic movement and that, through divine intervention, he is the only one qualified to preach the true gospel.
Galatians 1:15-17
(15) “But when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace (16) was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles I did not immediately consult with anyone (17) nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.”
Galatians1:8-9
(8) “But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you let him be accursed. (9) As we have said before so now I say again: if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received let him be accursed.”
The reason for such an abrupt and dramatic shift away from the teachings of Jesus and towards the mythic mixture of superstitious belief and humanistic secularism of Paul’s Christology was simple. The easiest and fastest way to disarm the nationalism and rebellious nature of Jesus’ movement that was such a threat to the extant powers of Palestine was not to legitimize the movement by open confrontation and conflict, that might have escalated the situation, but to infiltrate and redirect the movement away from a strictly Mosaean sect in conflict with Rome to re-establish it as a politically neutral, and therefore harmless, theology open to Gentiles in place of orthodox Mosaeans. Paul’s goal was to marginalize Jesus and his followers to the point where they ceased to be politically viable. He did this by shouting longer and louder than the apostles that it was he and not them that God had chosen to spread Christ’s message. Paul himself admits to the fundamental change in his approach to the Jesus Movement in Galatians.
Galatians 1:13
“For you have heard of my former life in Judaism how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.”
The Greek word for church in the above reference is ekklesia, which means ‘gathering or assembly’ and is taken from the roots ek (out of, from, away from) and kaleo (to call, to call aloud). It was not meant as church in the modern sense that denotes not just a gathering but a set of rites and regulations as well, but as an assembly, a group of men who had been ‘called out’ for God or in God’s name, which is what the Jesus movement certainly was. Paul admits to his persecution of the group and even goes so far as to change his name from the Mosaean ‘Saul’ to the Roman or Latin ‘Paul’ from (Paulus), a change that an orthodox Mosaean would never have made. Paul was not only distancing himself from his overt persecution of a Mosaean sect, he was also distancing himself from his Mosaean background, a curious move on the part of someone who had been zealous for the traditions of his fathers.
Such a move might have seemed curious, even blasphemous for an orthodox Mosaean, but not so for a Roman citizen and a Herodian family member. Paul’s background indicates specifically that he was a Roman citizen (Acts 22:27-28) and suggests that he had familial ties to the House of Herod (Romans 16:10 and 16:11). Inclusion in both or either of these two groups would have placed Paul in direct opposition to Jesus and his movement. Paul was both Roman and Herodian, the two political groups that had oppressed the Mosaean nation for so long and the two groups that had the most to lose in the event of a Mosaean rebellion. It is not surprising then that he persecuted the politically active early followers of Jesus since their agenda formed the greatest threat to Paul’s social circle and way of life. What is surprising is that he was so blatantly obvious about his affiliations within his writings. The only sensible answer to his acknowledgements of his affiliations is that they were well known to those around him and to deny them would have been out of the question. The only course he could have taken would have been to admit to the associations and proceed as if they no longer mattered to him, which is exactly what he did.
Whether or not Paul decided on his course of action in opposition to Jesus’ movement on his own or in response to a directive from the Roman and Herodian authorities is impossible to determine. What is clear is that he began to alter the direction of the movement very shortly after the resurrection in 37 CE, once he had suffered his miraculous conversion. The traditional dating by many scholars of his conversion assigns a date of 33 CE or earlier for the event, but here again faulty translation and a willingness to accept tradition impedes the full understanding of the truth. The dating of much of Paul’s life and activities is based primarily upon a single reference made in Acts 18:12-16 concerning his appearance before the Roman proconsul of Achaia, Junius Annaeus Gallio and the scholarly consensus that it was fourteen years between Paul’s first and second visits to Jerusalem. There are problems with this scenario that traditionally indicate a too early date for the meeting with Gallio, and a mistranslation that suggests a fourteen year gap between Paul’s visits to Jerusalem instead of the eleven that actually transpired.
For years, scholars have erroneously deduced the dating of Paul’s appearance before Gallio as sometime between 51 -53 CE based upon the assumption that the length of term for a proconsul was one year. This fact, in conjunction with the Delphi inscription of the Emperor Claudius, that mentions Gallio directly and can be dated with confidence to January of 52 CE (Claudius assumed power on January 24, 41 CE and as the Delphi inscription notes, was granted tribunician authority twelve times; first when he assumed power and annually thereafter), has led scholars to incorrectly date Paul’s appearance. Consequently, since almost all dating for the activities of Paul are based upon this incorrect assumption, using it as a starting point and calculating earlier and later dates from it, the current calculations for the dates of Paul’s missionary travels can be off by a number of years. Although the original two co-consuls of the Roman Republic government were each granted one-year terms, there is nothing to suggest that such was the case for provincial consuls. In fact, Julius Caesar had mandated that provincial consuls could serve terms up to two years based upon his own experiences and his personal knowledge, taken from his abilities as provincial consul to build and strengthen an army strong enough to march on Rome, that consuls who remained in power longer could become a threat to the political stability of Rome. More specifically, in the time of Gallio and Claudius, proconsuls (taken from the Latin prorogatio for ‘extension’ and consul for ‘magistrate’) could be granted terms of office anywhere from one year to five. Gallio, as a proconsul of the Imperial province of Achaia, served ostensibly at the pleasure of the Senate but it is clear by Claudius’ reference to Gallio in the Delphi inscription that Gallio owed much of his prestige directly to the emperor and could have had a term of office that had been dictated by Claudius. So while Gallio is mentioned in the Delphi inscription, dated to 52 CE, there is no definitive way to determine when he took office or how long that term might last or at what precise date Paul stood before him. Given the five-year term of office that was acceptable for provincial governors, there is every chance that he retained the office at least until 54 CE when Claudius died and perhaps as long as 57 CE, the latest date when his term would have ended.
Another erroneous assumption made in the dating of Paul’s activities is the length of time between his first two visits to Jerusalem as a means of dating the year of his conversion. This is based on the calculation that when in Galatians 2:1 he states that he made his second visit to Jerusalem “after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem.” Those fourteen years were measured from his first visit and not from the date of his conversion, both of which were recorded in Galatians 1. The natural assumption by most scholars is that the fourteen years followed the first visit that was three years after his conversion because the second visit follows the first in the text and so seems a natural progression. However, the translation of the original Greek in similar passages regarding the passage of time indicates that a different meaning was intended when referring to the fourteen years.
Galatians 1:18
“Then after [Greek: ‘meta ’] three years I went up to Jerusalem…”
Galatians 2:1
“Then after [Greek: ‘dia ’] fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem…”
The distinction between meta and dia in the earliest Greek originals is significant in that it denotes a difference between the two intentions of the two sentences. Meta is a primary preposition used for ‘with, after, behind’ while dia, as a primary preposition, is more correctly translated as ‘through’ and denotes the channel of an act or a causality, as in “he was granted asylum ‘through’ (‘dia ’) the auspices of the church.” A more accurate translation of Gal. 2:1 would read; “Then through [or: as a result of] fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem…” The use of ‘dia ’ indicates a sense of causality to the fourteen years; that something had caused those fourteen years to transpire. The question then becomes what was more likely to be the cause of the fourteen years, the first visit to Jerusalem or Paul’s conversion? Paul’s conversion was such a pivotal point in his life that it seems natural that he would view those events that occurred after it to be the result of it. While it is possible that he considered that his first visit to Jerusalem caused his second, it seems more likely that the second visit, as well as the first, was in fact brought about by his conversion.
The major time markers in the New Testament regarding Paul’s travels are as follows:
1) Paul’s first visit to Jerusalem (Acts 9:26, Gal. 1:18) was three years after his conversion.
2) Paul’s second visit to Jerusalem (Acts 15:2-4, Gal. 2:1-10) was fourteen years after his conversion.
3) Paul visits churches through Syria and Cilicia to Derbe and Lystra then through Phrygia and Galatia to Troas and Macedonia then through Amphipolis to Thessalonica (Acts 17:2, roughly three weeks) then to Beroa, Athens and Corinth (Acts 15:40-18:1). These journeys accounted for approximately one year, though it is difficult to determine a more precise length of time.
4) Paul arrives in Corinth (Acts 18:1) and after one and a half years (Acts 18:11) appears before Gallio (Acts 18:12-16), sometime after the beginning of 52 CE and before 57 CE, since as proconsul, Gallio would have notified Claudius of the trouble in Delphi as soon as possible and Claudius’ response was in the spring/summer of 52 CE.
Calculating backwards from the known date of the Delphi inscription (52 CE), and determining the total years of Paul’s early travels as roughly 16.5 (1.5 years + 1 year+ 14 years), a range of dates between mid way through 35 CE to midway through 40 CE is available for Paul’s conversion. Though not impossible, any dates before 37 CE would suggest that he converted before Jesus’ resurrection that would indicate that he had begun persecuting Jesus’ followers quite early and years before the crucifixion. It seems likely that, given the substantial differences between Paul’s teachings and those of Jesus, Paul’s general lack of biographical detail regarding Jesus and Paul’s complete disinterest in learning directly from Jesus’ apostles, Paul’s goal was to supersede Jesus’ message with one of his own and that his conversion took place sometime between 37 and 40 CE in response to the resurrection stories that must have been going around and the significant public reaction to them. Whether that message was meant as an addendum to Jesus’ traditional Gospel message, advancing a more spiritual and universal point of view in competition with orthodox Mosaeanism, or whether it was meant as a political distraction to minimize the impact of Jesus’ message while marginalizing the nationalistic agenda of the movement in order to avoid conflict with the authorities is open to debate. However, it is difficult to rationalize Paul’s aggressive stance against the first followers of Jesus with the idea that he was fully invested in continuing and expanding Jesus’ philosophy. His promotion of the mythic risen Christ and his apparent antipathy towards the historical Jesus and his followers makes it clear that Paul was a man with his own mission.
Paul’s essentially mythic Christ, untethered as it was by any historical context, was merely the first reworking of the story of Jesus. Perhaps prompted by Paul’s creation while confronted by the confusion over the missing body, other groups tried to make sense of the event by fictionalizing the resurrection in terms that they could embrace. Wanted by the Romans and the Jerusalem authorities should he show himself, Jesus was hardly free to appear publicly (except to his closest followers) and so his apparent death and resurrection had to remain ambiguous to the wider populace. Rumors of his death and resurrection must have spread rapidly, changing slightly at each retelling. There would be no dramatic assaults on the Temple moneychangers, speeches to the multitudes, miracle healings or calming of storms to reaffirm his resurrected existence and explain its meaning. The resurrection had to stand or fall as political theatre by itself with no further explanations from Jesus or further confirmations that he had risen from death. Presented with such a vacuum, other groups tailored Jesus and his resurrection with the cloth of their spiritual needs, abandoning the historical man and, taking Paul one step further, replacing him with the spiritual, Pagan and completely mythic god-man, a movement that in a less spiritual form continues even today.
Yet it is important to remember in the search for the historical Jesus that tradition is not automatically history and consensus is not always truth. The acceptance and continuance of tradition is very often based upon desire and familiarity and not on exegesis and analysis. Tradition can cloud examination and can perpetuate assumptions and reinforce anomalies to the point where fiction becomes fact. The historical Jesus was a real man of flesh and blood with political goals and family ties that drove him to attempt an act of deception in order to free his people from oppression and dominance. He was not the Christ of faith or the Jesus of tradition who is portrayed today, but was in fact a man anchored in his time and place who had great moral strength and courage and was willing to sacrifice all that he had to re-establish the nation of Israel. No mythic hero of that time, not Dionysus, Mithras or Osiris had gospels or a new testament written for them. The Gospels were written to record Jesus’ ambitions for his people, to spread the word of God’s nation and to teach the idea of forgiveness and reunification among the Mosaean tribes and as such, they stand alone as a history of one man’s dream.
ADDENDUM
One of the great mysteries concurrent with any reconstruction of the historical Jesus is the question regarding what happened to him (or his body) after the resurrection and his subsequent appearances. If he was not a divine, supernatural being but merely a man of flesh and blood what happened to him after the events of the Gospels? If the tomb was empty was he reburied in a pauper’s grave, as some suggest, or was his corpse stolen and it’s whereabouts lost to history? If he survived, as is suggested in this work, what became of him? Did he travel to India and the East in search of greater spiritual knowledge or did he choose to embrace obscurity in the face of his abject failure to ignite his revolution? He was a political activist of some renown during his life, a man of some power and notoriety who had spoken on the public stage and while cheating the Romans of his execution certainly required that he disappear from the immediate political scene, a man of his ambition would not have remained silent for the remainder of his life. If his supposed death and apparent resurrection were so awe inspiring and miraculous as to alter the theological landscape of the time, why did he simply vanish from the pages of history? He had survived death and as a mortal man had made an impact on the Mosaean society of the First Century that was profound enough (as indicated in the Gospels and New Testament) to warrant some recognition of his later fate. Yet the historical record, scant as it may be, holds no hint as to what became of the man Jesus, at least according to traditional scholarship.
There is however a record of what became of the historical Jesus that has been overlooked by scholars and theologians for over two thousand years and it is recorded precisely where one would anticipate it to be, in Josephus. Whether or not Josephus knew that he was writing about the same Jesus who was the brother of James and known as the Christ is difficult to say. Certainly, the passage makes no reference to James or the Christ but there is about it a hint in its tone that suggests that Josephus was well aware of the man’s past, a past that Josephus found abhorrent and unwilling to recognize publicly. He refers to him by name and apparently names his father and he devotes as much space to him as he did to John the Baptist, if not more. Josephus did not like Jesus or what he stood for as has been indicated in his treatment of the Samaritan uprising at Tirathaba and his unwillingness to name its leaders, although he must certainly have known their names. Similarly, in this passage, Josephus writes as if he knows more about his subject than he admits and with an air of superiority and mockery that belies his ignorance of the man.
The War of the Judeans ; Book 6, Chapter 5, Line 299 (Whiston)
“…But what is still more terrible, there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for everyone to make tabernacles to God in the Temple, began on a sudden to cry aloud, “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against the whole people!” This was his cry, as he went about day and night, in all the lanes of the city. However, certain of the most eminent among the populace had great indignation at this dire cry of his, and took up the man, and gave him a great number of severe stripes; yet did not he either say any thing for himself, or for any thing peculiar to those that chastised him, but still went on with the same words which he cried before. Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procurator, where he was whipped till his bones were laid bare; yet he did not make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was, “Woe, woe to Jerusalem!” And when Albinus (for he was then our procurator) asked him, who he was? And whence he came? And why he uttered such words? He made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him. Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he said so; but he every day uttered these lamentable words, as if it were his premeditated vow, “Woe, woe to Jerusalem!” Nor did he give ill words to any of those that beat him every day, nor good words to those that gave him food; but this was his reply to all men, and indeed no other than a melancholy presage of what was to come. This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals; and he continued this ditty for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse, or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for as he was going round upon the wall, he cried out with his utmost force, “Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!” And just as he added at the last, “Woe, woe to myself also!” there came a stone out of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and as he was uttering the very same presages he gave up the ghost.
Now if any one considers these things, he will find that God takes care of mankind, and by all ways possible foreshows to our race what is for preservation; but that men perish by those miseries which they madly and voluntarily bring upon themselves…”
Several points are immediately apparent from the above passage. First and most obviously, the focus of the work is a man named Jesus who, according to the translation, is the son of another man, named Ananus. The Greek word used by Josephus to indicate ‘son’ was uios (transliterated as huios ). The word is generally used of the direct offspring of men but can also be used, in a wider sense, to indicate the descendents of men, as in the ‘sons of Abraham’ or the ‘son of David’. Its usage in the passage is therefore open to interpretation. It could indicate that Jesus was the actual son of Ananus or merely his descendent. Since the name Ananus (or Ananias), transliterated from the Greek name Ananiou , is an alternative spelling for the name Annas, there is every reason to consider that the Jesus of the passage was the descendent of Annas, which, in fact, Jesus of the Gospels was, being the grandson of the high priest Annas. So it is reasonable to suggest that Jesus, the son of Ananus, in the passage was the same person as Jesus, the grandson of Annas.
Whiston’s translation of Josephus, written in the Eighteenth Century, used two words to describe the Jesus of this passage; plebeian and husbandman, both words that are archaic today and therefore are ill suited to convey Josephus’ original intent. As Dr. Steve Mason (Professor of History and Graduate Humanities, Canada Research Chair in Greco-Roman Cultural Interaction, York University, Toronto, ON.) commented:
“Whiston was not inaccurate, but he wrote in 1737. We don’t speak of husbandmen today. The Greek here is straightforward [translating part of the passage]: For a certain Jesus son of Ananias, a private person (that is layman, not a priest, aristocrat, or office-holder) and man from the countryside (or rustic, farmer; not a city man, not from Jerusalem or connected with high power in Jerusalem; the word generally has the sense of simpleton, boor, etc.).
More literally: For Jesus son of Ananias, a country type from among the private persons….. The word for ‘private persons’ is the one from which we get ‘idiots’, but the Greek word does not mean idiots in our sense. It’s a term of class distinction.”
(From e-mail to author, brackets author’s)
In today’s idiom, Josephus’ two-word description might read: Jesus, the son of Ananus, a ‘nobody from nowhere’. Josephus’ intent was to indicate the almost complete obscurity of this Jesus and his total disconnect from Jerusalem and its politics. Judging that as Josephus’ intent, it is curious then that he spent one moment of thought or consideration on someone he considered to be a lunatic hick. Surely there were other mentally unstable people who broke from normal behavior under the pressures of Jerusalem’s siege, so why did Josephus feel the need to record the actions of this Jesus? Not only that, but this nobody from nowhere began his unusual behavior ‘four years before the war began’, at a time of relative peace in Jerusalem. So why take any notice of a crackpot from the sticks? Why include him in a passage that details some of the major events leading up to the war and the Jerusalem siege? Even more to the point, why record the ravings of such an unimportant and unconnected individual with the preface that the rantings of this Jesus were ‘still more terrible’ than many of the other signs and events leading up to the war and siege?
Clearly, Josephus saw this Jesus as someone of some power and influence, regardless of his mental state and regardless of how he was portrayed in the passage. This was not an isolated incident among all the chaos and political upheaval leading to the war and yet Josephus saw it as something of greater significance, something that he needed to single out and bring to the attention of his readers, no matter how obscurely this Jesus might be portrayed. Yet in seeming contradiction to this stated obscurity, Josephus goes to the trouble to tell his readers that this lunatic from nowhere is the son of Ananus, thereby removing some of the obscurity. Jesus may have been a ‘plebeian and a husbandman’ but he was also related to Ananus, a name that must have been well enough known to make its inclusion in the passage worthwhile. If this Jesus truly had been a nobody from nowhere, the inclusion of his father’s name would have meant nothing to Josephus’ readers. Josephus included Jesus son of Ananus because he was important, but he referred to him as a nobody from nowhere in mockery and derision.
What is also of note in Josephus’ passage is that he records that Jesus began his lament in Jerusalem four years before the war had begun, or more specifically in 62 CE the same year that James, the head of the Jerusalem church and brother of the Gospel Jesus, had been assassinated. Although it may be coincidental, there is the supposition that the two events are linked and that Jesus came out of years of self imposed obscurity (after his resurrection failed to motivate the populace) and resurfaced at the death of his brother to continue the movement towards Mosaean nationalism, stepping back into the political arena upon James’ death in 62 CE. The fact that James the Just, a highly respected member of the Jerusalem elite was killed by members of the Jerusalem priesthood eerily echoes what Jesus himself said about the Jerusalem hierarchy in Luke 13:34;
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”
While this certainly might be a later addition to the Gospels, after the fact of James’ murder, it speaks clearly of Jesus’ original goal of re-unification and its addition to the Gospels may have taken place in conjunction with Jesus’ return to the public stage in 62 CE.
There are several similarities between Josephus’ Jesus, son of Ananus, and the Gospel Jesus. In the Josephus passage, Jesus’ lament echoes the lament of John the Baptist so many years before, a lament that the Gospel Jesus was no doubt aware of and may have used himself;
War , 6,5,301:
“[Jesus] … began on a sudden to cry aloud, ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!’”
Such terminology is quite similar to the language used by both Jesus and John when condemning the Jerusalem hierarchy and the Judeans in general for their lack of commitment to the cause of nationalism and might be interpreted as follows:
“[Jesus] began on a sudden to cry aloud, “ A voice to the east, a voice to the west, a voice from the four winds [“a voice crying in the wilderness…” (John 1:23)], a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house [“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem you who kill the prophets…” (Luke 13:34)], a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides [the rulers and their subjects as Jesus used in regards to the Samaritan woman’s husbands], and a voice against the whole people! [Either Mosaeans in a broad sense or more specifically, the Judeans who were generally against re-unification].”
The themes of the two Jesuses are quite similar and both lament Jerusalem and the Temple and the Judean people for some perceived fault or slight, although Josephus does not make clear the specifics of why Jesus laments these segments of Mosaean society.
Further similarities between the two men are clear in their individual responses to their direct confrontations with the Roman authorities:
War , 6, 5, 305:
“And when Albinus (for he was then our procurator) asked him, Who was he? And whence he came? And why he uttered such words? He made no manner of reply to what he said.”
Mark; 15:4-5:
And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you?” But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.
Luke: 23:9:
“So he questioned him at some length but he made no answer.”
Matthew: 27:12-14:
“But when he was accused by the chief priests and the elders he gave no answer. Then Pilate said to him, “Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?” But he gave him no answer, not to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.”
While Mosaean stoicism was legendary at the time and consequently it is quite possible that two different Mosaeans named Jesus could have remained stoically silent in the face of Roman authorities’ questioning, the fact that both men were descendents of Annas or Ananus and both men lamented against Jerusalem and the Judeans seems a remarkable coincidence. Add to these coincidences the fact that the Jesus of the Josephus passage hid his identity from the Jerusalemites while he went about lamenting during the years before the war, a time when it still would have been inopportune for the Gospel Jesus to be recognized by the Roman authorities and the suggestion that the two men were one and the same seems even stronger. Once all out war developed between the Romans and the Mosaeans, Jesus’ identity and the fact that had he survived the crucifixion mattered not at all and so for the last three and a half years of his life he lamented openly, although Josephus makes no overt connection between the men.
Jesus would have been 68 years old when he returned to the public eye in 62 CE and 75 when he was killed in 69/70 CE, quite old for men of that time, though not unrealistic. Paul lived into his sixties and Herod the Great lived to be seventy and while it might seem hard to believe that a man in his late sixties or early seventies could survive a severe flogging to the bone, it should be remembered that Jesus, as a stoic and as a man who had survived previous beatings and a crucifixion must have been a remarkably strong and fit individual during his life, even perhaps into his old age. Unfortunately, Josephus gives no clue as to the man’s age so there is no way to verify more precisely whether or not he was the Jesus of the Gospels, but the coincidences are startling.
Two pictures are possible of the final years of Jesus. On the one hand, he can be seen as a failed political activist, an old man coming out of an enforced retirement to continue his lament against Jerusalem and its hierarchy, still bemoaning the inability of the Judeans to surrender their wealth to the cause of nationalism and freedom while on the other, he can be seen as what he was in his younger years, a strong and vibrant agitator for Mosaean nationalism willing to risk capture and death at the hands of the Romans in order to continue to goad the elite of Mosaean society into rebellion. Josephus remarks that Jesus ‘continued this ditty [lament] for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse, or being tired within,’ inspite of being whipped and abused, certainly the sign of a strong and committed individual, as is the comment that he was driven by a ‘divine fury’. It is perhaps fitting that Jesus, the man so intent upon the re-establishment of the Davidic kingdom and upon the establishment of a united Israel prepared to engage the Romans in a war for Mosaean freedom, should have died in the open, on the walls of Jerusalem, lamenting the inertia of the Judeans and defying Rome to the end.
REFERENCES
BIBLES:
The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Zondervan, 1989.
The English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament (English Standard Version), Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 2006.
The Holy Bible, Abradale Press, Inc., New York, 1965.
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DICTIONARIES:
Webster’s New World Hebrew Dictionary, Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio, 1992, Hayim Baltsan, editor.
WEBSITES:
askwhy.co.uk/Christianity
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