THE POWER POLITICS BEHIND THE CRUCIFIXION
The identification of Germanicus as “Pharaoh’s son” allows us to pinpoint a specific moment in time in the now-lost story of Jesus’ missing years. It’s a period of great reversals. If we’re right, Joseph and Aseneth is telling us that by killing Germanicus, Sejanus saved Jesus, Mary, and their children. In fact, it seems that Joseph and Aseneth is a pro-Sejanus apologetic. In a sense, it justifies the murder of Germanicus’ wife, Agrippina, and her children because it argues that unprovoked, Germanicus was going to do the exact same thing to Mary the Magdalene and her children. Seen in this way, Joseph and Aseneth puts Jesus and his entourage squarely in Sejanus’ camp. If Germanicus is the evil “Pharaoh’s son,” Sejanus is the front man for the increasingly isolated Pharaoh. The “Pharaoh” reference, therefore, must be to Tiberius, who was represented—as far as the masses were concerned—by Sejanus. In any event, identifying Germanicus with “Pharaoh’s son” allows us to place Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem after the death of Germanicus (19 C.E.) and before the downfall of Sejanus (31 C.E.). Based on our deciphered text, we can now literally reconstruct the events leading to Jesus’ crucifixion, almost to the day.
Ascent to Jerusalem
So what prompted Jesus and his cousin John to push their missions to a new level in the late 20s? The answer is as simple as it is largely overlooked: Sejanus.
At precisely the moment that John and Jesus were gathering crowds, Sejanus was making his power grab in Rome. This is simply a matter of historical fact.
With Germanicus and Drusus both dead, it would have occurred to a wily politician such as Herod Antipas that, if he played his cards right, maybe this rising star—Sejanus—could help realize his wife’s lifelong ambition that he become King of the Jews. At the same time, if Germanicus had made a failed grab for Mary the Magdalene, from the point of view of Jesus, Mary the Magdalene, and the swelling number of their adherents, Sejanus would have also been perceived as an ally. Wasn’t he the man who murdered their deadly nemesis? In other words, the shifting alliances would have suddenly put Antipas and Jesus on the same side only in the late twenties and early thirties.
For his part, in his bid to become emperor, Sejanus had no option but to look for allies—not just in the Senate but out in the various provinces of the Roman Empire. No doubt, as the appointment of Pilate demonstrates, Sejanus was looking for influential leaders and charismatic people who could stand up for him and support his claims. Perhaps Sejanus was recruiting allies who would even go into battle with him, should civil war break out. As we have seen in these machinations, Sejanus was not one to overlook women. It’s easy to imagine, therefore, that he would have been happy to make an alliance with a wealthy Phoenician woman who had a charismatic pretender to the Judaean throne as a husband. Why is Livilla believable as the object of Sejanus’ attentions and not Mary the Magdalene?
In retrospect, Sejanus must have appeared as a godsend not only to Jesus and his followers, but also to the Jewish people as a whole. Remember, after Augustus, Roman emperors like Tiberius were making claims of divinity, and here was a commoner, a soldier, killing the royals one by one. It was hard to root for Tiberius, the pedophile god-emperor in Capri. It was much easier to be taken in by Sejanus. Besides, Tiberius didn’t need allies on the ground; Sejanus did. Suddenly, it must have occurred to Jesus, or at least to his wife, Mary the Magdalene, that the ascent of Sejanus could propel them onto the national or even international stage.
When Jesus’ brothers taunted him—“If you really are doing such things as these, show yourself to the world” (John 7:4–5)—Mary the Magdalene must have agreed. But there was a problem: To “show” himself to the world, Jesus needed to go to Jerusalem. But Jerusalem was not safe for Jesus. The temple hierarchy (code-named “the Jews” in the Gospel of John1) that was appointed at the time of Germanicus “were looking for [Jesus] and asking, ‘where is he?’” (John 7:11–12).
Germanicus’ downfall and Sejanus’ power grab would have allowed Jesus to shift his focus from the villages of the Galilee to the capital itself. Perhaps the time was now ripe for an autonomous Jewish state led by a miracle-working descendant of the House of David.2
Situating Jesus’ departure from Galilee and entrance into Jerusalem at this particular time in Sejanus’ career helps to make sense of a puzzling passage in Mark that says the Kingdom of God is “at hand” (Mark 1:15). Why “at hand,” now, at this particular time in history? What’s driving this specific agenda? The shift in power in Rome and the impact it had on shifting power balances within the Middle East would help explain Jesus’ timetable.
The identification of “Pharaoh’s son” as Germanicus provides us with the missing key player in the Jesus drama, namely Sejanus. Once he is reintroduced into the story, the social matrix and the web of relationships surrounding Jesus can be reconstructed with various degrees of certainty. Of course, some of this has to be speculative because it was a secret even in Jesus’ day. Even Tiberius didn’t know what Sejanus was up to. Had Antonia not tipped him off, Tiberius would have ended up like Germanicus and Drusus before him.3 Having said this, the reintroduction of Sejanus into the story allows us to explain much more of the Gospels’ narrative than has so far been possible.
Jesus’ famous provocative riot on the Temple Mount, after his entry into Jerusalem, suddenly makes sense. We can now see that by his actions he’s not challenging Pilate or Antipas, Sejanus’ protégés. Rather, he’s challenging Caiaphas, the Germanicus-friendly high priest who was appointed by Valerius. That’s why, uncharacteristically, there is absolutely no Roman reaction to Jesus’ provocation. None whatsoever. That’s why no Roman troops stationed nearby in their barracks on the northwest side of the Temple Mount came out to arrest Jesus. While there is opposition from the priesthood, there is complete silence from the Roman authorities (Matthew 21:17; Luke 19:47). The flip-flop policy of Antipas with respect to Jesus also starts to make sense. Even the presence of someone like Joanna, married to Antipas’ head of security, in Jesus’ most intimate circle only makes sense in the context of this lost world of intrigue and counter-intrigue opened up by Joseph and Aseneth. Once we reintroduce Germanicus and Sejanus into the Jesus story, we can finally understand the dynamics that led to Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem and to the sudden reversal of his fortunes.
Reconstruction
It must have seemed at that unique moment in history that everything was possible. As a result, in the Galilee, Herodias was pushing Antipas to become King of the Jews. In Rome, Bernice was pushing Agrippa toward the same goal. And, with their move to Jerusalem, it now seems clear that Mary the Magdalene was sponsoring her own candidate for the prize.
These women were all playing the same game: marry a pretender to the throne, make him the protégé of someone who might become emperor, and then propel him to the top. It must have seemed at that particular moment that compromises were possible. The power in Rome was shifting: Tiberius was about to fall; Sejanus was about to take over. Here was an opportunity to make Jesus of Nazareth a Sejanus-sponsored Messiah. If Jesus bought into this strategy, this meant that he would enter Jerusalem sponsored by the most powerful Roman of the time, second only to the emperor. But there was a price—he would have to give up on the Davidic throne. In that sense, he would be reversing his previous position. Why would he do this? For very practical reasons, it seems. His cousin John the Baptizer had not compromised with Herod Antipas and ended up decapitated. Here was an opportunity to avoid death. But more than this, there was a bigger prize at hand: the temple. If Jesus became a Sejanus-sponsored Messiah, he would be liberating the temple from the lackey priesthood led by the High Priest Caiaphas.4 Put differently, if Jesus played along with Herod Antipas, and if they both had Sejanus’ backing, he would no longer be seeking political independence for Judaea. But his growing movement would relocate from the religious periphery to the center of Judaean religious life—the temple in Jerusalem, the House of God. Perhaps there was, after all, room at the top for two Kings of the Jews—one political and one religious.
Until the Hasmoneans (that is, the Maccabeans) fused the roles of high priest and king in 168 B.C.E., kingship and priesthood had been separate affairs in Israel. King and high priest were supposed to be different individuals. They acted as checks and balances on each other. According to the Zadokites (traditional temple priests), the Hasmoneans erred when they united the two functions and ousted the temple hierarchy. This led to corruption and the debasement of the House of God. Later, under Roman rule, the high priest became a lackey of Roman power, an appointee of an emperor claiming to be a god. Even the high priest’s vestments were now held by the idolaters and were only “loaned” to the high priest on holidays. The Zadokite priests never forgave the Hasmoneans for uniting the two offices into one. By accommodating himself with Antipas and Sejanus, Jesus now had the opportunity to oust the discredited priests, to align himself with a Herodian King of the Jews, and to get the Romans to cut the Jewish people some slack. Also, from Jesus’ point of view, accommodating himself with another Jewish king would not have been betrayal. In fact, for a few years prior to this, some Judaeans had begun to believe that the Jewish people were about to be redeemed not by one but by two individuals. There was a precedent for this—very close to home.
When Jesus was born, or perhaps when he was a child about ten years old (6 C.E.), an uprising took place right in the area of Nazareth. The revolt was put down with savage brutality by the Roman procurator, Varius.5 Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Galileans were crucified. This revolt seems to have been spearheaded by two men: a revolutionary called Judah the Galilean, and a priest named Zadok. It seems, therefore, that some twenty years prior to Jesus’ movement, the idea of power-sharing between revolutionary leaders who divided temporal rule from temple service was already in the air.
In fact, at the same time, in the entourage of the followers of another would-be Messiah named Simon of Peraea, a new and revolutionary idea emerged. The idea was that there would soon appear not one but two Messiahs—a political Messiah of the House of David and a spiritual Messiah of the House of Joseph.6 Many now understood salvation as a dyad: that two leaders instead of one would herald it. The Dead Sea Scroll community, for instance, embraced this idea: two Messiahs, one kingly, one priestly, both together helping to usher in God’s rule on earth.
It seems that Jesus introduced an innovation into this emerging formula. By proclaiming that his kingdom was not of this world, Jesus was signaling that he was declaring war on the high priest, Caiaphas, but not on the Romans and not on Antipas, their temporal representative. More than this, perhaps by declaring liberty from the Torah’s law, Jesus was about to institute a new priesthood, with himself as high priest. Let’s remember that according to Paul, Jesus has been made the “high priest” bearing the sacrifice of his own blood into the heavenly temple.7 Perhaps in light of the crucifixion Paul was reinterpreting a historical run for the high priesthood. Let’s remember that Jesus was accused of plotting to destroy the temple (Mark 14:58 and parallel John 2:19).8 Clearly, what was meant was not a physical destruction but a spiritual takeover. Maybe that’s why Caiaphas, Annas, and the priesthood were so worked up against Jesus. Maybe the sign the Romans nailed to the cross should have read “High Priest of the Jews” instead of “King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37, Mark 15:26, Luke 23:38, John 19:19). All this seems to explain why Herod Antipas did nothing to Jesus when he had a chance to kill him in the Galilee.
Put differently, it seems that Jesus didn’t want to end up like his cousin John, served up on a Roman platter. Perhaps it was this calculated and pragmatic move by Jesus that led Peter to deny him and Judas Iscariot (i.e., Judas the Sicarius) to betray him. Remember, Judas the Sicarius was a member of a group that would end their trajectory committing mass suicide in the mountain fortress of Masada. From Judas’ point of view, a Jesus decision to lead a Roman-sponsored Messianic movement with the limited goal of a temple takeover must have seemed like treason.9
We shouldn’t be confused by Jesus’ actions in the temple as a challenge to Roman power. By overturning the moneychangers’ tables in the Temple of Jerusalem—the so-called “cleansing of the temple”—and by calling the temple “my Father’s house,” Jesus was signaling a regime change in the high priesthood, not the government. Mary the Magdalene and Joanna may have brokered a deal whereby Jesus and Herod Antipas were to join forces. They probably came to the conclusion that Sejanus would have an interest in making Jesus a spiritual King of the Jews while finally crowning Herod Antipas the political King of the Jews.
If you think the idea of a Roman-sponsored Messianic grab for power by Jesus is far-fetched, think again. For example, the Talmud states that “Jesus the Nazarene was . . . close to the [Roman] crown.”10 This is not a Talmudic throwaway. When it comes to Jesus, it’s a Talmudic theme: Jesus of Nazareth was connected at the highest levels to the Roman authorities. Also, you should recall that within a few years of Jesus’ death, Tiberius’ successor, Caligula, made Herod Agrippa King of the Jews and, as Josephus relates, positioned him to be declared Messiah by the Jewish masses. In that sense, perhaps the time—or timing—really was “at hand.” Perhaps Sejanus, Herod Antipas, and Jesus were planning to pull off what Caligula and Agrippa were to accomplish a few years later. As with Jesus, it all went terribly wrong with Agrippa.
Today, we recognize that the “kingdom” didn’t materialize the way Jesus and his followers intended or his contemporary audience understood. Later generations recognized this too and engaged in revisionist history, saying that Jesus’ Kingdom was not at all of this world, that it was a supernatural, heavenly kingdom. This view simply doesn’t ring true. Such an otherworldly view would not have corresponded with any Jewish messianic expectations whatsoever, then and now. Nor does it fit with Jesus’ own prayer that God’s will should be fulfilled on earth as it is in heaven.
How could Jesus, the messianic claimant, have become a Roman ruler’s ally? As stated, the strange story related in the Gospels—that Jesus resisted Satan’s offer of an earthly kingdom and that he was only interested in a heavenly one—is probably an echo of something that actually happened.11 This would seem to indicate that, at some point, Jesus relinquished his earlier Zealot ideology (“I come not to bring peace on earth but the sword”) for what the Zealots would have regarded as collaborationist tactics (“Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”). This tilt toward Rome would have confused his followers, even while it facilitated Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
In effect, Joseph and Aseneth gives us the key to reconcile the different Jesuses presented in the Gospels. He didn’t advocate for the Kingdom of God in opposition to the Kingdom of Earth. It’s merely that he was willing to separate the two. He could lead the former, Herod Antipas could lead the latter, and Sejanus could bless them both. Why was Jesus willing to do this? For the purpose of gaining control of the temple and, as a result, accelerating the advent of the Kingdom of God on earth.12
Understanding that Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem took place with the backing of Sejanus not only explains the contradictory depictions of Jesus in the Gospels and the ambivalent response of the authorities, but it also explains the shifting response of his own entourage, i.e., Peter’s denial and Judas’ betrayal and suicide. It also explains the disappearance of his disciples during the crucial hours of the trial and crucifixion: they felt betrayed by their leader.
Some might argue that the disciples disappeared not because they felt betrayed by Jesus but because they were scared of Pilate. Not likely. As we have seen, Zealots and Sicarii surrounded Jesus. As a point of information, this is the way Josephus describes the Sicarii under torture: “The Romans could not get anyone of them to declare, or even seem to declare, that Caesar was their Lord. On the contrary, they stayed true to their beliefs despite all the tortures they had to endure. It was as if they received these torments, even when they were set on fire, with bodies insensible to pain, and with souls that, in a sense, rejoiced under torture. But what was most astonishing to eyewitnesses was the courage of the children; for not one of the Sicarii children was so overcome by torments as to name Caesar as his or her lord.”13 Josephus was a sworn enemy of the Sicarii and the Zealots. His testimony with respect to their courage comes from an opponent, not a supporter. Given this, is it believable that Jesus’ disciples abandoned him at the time of his crucifixion because they were afraid of the authorities? Clearly, something else was at play here. Let’s examine Jesus’ evolving ideology.
Jesus’ Evolving Message
In the canonical Gospels, we have a schizophrenic presentation of Jesus. “Jesus One” seems to be a Zealot, that is, a revolutionary espousing a violent philosophy and surrounding himself with violent men. This Jesus is a member of a revolutionary family that keeps being hounded by the authorities. After all, Jesus is crucified and, later on, so is his brother Simon; his brother James is stoned to death in 62 C.E., and his cousin John is beheaded. Further, two of the twelve disciples, Simon and Judas, are members of revolutionary groups; the two people crucified on either side of him are revolutionaries, and Jesus himself insists that his closest associates carry concealed weapons.14
In contrast to “Jesus One,” however, the Gospels also present another Jesus: “Jesus Two.” This Jesus shuns earthly kingdoms, separates what is due to Caesar from what is due to God, advocates turning the other cheek, and, when they come to arrest him, calms his violent disciples by stating that “he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.”15
How does one reconcile these two very different Jesuses? Traditionally, Christians have done this in two ways: denial and revisionism. With respect to the first, the world simply has erased from its collective memory the Jesus who advocated violence and surrounded himself with armed men. With respect to the revisionism, the strategy is more complex. According to this view, Jesus’ message was so far above everyone’s head that his most intimate followers didn’t understand him. They thought he was a revolutionary Messiah, but he wasn’t. They thought his message was a Jewish one, but it wasn’t. They only started to get it after his death and resurrection. According to this view, it’s the message that Jesus espoused after his death that’s the clearest of all because, after all, that’s the message he gives to the only apostle who didn’t meet him—Paul.
To make this interpretation stick, however, certain passages in the Gospels have to be ignored or altered. According to this view, Simon—who is called the Zealot in the Gospels—wasn’t really a Zealot, he was a reformed Zealot; Judas the Sicarius wasn’t really a member of the Sicarii, he was actually Judas Ish Kariot (i.e., Judas the man-about-town). As for the two revolutionaries crucified with Jesus, they weren’t really lestes (Zealots), as they are called in the original Greek, they were mere thieves—never mind that theft was not punishable by crucifixion. If we make all these changes to the text, Jesus turns into a pacifist. In response to this theological spin, some, like S. G. F. Brandon,16 have argued that the only real Jesus is the revolutionary one.
But why do we need to turn Jesus into a Zealot or a pacifist? Why does he have to be one or the other? Why can’t there be ambivalence in his program? Why could it not have evolved and changed over time? After all, besides Jesus, the most famous Galilean of that era is Joseph Bar Matia, known to history as Josephus Flavius, the historian who basically rescued the entire history of that period from oblivion. What do we know about Josephus’ life? How did he react to the complex choices that his contemporaries faced? Was he a revolutionary or a collaborator? Well, he was both.
We know from Josephus’ own writings that he was a general, a revolutionary, and a collaborator. Once he was convinced of the futility of armed struggle, he cooperated with the Roman generals Vespasian and Titus, all the while believing that he was serving the best interests of the Jewish people. In other words, in Josephus we have a Judaean born around the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, a contemporary of Paul, who in his own life embodied the ambiguity that was inherent in the opposition to Rome.
Josephus at first surrounded himself with Zealots so as to fight the Romans; then he abandoned the Zealots and cooperated with the Romans. By his own admission, his former followers now wanted to kill him. Meaning, in Josephus we have a latter-day Jesus—a complex individual with an evolving philosophy, shifting alliances, and an enduring conviction that he was doing the right thing.
By his own admission, Josephus was prepared to do anything in order to “cleanse the temple”—to keep it functioning properly according to the ancient rituals, safeguarding it from destruction.17 Jesus seems to have been motivated by similar concerns. Remember, we only see him weeping once—not during the crucifixion, but when he foresees the destruction of the temple.18 In any event, the idea of a revolutionary that ends up finding a royal patron is only far-fetched if you are unfamiliar with the history of the period.
It seems that, like Josephus, Jesus was in the anti-Roman camp until he found a Roman he could work with. As it turns out, things turned out well for Josephus but not for Jesus. Josephus allied himself with a Roman commander named Vespasian, who then became emperor. Jesus allied himself with a Roman commander named Sejanus, who was executed by the emperor. Had Vespasian been killed as a captured revolutionary general, Josephus, like Jesus, would have probably ended up crucified in Judaea—instead of retired in Rome.
The Dating Game
Our explanation of the events in Jerusalem during Jesus’ entry into the city is based on new information gleaned from our lost gospel of Joseph and Aseneth. The new reconstruction of events is based on the idea that Germanicus is the historical person called “Pharaoh’s son” in the text, and that Jesus cooperated with Sejanus, Germanicus’ enemy. All of this, in turn, depends on Jesus making his entrance into the capital at the precise moment of Sejanus’ downfall in 31 C.E. But scholars generally propose 30 C.E. as the date of the crucifixion, not 31 C.E. How solid is their date?
It is important to note, in the first instance, that no one really knows the precise date of Jesus’ crucifixion—30, 31, and even 33 C.E. have been proposed by scholars. So which is it? By all accounts, including the Talmud, Jesus was crucified on Passover. It’s generally believed that in the year Jesus was crucified, Passover fell on a Sabbath. It seems that in the year 30, Passover did indeed fall on a Sabbath. That’s why most scholars prefer this date for the crucifixion. But the argument is hardly convincing.
Synchronizing holidays to precise days of the week is an imprecise exercise at best, especially when we are talking about events that occurred some two thousand years ago. Also, today the Jewish people use astronomy to calculate holidays, but when the temple stood in Jerusalem, eyewitness reports of the new moon trumped scientific calculations. A cloudy day changed everything. So it is very hard to be sure on what particular day of the week a given holiday fell at the time of Jesus. Let’s re-examine the Gospels, therefore, and see if there are solid reasons to shift the popular notion that the crucifixion happened in 30 C.E. and move it some eighteen months forward to coincide with Sejanus’ downfall.
When it comes to Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we suspect that most people have some kind of version of Jesus Christ Superstar pop up in their heads when they imagine the event. According to this stereotypical view, after three years of preaching and healing in northern Israel, Jesus chose Passover to make his big move into the holy city. Surrounded by his disciples, Jesus came riding on a donkey or colt—sometimes white, sometimes not—while masses of people waved palm fronds at him and welcomed his arrival with songs called Hosannas.
To make sense of this scene, let’s imagine that we are describing not Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, but the triumphant return of a high school basketball team to a small town in Anywhere, U.S.A. The team just won the state championship and, as their vehicles roll into town, crowds of people waving lit pumpkin lanterns and kids wearing masks meet them. Everyone joyfully takes up the chant, “Trick or treat! Trick or treat!” What season of the year is being described? Of course, anyone familiar with Halloween would immediately say that the championship was won in October. In this analogy, the normal expression that accompanies Halloween seems to have been taken up by the crowds as a victory chant.
But imagine for a moment that a newspaper describing the above event is discovered thousands of years from now. People might think that the pumpkins were carved as way of greeting the team, and that “trick or treat” had some kind of meaning related to their victory. With this story in mind, we can now return to Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, where crowds waving palm fronds and chanting Hosannas met him.
There are three great pilgrimage holidays during which Jews congregated in Jerusalem and offered sacrifices in its holy temple—Passover (Pesach), Tabernacles (Sukkot) and Pentecost (Shavuot). Roughly, Passover celebrates the Biblical Exodus, when the Jewish nation was freed from slavery in Egypt; Tabernacles celebrates God’s providence during the wanderings in the desert; and Pentecost celebrates the receiving of the Five Books of Moses, or the Torah. During these holidays, thousands upon thousands of pilgrims descended on the ancient city. They came from all over the Roman Empire and beyond; from places like Parthia and even India.
If we take Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem at face value—as reported in the Gospels—there are serious issues of chronology in their account. For example, all four canonical Gospels state that he came during Passover, and yet, three of the four Gospels report that pilgrims carrying some kind of branches and singing Hosannas greeted him.19 The Gospel of John is more specific.20 It states that the crowds were carrying not any old branches, but palm fronds. Waving palm fronds and singing Hosannas are specific to the rituals connected with the holiday of Tabernacles (in Hebrew, Sukkot), not Passover. They are as much a part of Tabernacles as pumpkins are a part of Halloween.
Some might say that you can grab a palm frond anytime. They’ve obviously never tried climbing a palm tree and cutting a leaf off. The harvesting and distribution of palm fronds during Tabernacles was and is a difficult business. Also, even if we imagine an entrepreneurial Jesus supporter climbing up a palm tree and throwing down some leaves, this would still not accord with the Hosanna-singing crowds that the Gospels describe. Hosannas, then and now, are prayer rituals specific to the holiday of Tabernacles/Sukkot.
We suspect, therefore, that the Gospels collapsed the calendar, compressing into a number of days what actually took months. Meaning, if Jesus arrived in the city during Tabernacles, then he arrived in the fall. This holiday occurs around October/November. And if Jesus was tried and executed during Passover, then he was crucified in the spring, around March/April. In other words, he didn’t just spend four days in Jerusalem, as the Gospels relate. Put differently, if we are to believe that the residents of Jerusalem were singing Hosannas when Jesus arrived and were about to celebrate Passover when he was crucified, he must have spent about six months in the city.
To return to our basketball example, if we say the team became state champs when children were trick-or-treating and lost the nationals by Christmas, there is no way to imagine that less than a week separated the first event from the last. There’s no way around it. It’s as simple as that. So how did the palm fronds and Hosannas end up in a story about Passover?
It is acknowledged by scholars that during its final redaction, the Gospel of John was overwritten with a theological spin in mind. It is also acknowledged that embedded in John are eyewitness sources that are thoroughly familiar with Jewish life. For example, John has the best information of all the Gospels when it comes to Jewish festivals and other customs. As a result, John’s description of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is probably the most accurate. This is what he says: “The next day the great body of pilgrims, who had come to the festival, hearing that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting ‘Hosanna!’ Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord! God bless the King of Israel!”(John 2:12–14).
This perfectly describes the feast of Tabernacles. Earlier, John tells us that Jesus was approached in the Galilee: “As the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was close at hand, his brothers said to him ‘you should leave this district and go into Judaea, so that your disciples there may see the great things you are doing.’ Surely no one can hope to be in the public eye if he works in seclusion . . . Later, when his brothers had gone to the festival, he went up by himself, not publicly, but almost in secret” (John 7:2–10). So, according to John, Jesus does go to Jerusalem in October. He enters the city in “secret.” Why the secrecy? Well, here, too, John provides us with the answer. He says that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the authorities were “looking for him” (7:12). Also, “there was much whispering about him in the crowds” (7:12), not all of it good.
It is clear, therefore, that John’s palm-waving, Hosanna-shouting crowds belong to this episode. After this, Jesus does not go back to the Galilee. By December, during the festival of Chanukah, John says, “It was winter [and] Jesus was walking in the Temple precincts” (10:22). Always the temple! He then crosses the Jordan, “to the place where John had been baptizing earlier” (10:40), and he “goes back to Bethany . . . just under two miles from Jerusalem” (11:18). He now meets up with Mary the Magdalene (11:22), and they re-enter Jerusalem for the final Passover.
It seems that later, a redactor concerned that John’s chronology might contradict the Synoptic Gospels moves the Tabernacles palm-fronds episode and places it before Passover. This final redactor is not familiar with Jewish holidays. All he is concerned with is harmonizing the texts. To reiterate: when we move Jesus’ Hosanna-accompanied entry out of the spring and put it back into the fall where it belongs, we see that Jesus spent six months in Jerusalem and its environs before his fortunes changed—not four days.
We hope this is clear. Our redacted Gospel of John has Jesus secretly coming to Jerusalem in the fall and then publicly—with palm-waving and Hosannas—in the spring. But the public acclamation really belongs to the fall entry. That means that the first pilgrimage was not an insignificant foray. It was the key move out of the Galilee and into Jerusalem, a move that would end up in Jesus’ crucifixion.
Why would the Gospels want to compress half a year into four days? The answer is pretty obvious. If the crowd went from ecstatic support to hostility in less than a hundred hours, the Jewish masses are the villains. The message seems to be: “What a fickle people these Jews are!” They literally go from singing Hosannas to shouts of “crucify him” in a matter of hours (John 19:7–12).
So perhaps there is more to the Gospel’s obfuscation of the chronology. This portrayal seems to be no slip of the pen. It gave rise to millennia of anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust. After all, what kind of people are these who, when faced with God made flesh, turn from adoration to murder in less than a week?
On the other hand, if Jesus arrived in the fall and was executed in the spring, the responsibility for his death shifts from “the Jews” to the Roman authorities and, maybe, even to Jesus himself. Meaning, if a man loses popularity in a matter of hours, you ask: “what’s wrong with the audience?” If a man loses popularity over half a year, you might ask: “what did he do wrong?” This last question may lead to an investigation of the historical circumstances of his demise. If it all takes place in a matter of days and hours, one falls back on psychology to explain everything and indeed, for millennia, the blame was put on the national character of the “perfidious Jews.”21 But if Jesus came in the fall and was executed in the spring, perhaps the deadly shift in popularity is not to be found in psychology but in politics.
Let’s remember why we embarked on this dating game in the first place. It is crucial to our analysis that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem coincides with Sejanus’ fall. Does it? Perfectly. As it turns out, Sejanus was executed on October 18, 31 C.E., right around the Jewish holiday of Tabernacles.
We can now reconstruct the last six months of Jesus’ life. As hypothesized, Jesus came into Jerusalem in the fall during the Festival of Tabernacles/Sukkot, seemingly under Sejanus’ protection. He presented himself as a threat to Caiaphas but not to Antipas, and focused his activity exclusively on the temple. In fact, the Gospel of Mark relates that Jesus effectively shut the temple down for a day, not allowing anyone to carry anything through its precincts.22 He did all this without any intervention by the Roman garrison stationed in the Antonia fortress overlooking the temple. Clearly, the Sejanus connection was working.
Within days, however, Sejanus was executed. But it took weeks and months for that information to filter to Jerusalem. By Passover—that is, by spring of the year 32 C.E.—all of Sejanus’ supporters, like Herod Antipas and Pilate, were on the defensive. Based on the sources, all we can say is that Jesus was crucified as Sabbath was approaching, while pilgrims were gathering for the upcoming Passover holiday. The year 32 C.E. fits much better with the available facts and with our lost gospel. In that year, it is calculated that Passover fell on the Sunday night right after Jesus’ crucifixion. According to the Gospels, by Sunday morning Jesus’ body was no longer in the tomb. A Sunday night Passover, therefore, provides his disciples with a very small window in which to act to remove the body from its temporary burial near the place of crucifixion to a permanent place of burial. They would have had 24 hours to do so, from Saturday night after the completion of the Sabbath to Sunday night, the beginning of Passover.
They say the devil is in the details, and there is one last character lurking in the shadows of Jesus’ trial that we need to now look at. His presence seals the argument. His name is Annas, or Hanan in Hebrew. According to the Gospel of John and only that Gospel, Jesus was handed to Annas before he was handed to the High Priest Caiaphas.23 As often happens with John, he seems to be preserving a tradition lost or suppressed in the other Gospels. Since the incident with Annas seems to serve no theological purpose, it must be historical. So who is Annas?
A Priest Called Annas
Quirinius, the Roman governor of Syria, appointed Annas high priest in 6 C.E., during the reign of Augustus. He was then deposed by Valerius Gratus at the beginning of Tiberius’ reign. In other words, Annas was perceived as a leftover of the previous administration. As things sorted themselves out in Rome, what followed were a few years of short-lived high priests. Remember, the high priest under Roman occupation was a Roman appointee.
Then Germanicus showed up in 18 C.E., ostensibly representing his adoptive father, Tiberius. At this point, Valerius appointed a new high priest, the man called Caiaphas. By 19 C.E., Germanicus was dead and Valerius was out, replaced by Sejanus’ man, Pilate. Caiaphas, a son-in-law of Annas, survived the changes in Rome and seemed to accommodate himself with Pilate. Things stayed this way until 31 C.E., when Sejanus was about to murder Tiberius and hand the title King of the Jews to Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. According to our reading, Antipas was also about to let Jesus “cleanse the temple” of Caiaphas, replacing the latter with a hand-picked high priest more responsive to the messianic aspirations of people like Jesus—maybe Jesus himself. After all, Jesus is referred to as a high priest in the Christian Bible: “. . . we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God” (Hebrews 4:14). Working toward this goal, Jesus showed up in Jerusalem in the fall of 31 C.E. during the Festival of Tabernacles and caused a riot in the temple. He was not arrested. Then, by Passover the following year, 32 C.E., he was tracked down and hauled before first the Jewish and then the Roman authorities.
In the midst of all this, Annas showed up as the man judging Jesus. Why? After all, if the year is 30, 31, 32, or even 33, Annas had not been high priest for over a decade. Why the comeback?
Annas’ brief re-appearance on the stage of history at this particular point only makes sense after the demise of Sejanus and before it is clear what the consequences of his departure would be. His appearance in the story is a tip-off with respect to the year of the crucifixion. In the year 30, Sejanus was at the height of his power in Rome and Pilate was ruling with no governor sitting in Syria. There was no reason to trot out a retired high priest to preside over Jesus. But in the spring of 32 C.E., in the aftermath of Sejanus’ death, no one wanted to take responsibility for the execution of a man who had some kind of protection from the previous administration. Annas’ sudden appearance demonstrates that the temple administration was trying to find a high priest who was not tainted by association with either Sejanus or Germanicus. To this end, they were forced to reach back to a high priest who had presided at the time of Augustus. This action throws light not only on the timing of the arrest, but also on the importance of Jesus in the constellation of Roman–Judaean politics.
Analysts can’t have it both ways: one can’t look at Jesus as an itinerant Galilean peasant and accept the Gospels’ narrative with respect to the crucifixion. If Jesus was not a local player with connections at the top, why was everyone so afraid to try or execute him? After all, Jesus is handled like a political hot potato. He is arrested at night and handed over to Annas, then to Caiaphas, then to Pilate, then to Antipas, then back to Caiaphas, then back to Pilate,24 all in less than twenty-four hours. More than this, two high priests (past and present), a Tetrarch, and a procurator are involved in the execution of a man who the common wisdom would have us believe was nothing more than a Galilean miracle worker. This makes no sense.
The kind of judicial buck-passing that occurred with Jesus only makes sense when the man being tried is important to someone high up and when the chain of command is unclear. There is only one specific moment when Roman history fits the Gospel narrative: namely, after Sejanus’ demise and before its consequences had been made clear in Jerusalem. When you take all this into account, ours is the only scenario that makes sense of all the events and people surrounding the trial and crucifixion of Jesus.
More than this, the dynamics repeat themselves in almost exactly the same way in 62 C.E. with regard to the trial and execution of Jesus’ brother James.
Brother James
After the crucifixion, Jesus’ brother Ya’akov in Hebrew—“Jacob” in English or “James” as he is mostly commonly referred to in Christian tradition—headed Jesus’ movement in Jerusalem. It seems that James, like his brother, was also obsessed with the temple. Church father Jerome (342–420 C.E.)25 tells us that James was called “camel knees” because he had developed scars on his kneecaps from spending so much time kneeling in the temple.26
James’ temple-centered focus was not viewed kindly by the high priests of the time. But these high priests were regarded by the Pharisees, the Essenes, the Zealots, and the members of James’ Jesus Movement as illegitimate collaborators with the Roman occupation. Hatred of the priesthood reached a fever pitch during this period. Consider the following story in Josephus: when rebellion broke out in 66 C.E., the Sicarii under the command of one called Simon arrested a high priest named Mathias. They then killed him. But not before they made him watch the slaughter of his three sons, all high priests themselves.27 Clearly, many people hated the high priests.
For their part, the Romans enjoyed dividing and conquering. As long as a Jewish group did not advocate armed insurrection but merely created trouble for the Roman-appointed priesthood, the Romans left it alone. Such groups served Roman interests because they made the priesthood ever more dependent on Roman arms.
It seems that James’ Jerusalem group found favor both with the masses and with the authorities because James focused his attention on the temple, not on the Roman occupation. As long as the Roman procurator Festus was alive, no harm came to James. But the minute Festus died, in the interregnum before the arrival of his replacement, Albinus, the High Priest Annas, son of the very Annas who had been involved in the trial of Jesus, moved against James.
After a quick trial on trumped-up charges, Annas had James stoned to death. On this occasion, the Pharisees intervened with the Roman authorities against the high priest and on behalf of James. A delegation was sent to Alexandria, Egypt to meet the new procurator before he arrived in Jerusalem. After their petition, the High Priest Annas was removed from his position. He had served only three months in office—just long enough to execute James.28
This story once again strengthens the idea that Jesus and, indeed, his entourage were players in 1st-century Judeo–Roman politics. A cursory examination of the historical facts reveals that Jesus was on the powerful Annas family’s radar. The Annas who had James stoned was basically waiting for the opportunity to get rid of James, just as his father had gotten rid of Jesus. As Josephus relates, the stoning of James cost the younger Annas the high priesthood. This was a very high price to pay for getting rid of James, and yet Annas was willing to pay it. There seems to have been a family grudge involved. In any event, the stoning of James demonstrates that James too was a player—you don’t lose the high priesthood for getting rid of just anybody. It also reveals that whatever else James was up to, it was not revolution against Rome. How do we know this? Because Josephus tells us that the Annas who brought down James became one of the leading figures in the Jewish revolt against the Romans. Together with Joseph, son of Gorion, he was elected to the supreme control of affairs in Jerusalem during the revolt. He died a violent death in the winter of 67–68 C.E.29
So here we have a clearly documented case whereby a brother of Jesus, the first leader of the Jerusalem Church after the crucifixion, enjoyed Roman protection until he was killed by a high priest who took advantage of a regime change to arrest, try, and execute him. In James’ case, it was the death of Festus that precipitated the events that led to his violent end. We now know from the decoded Joseph and Aseneth text that it was the death of Sejanus that precipitated the downfall of James’ brother Jesus.
In James’ case, Annas played the game himself. He tried James for heresy and punished him in the only manner available to him: stoning. In Jesus’ case, because the post-Sejanus situation was so unclear, Caiaphas made sure that Jesus would be turned over to Pilate, who tried him for sedition and had him killed in the only way, according to Roman law, a revolutionary could be killed: a public execution by crucifixion. The facts are clear. To use Robert Eisenman’s words: “Who and whatever James was, so was Jesus.”30
As stated, when the High Priest Caiaphas leaned over and whispered to Pilate that if he let Jesus go he would be perceived as “no friend to the emperor,” the message was clear. If Pilate continued to sponsor a Sejanus protégé, it would be interpreted in Rome as if Pilate, like his mentor Sejanus, was no friend of Tiberius. As a result, Jesus, the man who had been groomed to wear a crown of gold, now wore a crown of thorns. Over his head, they nailed to the cross the title so coveted by Antipas, King of the Jews.
Aftermath
After the crucifixion, Antipas and Pilate became friends. There is only one reason why this would have happened. Having been aligned with Sejanus, they were in the same boat now. Both were vulnerable in the anti-Sejanus purges that followed Tiberius’ return to politics. As it turns out, Pilate survived for a while and was then removed and exiled in 36 C.E. Church father and historian Eusebius reports a tradition that he killed himself. As with Piso, after Germanicus’ death, Pilate knew too much. He had to be forced to “commit suicide.” In the year 39 C.E., Antipas was removed to a life of exile in Gaul. Herodias accompanied him. Like Mary the Magdalene at the cross, she must have finally realized that her husband was never going to be King of the Jews.
From the grave, Sejanus did offer Jesus one last favor. When Joseph of Arimathaea, a Jesus follower and member of the pro-Roman Jewish elite, asked for Jesus’ body after he expired on the cross, Pilate allowed it.31 In the post-Sejanus era, he could no longer provide Jesus with Roman protection, but he could save the body of the Sejanus-connected Messiah from the garbage heap reserved for crucified rebels. This was not what Jesus and Mary the Magdalene had anticipated when they entered Jerusalem some six months earlier.
Neither Jews nor Romans gave up on the idea of an emperor-sponsored Messiah. The dreams of a restored Judaic monarchy were realized just a few years later when Caligula rewarded his friend Agrippa with both the crown and the title. So Germanicus’ son, Caligula, did what Sejanus and Tiberius could not do: choose a king and a Messiah for the Jewish people. At that point, history intervened. Like so many players in this drama, Agrippa suddenly died from a mysterious illness. Perhaps he was poisoned. On his deathbed, he attributed his disease to divine punishment for the arrogance he demonstrated when he basked in the crowd’s chants of “Messiah.” His lament somehow echoed Jesus’ own cry, recorded in the Gospel of Mark: “Eli, Eli lama sabachtani?”32 My Lord, my Lord, why have You forsaken me?
Although the political constellation changed after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the fact is that Jesus’ family continued to be on the radar at the highest levels of Roman power. In other words, these people were not simply a group of shepherds, carpenters, or fishermen. The church father Eusebius tells us that in the 70s, the Roman emperor Vespasian ordered a hunt for all the family of King David (i.e., Jesus’ family).33 In the mid-80s, the Emperor Domitian interrogated two of Jesus’ nephews or great-nephews, perhaps the sons of Jesus’ brother Judas.34 Around 106 C.E., the Emperor Trajan crucified Simeon, another relative of Jesus, who had succeeded James as the leader of the Jesus Movement.35 As these accounts demonstrate, three Roman emperors—Vespasian, Domitian, Trajan—went after any individual who was related to Jesus. This illustrates in dramatic fashion that Jesus and his family represented a political threat and were treated as such at the highest levels of the empire. While other messianic claimants such as Judas the Galilean and Simon of Peraea were killed by lesser Roman officials, only with Jesus and his family did the Roman emperors, in the midst of running a vast complex empire, take the time to hunt down his descendants. It seems that until the Great Revolt in 66 C.E., the Jesus Movement was seen as a potential ally of Rome. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., it had outlived its usefulness.
But in a curious reversal of history, almost three hundred years after the crucifixion, Jesus would come back in a different form; not as enemy of Rome but as its deity. He made his comeback not in Jerusalem but in Rome.
It was in 312 C.E. that the Emperor Constantine became aligned with Pauline Christianity and the historical Jesus was eclipsed by Pauline theology. The relationship between Jesus and Mary the Magdalene was no longer important. In fact, she was airbrushed from history, and by the 7th century she was commonly portrayed as a weeping former prostitute. More than this, Jesus’ life was no longer that important to the narrative. Following Paul, the new theology celebrated Jesus’ death and resurrection. Only those Gospels that reflected this new theology were allowed to survive.
But now, at last, Joseph and Aseneth gives us a glimpse into a story untainted by later Roman theology. We finally have a document that was slated for the fire, but is now seeing the light of day.