Chapter Fourteen GOOD FRIDAY (PESACH) Some time towards early morning, the Sadducean Tribunal began to interrogate him. Mark, the earliest of the evangelists reports the gist of the questioning, according to his received tradition, as follows, regarding the testimony of witnesses that reported him to have made messianic claims: "We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands. But neither so did their witness agree together. And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witness against thee. But he held his peace, and answered nothing." Mark 14:58-61 Caiaphas then asked him to explain who his disciples were and what their mission was, and in general, to give an account of the exact "doctrine" that he taught. Jesus replied that his teachings were no secret since he has always spoken to the people openly and that his teachings were public knowledge. (John 18:15-16). Seeing that this line of questioning was getting him nowhere, the high priest asked him directly if he was claiming to be the messiah, to which Jesus responed: "I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the righ hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Mark 14:62 Or, as Matthew has it: "Thou hast said: neverthless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Matthew 26:64 The gospel account continues that after making this declaration, the servants of the high priest began to verbally and physically abuse Jesus. Whether this is inserted for dramatic affect is not certain but in the story of Jesus before Pilate, we see agin that the Roman soldiers did the same. This is more in connosance with a historical reality of the situation that obtained between the Romans and any subject native that would be seen as a rebel against the Empire. But to suppose that Jewish leaders, even Sadducean collaborators, would mistreat their own is a bit too much. It appears that either the author (or the editor) is casting the high priest and his servants in a particularly bad light, or that he wishes to bring out the aspect of Jesus suffering abuse as a relevant part of his passion. While the interrogation of Jesus was going on, Peter and another disciple were waiting in the outer court yard of the Caiaphas' palace. Presumably this other disciple was one of the sons of Zebedee since we are informed that this other disciple was known to the high priest (John 18:15-16), and we remember that the family of Zebedee supplied fish to the house of the high priest. Servants of the high priest's household were in the court with the two disciples and, seeing the disciples there, the servants asked if they were acquainted with the prisoner. Peter vehemently deneied knowing Jesus. When the high priests servants pointed out that he must be one of Jesus' followers since he had a Galilean accent, Peter became angry and beligerent. This continued until, in a state of embarrassment and shame at his cowardace, he could no longer remain and lie in his interrogators' faces. The other disciple who had accompanied him, possibly John, probably remained to see the outcome of the Sadducees' tribunbal. Having now determined that Jesus indeed was a messianic pretender, the Sadducees decided to hand him over to the Roman authorities for questioning since the Romans were looking for all and any ring leaders involved in the insurrection. Consequently, he was taken to the palace of Pontius Pilate, Rome's governor of Judea. Matthew informs us that while they were on route to Pilate's residence, Judas was overcome with guilt and remorse for his betrayal of his master, and he hanged himself (Matthew 27:5). Jesus was brought to Pilate's Hall of Judgment (John 18:28) in the early morning. The Sadducees no doubt told Pilate that Jesus was the ringleader in the Temple takeover, and may have added that Jesus was overheard by many to have said that he would ultimately destroy the Temple and rebuild it himself within three days. If so, Pilate must have thought that this was another instance of Jewish madness until the Sadducees explained to him the significance of such a statement on Jesus' part: "We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King." Luke 23:2 Furthermore: "He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place." Luke 23:5 This was something that Pilate could understand. Sedition against Rome. Here was another Jew setting himself up as a saviour of the Jews, and a king to challenge the Empire. The Romans were by now quite used to this phenomenon but but no means the less threatened by it just because it was repetitious in Israel. Jewish Messianism always frightended Rome because the Romans always saw the POLITICAL element in it no matter that there was also a RELIGIOUS element, and their concerns were justified. Politics and religion were forever inseparable in Israel. Pilate therefore thought it expedient to have Jesus interrogated along with other captured leaders in the insurrection. At this point, Luke introduces an episode (Luke 23:7-15) not found in the other gospels. He states that Herod had come to Jerusalem (ostensibly for the holiday), and when he (Pilate) discovered that Jesus was a Galilean, he decided to send him to Herod for an interrogation. Herod having heard so much about Jesus, having for a time believed him to be a possible reincarnation (or resurrection) of the Baptist, and having sought him out in Galilee, now at last had the opportunity to face him and question him. Luke reports that Jesus refused to answer any of Herod's questions, possibly because he considered Herod as a royal usurper, sitting on the very throne of David that he himself ought be occupying. When Herod found that he could get no satisfaction from the interrogation, he mocked Jesus and dismissed him as being of no consequence. Thereupon, he sent him back to Pilate to be questioned further. The gospel adds a detail that up to that day, Pilate and Herod had been angry with each other and that the protocol of courtesy on Pilate's part in sending Jesus to him caused their friendship to be renewed. John's gospel gives the most thorough details of the questioning, perhaps because the original author, the son of Zebedee, was present throughout the proceedings. In order to appreciate the full force of the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate it is to the point to render it into modern idiomatic English rather than to present it in the King James which, due to its archaism, detracts from its impact. I have therefore taken the liberty to render it into emotionally charged language of today in order to underscore the emotional conflict going on between the two men, on the one hand the Jewish resistence leader who is being put on trial for daring to challenge the power of the mightiest nation in the world to save his people, and on the other hand, the viscious representative of that totalitarian power, the miliary governor of Judea. Pilate: Do you claim to be the messiah, the king of the Jews? Jesus: Did someone tell you that I am or are you saying that of your own accord? Pilate: I'm no Jew! Your own leaders delivered you to me. Are you aware of the seriousness of your crime? Jesus: You mean because I say I am a king? Yes, I am a king but my kingdom is not of this Age. In MY kingdom, my servants will fight alongside me. Pilate: SO you DO say that you are a king! Jesus: You ask if I am a king. The purpose of my comming into this world is to bring about the Age of Truth. Everyone who will enter the world of Truth hears my voice, and they will follow me. Pilate: What do you mean by that At this point, Jesus had no wish to continue parrying with Pilate. Believing that he had made his point, he remained silent. Pilate: You're not answering? Don't you realize I have the power to crucify you (John 19:10) for what you have preached and done? Jesus: You have no power at all except that which is given you by Heaven. Pilate saw the futility of continuing the conversation. Here was a Jew who by his own admission, by proclaiming himself as the king messiah, by incitng to riot, by preaching the withholding of tribute to Caesar, was a danger to the government and to the status quo, fully recognized as such by the Sadducean leaders of the country, merited the sentence of execution for sedition. Outside the governor's palace, in spite of the early hour and despite the fact that it was a holiday, a crowd had gathered. Their mood was ugly and they were crying out for the release of one of the insurrection leaders, a certain Barabbas. "One named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that had made in- surrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrec- tion." Mark 15:7 "Who for a certian sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison." Luke 23:19 "Now Barabbas was a robber." LESTAS John 18:40 The gospel authors tell us that there was a custom that one prisoner was released during the holiday by the governor. No outside source, neither Josephus nor the Talmud corraborates this "custom". Whose custom was it supposed to have been? That of the Jews or the Romans? Why do we not hear of it in other Roman provinces? This is not to say that some LOCAL precedent had been established in Judea to show leniency to certain prisoners during a holiday. During our own days a judge may let an accused off with probation or a word of warning at Christmas time just as an example. But this would not happen if the perpertrator were being indicted for sedition against the government, or if he were a KNOWN felon who would continue to be dangerous to the established social order after his release, holiday or no holiday. Yet Pilate seems to have no difficulty releasing this man who we are informed was a MURDERER and ROBBER. Again we are reminded that John's usage of the word LESTAS (briggand) rather than the more common KLEPTIS (thief) highlights the fact that this Barabbas must have been a Zealot. He is popular with the multitude (Matthew 27:22). We are informed that he is "a NOTABLE prisoner (Matthew 27:16). In other words, we are here dealing with a local Judean hero who was more popular with the Jerusalemites than the Nazarene Galilean preacher. It is possible that the name Barabbas is a reflex of the Semitic bar-abba, "son of his father", but more likely of bar-rabba, "son of the rabbi", perhaps an allusion to some other popular local religious leader. If the Barabbas episode is historical (why would the evangelists bother to include it otherwise?), it would lead more credence to the fact of a popular insurrection in the City that week. Pilate did release him, probably grudgingly and with the intention of arresting him again at the next possible opportunity. Pilate then ordered Jesus taken out and scourged. Why did he do this if he really believed that Jesus had committed no crime? During the scourging, the soldiers who were administering it mocked and abused Jesus, a common practice for Roman soldiers against the hated Jews. Why did Pilate permit this if he was the saint that the New Testament tries to paint him to be? (This is reminiscent of the detail about the servants of the high priest mocking and abusing him and the suspicion is that the evangelist (or the editor) carried the abuse of the Roman soldiers over to the high priest's servant for dramatic affect. At the same time, the evangelists tell us that Pilate was overcome with guilt and "washed his hands" of the blood of Jesus's death (Matthew 27:24). The evangelists describe this ritual as though it were some parody of the expiation ritual described in the book of Deuteronomy. Washing of the hands is a JEWISH ritual form of symbolic ridding of guilt, not a Roman one. If a dead body is discovered in a field outside the city limits of a city in Israel, and the slayer is unknown, the city elders come out and perform a ritual of expiation for the city, then ... "And all the elders of that city, who are nearest unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. And they shall speak and say:'Our hands have not shed this blood, either have our eyes seen it. Forgive, Oh L--d, Thy people Israel, whom Thou hast redeemed, and suffer not inno- cent blood to remain in the midst of Thy people Israel.'" Deuteronomy 21:6-8 For the most part, the gospel writers (and editors) appear to treat Pilate as a saint, and as a matter of fact, there was a period of time in which he actually was made a Saint of the Roman Catholic Church. Christianity indeed did have its own reasons for casting Pilate in a favorable light, and we shall explore these reasons later. However the gospel portrayal of the Roman governor as it relates to the trial and sentencing of Jesus is NOT historically acurate. It is precisely because the New Testament wishes to shift the guilt of the death of Jesus away from the Roman authorities and on to the heads of the Jewish nation that Pontius Pilate has been white-washed by its authors and editors, and made to appear the innocent dupe of "THE Jews". However, one only need go to other contemporaneous sources outside the New Testament to get ANOTHER appraisal of the character of the governor of Judea at the time of Jesus' arrest. Philo of Alexandria, the great philosopher of his day, states that Pilate was "cruel by nature and hard hearted, entirely lacking in remorse." He states that under his administration, men were often sent to their deaths without benefit of a trial, and that he committed many other injustices of a similar magnitude. Josephus, the well-known Jewish historian, writes that, in every way possible, he deliberately tried to outrage the religious feelings of the Jewush people he was responsible for governing. On one occaision he had the Roman standards brought into Jerusalem, something that no procurator before him had done. These standards bore images upon them, notably of the emporer whom the Romans deified. Therefore they were considered anathema to the Jewish people, and there had been a long standing agreement between the Romans and Jews that Jerusalem would not be subject to these standards. After the standards were brought in, a delegation of Jews appealed to Pilate to remove them but he refused, saying that their removal would constitute an insult to the honor of Caesar. Subsequent to that another delegation of Jews peacefully petition for their removal whereupon Pilate ordered his soldiers to attack the unarmed assembly and kill as many as possible for their "insult against August Tiberius." Herod himself became enraged at this treatment of his subjects, and from then on cut off all communication with Pilate. It is this break in friendly relations between Pilate and Herod that Luke alludes to in his story of the interrogation of Jesus by Herod. Pilate also robbed the Temple treasury to finance his own par- ticular pet projects, and it is continuous similar actions which probably prompted the Jerusalem to finally attempt an insurrection. In C.E. 36, after a decade of inept and provacative administra- tion, he was ingloriously removed from his position as procurator by Rome for a savage and senseless masacre of Samaritans. Pilate later died, alone and friendless, in exile. Finally, as if these dark facts about the man were not enough, we have the one true picture of him as rendered in Luke 13:1 in which we hear that Jesus was told by his disciples about the Galileans "whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." When the scourging was completed, the Romans took him out to the place of execution called Golgotha by Matthew (27:33) and Calvary by Luke (23:33). As was their custom, the Romans added to the humiliation of the execution by forcing the condemned to carry his own cross to the place of execution. Once there, the soldiers began to carry out the sentence. While the body of the condemned was being affixed to the cross, he was offered a drink of mixed wine with myhrr, the purpose of which was to dull the pain of the impalement. The evangelists report that Jesus refused this draught. It is safe to assume that even to this point, Jesus still maintained faith that G-d would step in and save him, and thereby save the Jewish people. His faith remained strong and he surely must have believed that this was the final test of that faith to see that he was worthy of his messiahship just as Abraham had received his own final test of faith - the binding of his only son Isaac upon the alter as a sacrifice. Isaac had indeed submitted his will to the will of G-d, and allowed himself to be bound as a sacrifice, and at the last moment, G-d had saved him from death and caused him to become the leader of Israel. Now surely G-d would do so for his annointed king must have been the thoughts of Jesus as he was placed upon the cross and lifted up to begin his trial of agony. Affixed to the cross was a sign written in three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, proclaiming the crime of the condemned for all onlookers to see, and be warned. In the case of Jesus, Pilate had mockingly written, JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF THE JEWS, a stern warning against any and all would-be messiahs, that there is no king but Caesar, and all who make themselves kings rebel against Caesar and his proclaimed divinity. Thus Jesus joined the ranks of his fellow Israelite martyrs whose complete faith in G-d led them to defy the arrogance and tyranny of Satan who called himself Caesar Augustus Soter Mundi, August Caesar Saviour of the World. Jesus was crucified in the midst of two other freedom fighters whom the New Testament call LESTES. Perhaps they had been followers of his. Luke says that they called out to him to save himself and them (23:39), showing that even in the face of all hopelessness, the faith in the G-d of Israel to perform miracles for His people, and for His Annointed One was never diminished. The hours wore on as did the agony of the crucifixion. Jesus felt his strength leaving him and, as he was overcome with dispair, as his belief in himself as Israel's messiah which to now had been so strong began to falter, he submitted to G-d's will and began to recite Psalm 22 as a eulogy for his own impending death: "My G-d, My G-d, why hast thou forsaken me. Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring. Oh my G-d, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that dwellest within the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were deliv ered: they trustedin thee, and were not confounded." Psalm 22:1-5 Elie Wiesel, in his book, "Night", describes an incident that took place in the concentration camp in which he was a prisoner. He tells us that there was a young boy who had stollen some food beyond his allotted ration. having been caught by the Germans, the camp com- mandant decided to make an example of him. He was to be publicly hung. All inmates of the camp were ordered out and forced to witness the hanging. They watched as the Germans placed the noose around his neck and kicked out the stand from beneath his feet. They watched as this young innocent Jewish boy swung suspended in the agony of his death throwes. As the rope choked the life out of him, Wiesel heard a man behind him begin to weep and to whisper, "Where is G-d?". He heard another man behind him answer quickly, "There He is, hanging from that gallows." What must have been running through the minds of the Jews who watched this scene of three Jewish brothers hanging from their own trees? A scene which had been repeated over and over again since the coming of the hated Romans. The heathens mocked while the image of G-d hung dying in disgrace before the eyes of Israel. The life force drained out of the three Jewish martyrs while the soldiers who had executed them calously played a game of dice at the foot of the cross, a game in which the CLOTHING of the condemned was the prize! Such were the scenes (and THIS upon a holy day), repeated over and over again which ultimately led the Jewish people to revolt against Rome, the only people in the ancient world to dare fight against the SUPER POWER of the day because they were the only people of the ancient world to hold on to the messianic dream in faith. G-d had redeemed them before. The prophets had promised that He would do so again with an ULTIMATE redemption. Finally exhaustion overcame Jesus. With his last strength he cried out, "Into thy hands, I commend my spirit!" (Luke 23:46). John the evangelist records his last words as he slipped inot death; in sorrow he hung his head, and said simply, "It is finished." The Sabbath was fast approaching, and those disciples who had remained in Jerusalem wished to have Jesus buried before its onset. A certain Jospeh of Arimathea, of whom we have not heard before, but al- legedly a follower of his, petitioned Pilate for his body. When the permission was given, this Joseph had Jesus interred in the very tomb he had prepared for himself. As with all rebels who attracted a following, Pilate had the tomb sealed in order to prevent the disciples from removing the body. A large heavy stone was placed at the tomb's enterance thereby effectively preventing anyone from entering. The Romans and their collaborating Sadducees could now rest, confident that again another Jewish trouble-maker had been made an example to the people. Their latest "messiah" was dead. He would be forgotten by his followers and by the people in general just as all previous "saviours" had been forgotten when their promised Kingdom failed to materialize in the face of brute naked Roman might.
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