Pesos a´ ereos

followed by a quite distinct “Jesus in Jerusalem.” It is in this latter that the generalized landscape and chronological vagueness of Jesus’ public ministry, which serve chiefl y to provide a backdrop for the originally unembedded Q logia and similar teaching material, is replaced by the urgent facticity of what is known in the Christian tradition as the “Passion and Death of Jesus.”

If Q and what we may assume was a similar collection of sayings/teachings that lay behind Jesus’ words in Mark were the original “Galilean” form of the Jesus tradition, then what produced our current Gospels with their heavily weighted “Passion” narratives? Was it those very events, Jesus’ arrest, his arraignment before the Jewish authorities of Jerusalem, his trial before the Roman procurator, and his public execution as a criminal, that created the need for some form of explanation? Th e Markan prototype provided just such an explanation by adding to the older logoi a detailed account of the last days of the Jesus and then framing them both in a species of biographical narrative that came to be called “Th e Good News.” ¹

“Jesus in Jerusalem” is not, then, an arbitrary division in a narrative of the life of Jesus. All four of the Gospels fall into this two-act scenario: Jesus in Galilee (with a “Nativity Prologue” in Matthew and Luke and an “Overture in Heaven” in John) and Jesus in Jerusalem (with appendices on the risen Jesus). Th e second act has a clear-cut beginning with the arrival in Jerusalem of Jesus and his inner group of supporters. Th ere follow his increasingly por-tentous remarks and the equally porpor-tentous events that precede Jesus’ celebra-tion of Passover. Here the four Gospels come together to describe his arrest outside the city, a late-night hearing before the high priest, a trial the next morning before Pilate, and his fi nal execution by crucifi xion outside what was then the western wall of the city, all of which constitutes the largest single part of all of the Gospel narratives.

A Common Account?

Chronologically, the earliest view we have of the fi nal week in Jesus’ life is found in two lines of the fi rst of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians (15:3–4).

Th ere we are told simply that the “tradition” received by Paul and now passed on—surely not for the fi rst time—to the believers in Corinth was that “Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried . . .”

Th e plain, undetailed facts—“died” and “was buried”—are here quite noticeably wrapped in the now familiar argument “in accordance with the Scriptures” and already freighted with a profound theological signifi cance,

“for our sins.” Jesus’ immolation as a sin-off ering to God had thus entered the

Christian repertoire of explanations of this extraordinary event and, if the traditional chronology is accurate, even before our Gospels were written.

For their part, the slightly later Gospel accounts of Jesus’ death are all very conscious of the argument for Jesus’ claims based on the fulfi llment of Scrip-ture, and they provide an ongoing biblical gloss on the events of Jesus’ last days. But they are also interested, as Paul obviously was not, though he must have heard it repeated many times, in precisely what happened when Jesus came to Jerusalem for the last time. All four Gospels speak of these events, which are many and varied, but what is chiefl y noteworthy about their accounts is that, though John and the Synoptics go their own way in the inci-dents leading up to Jesus’ arrest, from that point onward (Mk 14: 43–52; Jn 18:2–11) Mark and John have the same schematic presentation of the same events in the same order. Th is extraordinary agreement of the two—Q, it will be recalled, has no Passion Narrative—at the very least suggests that early on there was, if not a common literary source, then a basic common account of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and execution, an account later fi lled out with the varying details that become obvious by comparing Mark 11–15 with its parallel in Matthew 21–27.

A Triumphal Entry

Jesus comes to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover under a sky darkened by his own predictions. “We are now going to Jerusalem,” he tells the Twelve. And then, invoking his messianic title, “Th e Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes; they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles. He will be mocked and spat upon and fl ogged and killed, and three days aft erwards he will rise again” (Mk 10:33–34). Th e prediction is detailed and precise, too precise indeed to have won much credence from critics who regard it as an attribution aft er the fact, a case of the authors rather than Jesus fulfi lling Scripture.

But despite the grim predictions, the week begins in apparent triumph.

On the very day of his arrival, Jesus enters the Holy City in what appears to be a carefully staged procession from Bethpage where he and the Twelve are lodging. Th e royal detail of the progress to Jerusalem—the requisitioned mount, the cloths spread on the ground before him, the waving palm fronds, his acclamation as the “son of David”—all fulfi ll a prophecy, as Matthew is once again careful to tell the reader (21:4). Everyone in the city must have been aware of this very public demonstration. “Th e city was wild with excite-ment,” Matthew says. “‘Th is is that prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee’ ”

(21:10–11). It was certainly noted by the Romans who were habitually on high alert in Jerusalem during Passover and who did not take public demonstra-tions lightly.

Th e Temple Incident

Mark inserts a homely detail in his otherwise tense narrative: Jesus spends the following day sightseeing in Jerusalem: “He went into the Temple and looked around at everything” (11:11). He must not have liked what he saw since the next day he returned and angrily drove out of the Temple precincts—he whipped them with a homemade lash, according to John (2:15)—the sellers of the kosher animals prescribed for Temple off erings and overturned the tables of those who changed Roman coinage into the Temple shekels used to pay the religious tithes (Mk 11:15–17). Th is time it is Jesus himself who quotes the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah: “You have turned His house of prayer into a den of thieves” (Mk 11:17).

What fi rst arises off the Gospel text is Jesus’ disgust at the commercial goings-on in the Temple precincts. But his objection could only have been aesthetic; there was nothing patently illegal or immoral about either of those activities. Mark immediately moves on to something deeper and darker however. “Th e chief priests and the scribes heard of this and looked for a way to bring about his death” (11:18). We are somewhat baffl ed. Th e incident was clearly too minor to provoke any immediate police response either by the Romans, who did not hesitate to intervene in the Temple, or by the Temple authorities: Jesus simply walked off and then returned to the Temple the next day, when all he got was a question: “By what authority are you doing this?” (11:28).

A Priestly Plot

Jesus was put to death eff ectively by the Romans, all the Gospels agree, through the machinations of the principals among the Temple priests. Why?

Th e Jerusalem Temple priesthood, whose integrity had been compromised under both the Maccabees and Herod, was a provocative issue for many Jews in Jesus’ day, but Jesus himself appears to have had no problems with either the institution or the individuals who comprised it. Rather he reserved his scorn and his polemic for the Pharisees, the advocates of a meticulous—in Jesus’ eyes an overmeticulous—observance of the Torah. Th us Mark draws our attention to the Temple incident as a possible cause of the priestly plot,

and some modern critics have read Jesus’ act of measured violence—and they assume the priests read it that way as well—as a highly charged symbolic ges-ture by which he signaled the end of the old spiritual order and the initiation of the new. Th us, the argument concludes, the high priest understood both the action of Jesus and its intent and reacted accordingly.

John locates the Temple incident early in Jesus’ career (2:13–22) and so eff ectively disconnects it from a priestly plot. But for John there was indeed such a plot and he seems to have had privileged information about its hatching, of a very diff erent sort from the Synoptics’ and possibly due to Nicodemus, a member of the ruling Sanhedrin and a secret follower of Jesus ( Jn 3:1–2). Jesus had performed the famous, and for some notorious, act of raising a certain Lazarus from the dead in a suburb of Jerusalem ( Jn 11:1–44). Th e news spread and an alarmed Sanhedrin was convened in Jerusalem:

“What action are we taking?” they said. “Th is man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone like this the whole populace will believe in him. Th en the Romans will come and sweep away our Temple and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said,

“You know nothing whatever; you do not use your judgment; it is more to your interest that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation should be destroyed.” . . . So from that day on they plotted his death. ( Jn 11:47–53)

In John’s account what the priests feared was that another popular demon-stration of the type Jesus had already provoked—Josephus provides abundant evidence that the fear was well grounded—would lead to a Roman reaction against the entire Jewish enterprise in Palestine. Th ey decided that Jesus would have to be sacrifi ced not only to abort this particular threat but to demon-strate that the Jewish authorities were capable of protecting their own—and the Romans’—interests.

Challenges

To return to the Synoptics’ thread, Mark’s narration does not proceed in a straight line. Jesus is challenged, apparently in Jerusalem, since that is where the developing story has placed him, by three diff erent groups. Th e fi rst comes from the Pharisees, who pose Jesus what is described as a trap-question on the legitimacy of paying tax to the Romans, which he elegantly and famously sidesteps: “Pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what is God’s”

(Mk 12:15–17). Next to confront him are the Sadducees, the priestly party.

Th ey do not ask him about the priesthood, however, nor about the incident of the Temple that had immediately preceded. Rather, it is bodily resurrec-tion, which they denied in principle since it had no scriptural warrant, that interests them. Jesus derisively dismisses them: “You understand nothing about Scripture or the power of God” (12:19–27). Finally, one of Israel’s rising class of canon lawyers, a scribe, comes forward and asks the classroom ques-tion: which of God’s commandments is the greatest? Jesus gives him the class-room answer straight from Deuteronomy (6:4–5). Jesus is congratulated, and in turn bestows his own, perhaps ironic, reward on the scribe: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God” (12:28–34).

Th e Last Days

All the Synoptics at this point insert into their account Jesus’ own version of an apocalypse, an unfolding or unveiling of the Last Days (Mk 13 and parr.), texts in which, as already noted, many have seen clear enough references to Jerusalem’s own destruction in AD 70 to enable them to date the Gospels to aft er that watershed event. Th en in Mark 14 (= Mt 26–27; Lk 22–23; Jn 12–19) begins an account of Jesus’ own end. Th e time is set precisely: “Two days before the festival of Passover and Unleavened Bread,” the priests begin devising a scheme to do away with Jesus, but not, they agree, during the holy days, “else there would be rioting among the people” (Mk 14:1–2). Jesus mean-while is at a friend’s house in Bethany. And it was then and there that Judas, one of the Twelve, resolved to betray Jesus. Th e motive, we are told, was money (Mk 14:10–11).

Th e Last Supper

Th e next day, Passover eve, which turns out to be a Th ursday—by Jewish reck-oning, Passover will begin at sunset on that Th ursday—there takes place what the Christians came to call the Last Supper or, when it began to be reenacted as a Christian liturgy, the Eucharist (Mk 14:12–26). It was a formal evening meal celebrated within the walls of Jerusalem as prescribed by Jewish law, and it seems in some ways like a traditional Passover Seder and yet in other ways not: the meal is not eaten standing or in haste and there is no sign of a Pass-over lamb. Matthew, Luke, and John all have Jesus wash the feet of his fol-lowers; Mark does not. At the meal Jesus predicts his betrayal by one of the Twelve present, and John (13:30) has Judas leave soon aft er.

At some point Jesus takes bread, blesses it—the Greek word for “blessing”

is eucharistia —and distributes it to the Apostles with the extraordinary words, extraordinary in any Jewish context known to us, “Th is is my body” (Mk 14:22 and parr.; 1 Cor 11:24). He does the same with a cup of wine: “Th is is my blood,” and ends, “the blood of the new covenant, shed for many (Mk 14:24 and parr.; 1 Cor 11:25), and Paul’s account adds to both the bread and the wine, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Whether Jesus said it or the early Christians deduced it, the reenactment of the ritual of the bread and wine had become in fact, on Paul’s own testimony, a central act of worship among Christians two decades aft er Jesus’ death.

Th e Arrest in the Garden

Jesus and the Twelve, now eleven, leave their rented hall and go out into the Jerusalem night, an extraordinary act at that time and in that place. Th ey go to a private olive garden on the near slope of the Mount of Olives east of the city.

We are not told why, except that Jesus decides to pray (Mk 14:26–32). It is an anguished prayer, almost in desperation (Mk 14:33–36). Judas appears with the Temple police and identifi es Jesus. Th ere is a scuffl e, a bit of swordplay—

Luke for some reason insists that there were two swords among the Jesus party (22:35–38)—and Jesus is put under arrest. His followers fl ee (Mk 14:43–50), among them—noted only in Mark—an odd young man ”wearing nothing but a linen cloth” (14:51–52).

Th e Sanhedrin Trial

By all accounts, Jesus is taken directly back into the city, this time to the house of the high priest Caiaphas, where there is a species of trial (Mk 14:53–72), though it seems to lack all formality: it is being held at night, on the fi rst day of Passover, and in a private house. ² Peter is tagging along in the shadows, and when he is identifi ed by his Galilean accent, he denies any association with Jesus, not once but three times, as Jesus had earlier predicted he would (Mk 14:30). Witnesses are summoned; they lied, the Gospels aver, when they tes-tifi ed that Jesus threatened to destroy the Temple. Th e defendant is silent. Th e high priest then poses the question direct: “Are you the Messiah, the Son of God?” “Yes,” Jesus responds. “I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Mk 14:61–62).

“Blasphemy!” the high priest cries. ³

Th e Trial before Pilate

Jesus must have spent the night in custody at the high priest’s house, much of it while being abused by the servants (Mk 14:66). Matthew alone (27:3–10) reports the end of Judas: he hanged himself in remorse. ⁴ Early the next morning, which is Friday and the fi rst day of Passover, the Jewish authorities of the previous evening bind Jesus over to the Roman procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, who hears the case in his headquarters, probably in Herod’s former palace near the Western Gate. Pilate has no interest in messiahs. “Are you the king of the Jews?”

he asks (Mk 15:2). Jesus declines to answer. Pilate, who is portrayed in the Gospels as a very reluctant prosecutor and judge—the authors of the Gospels were careful not to antagonize the Romans—tries another approach. He off ers to the crowd outside the praetorium a Passover amnesty: he will release either Jesus or the imprisoned political terrorist Barabbas. But “the chief priests incited the crowd”

(Mk 15:11) and they call for the release of Barabbas and the execution of Jesus.

Jesus is stripped, a purple robe thrown around his shoulders, a crown of thorns placed on his head and he is mocked and roughed-up by the Roman sol-diers. He is once again shown to the crowd, who are growing increasingly restless and violent. “I fi nd no criminal fault in him,” Pilate is made to say, and he washes his hands in a formal gesture of disavowal. It is Matthew alone who supplies the bloodcurdling fi nis that has so fatally echoed down the centuries. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” Pilate says. “It is now your business.” “And all the people answered, ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children’ ” (Mt 27:24–26).

Th e Crucifi xion

Roman criminals were humanely fl ogged into a state of weakness before they were crucifi ed. So it was with Jesus, who was then taken outside the western wall of the city to a place that is specifi cally remembered as being called Golgotha, the “Place of the Skull” (Mt 27:33). He is nailed to a cross to which is attached his indictment, “Th e King of the Jews.” Two “brigands”—the contemporary codeword for political terrorists—are crucifi ed with him and they join with the bystanders in mocking Jesus. “If you are the Messiah of Israel, come down from the cross so we can see and believe” (Mk 15:32).

Jesus is crucifi ed at nine in the morning (Mk 15:25) and hangs on the cross until three in the aft ernoon, when he fi nally expires: “Jesus gave a loud cry and died” (Mk 15:37). Th ere were omens and prodigies. Darkness is said to cover the earth from noon on, and at the moment of Jesus’ death the veil that shields the Holy of Holies in the Temple is reportedly rent in two. And the Roman centurion

who stood guard at the foot of the cross is heard to say, “Truly this man was God’s Son” (Mk 15:39). All who remain to witness the end are “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses and Salome. ⁵ Th ese used to

who stood guard at the foot of the cross is heard to say, “Truly this man was God’s Son” (Mk 15:39). All who remain to witness the end are “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses and Salome. ⁵ Th ese used to