Antipas and his courtiers celebrated his birthday at a banquet with Herodias and her daughter, Salome, who was married to the tetrarch Philip. (The mosaic floors of Machaerus’ banqueting hall are still partly intact—as are some of the cells beneath.) Salome “came in and she danced and pleased Herod,” perhaps even performing a striptease of the seven veils,a so gracefully that he said: “Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt and I will give it thee.” Prompted by her mother, Salome replied, “The head of John the Baptist.” Moments later, the head was brought up from the dungeons, borne into the banquet on a charger and given “to the damsel and the damsel gave it to her mother.”
Jesus, realizing that he was in danger, escaped to the desert, but he frequently visited Jerusalem—the only founder of the three Abrahamic religions to have walked her streets. The city and the Temple were central to his vision of himself. The life of a Jew was based on study of the prophets, observance of the Laws and pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which Jesus called “the City of the Great King.” Although the first three decades of Jesus’ life are unknown to us, it is clear that he was steeped in knowledge of the Jewish Bible and everything he did was a meticulous fulfilment of its prophecies. As he was a Jew, the Temple was a familiar part of Jesus’ life and he was obsessional about the fate of Jerusalem. When he was twelve his parents took him to the Temple for Passover. As they left, Luke says he slipped away from them and after three worrying days “they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions.” When he was tempted, the devil “setteth him on the pinnacle of the temple.” As he unveiled his mission to his followers, he stressed that the playing-out of his own destiny had to take place in Jerusalem: “From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples how he must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things … and be killed and be raised again on the third day.” But Jerusalem would pay for this: “And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh … Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
Supported by his Twelve Apostles (including his brother James), Jesus emerged again in his Galilean homeland, moving southwards as he preached what he called “the good news,” in his own subtle and homespun style, often using parables. But the message was direct and dramatic: “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Jesus left no writings and his teachings have been endlessly analysed, but the four Gospels reveal that the essence of his ministry was his warning of the imminent Apocalypse—Judgement Day and the Kingdom of Heaven.
This was a terrifying and radical vision in which Jesus himself would play a central part as the mystical semi-messianic Son of Man, a phrase taken from Isaiah and Daniel: “The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” He foresaw the destruction of all human ties: “And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death … Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
This was not a social or nationalistic revolution: Jesus was most concerned with the world after the Last Days; he preached social justice not so much in this world as in the next: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Tax-collectors and harlots would enter God’s kingdom before grandees and priests. Jesus shockingly evoked the Apocalypse when he showed that the old laws would no longer matter: “Let the dead bury their dead.” When the world ended, “the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory” and all the nations would gather before him for judgement. There would be “everlasting punishment” for the evil and “life eternal” for the righteous.
However, Jesus was careful, in most cases, to stay within Jewish Law and in fact his entire ministry emphasized that he was fulfilling biblical prophecies: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Rigid adherence to the Jewish Law though was not enough: “except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Yet he did not make the mistake of directly challenging the Roman emperor, or even Herod. If the Apocalypse dominated his preaching, he offered a more direct proof of his sanctity: he was a healer, he cured cripples and raised people from the dead and “great multitudes were gathered together unto him.”
Jesus visited Jerusalem at least three times for Passover and other festivals before his final visit, according to John, and had two lucky escapes. When he preached in the Temple during Tabernacles, he was hailed by some as a prophet and by others as the Christ—though snobbish Jerusalemites sneered, “Shall Christ come out of Galilee?” When he debated with the authorities, the crowd challenged him: “Then they took up stones to cast at him but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going though the midst of them.” He came back for Hanukkah (the Festival of Dedication), but when he claimed “I and my Father are one, then the Jews took up stones again to stone him … but he escaped.” He knew what a visit to Jerusalem would mean.
Meanwhile in Galilee, Antipas’ discarded Arab wife escaped from the dungeons of Machaerus to the court of her father, Aretas IV, the wealthiest King of Nabataea, the builder of the remarkable Khazneh shrine and royal tomb in “rose-red” Petra. Furious at this insult, Aretas invaded Antipas’ principality. Herodias had first caused the death of a prophet and had now started an Arab–Jewish war which Antipas lost. Roman allies were not permitted to launch private wars: the Emperor Tiberius, who bathed in increasingly senile debauchery in Capri, was irritated by Antipas’ folly but backed him.
Herod Antipas now heard about Jesus. People wondered who he was. Some thought him “John the Baptist but some say Elias and others, one of the prophets,” while his disciple Peter believed he was the Messiah. Jesus was especially popular among women, and some of these were Herodians—the wife of Herod’s steward was a follower. Antipas knew of the connection to the Baptist: “It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.” He threatened to arrest Jesus, but significantly some of the Pharisees, evidently friendly towards him, warned him: “Depart hence: for Herod will kill thee.”
Instead Jesus defied Antipas. “Go ye, and tell that fox” that he would continue healing and preaching for two days and on the third he would visit the only place where a Jewish Son of Man could fulfil his destiny: “It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.” His sublimely poetical message to the son of the king who had built the Temple is steeped in Jesus’ love for the doomed city: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee: how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”46
JESUS OF NAZARETH: THREE DAYS IN JERUSALEM
At the Passover of AD 33,b Jesus and Herod Antipas arrived in Jerusalem at almost the same time. Jesus led a procession to Bethany on the Mount of Olives, with its spectacular view of the gleaming snowy mountain of the Temple. He sent his Apostles into the city to bring back an ass—not one of our donkeys but the sturdy mount of kings. The Gospels, our only sources, each give slightly different versions of what happened in the next three days. “All this was done,” explains Matthew, “that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.”
The Messiah was prophesied to enter the city on an ass, and as Jesus approached, his followers laid down palms before him and hailed him as “Son of David” and “King of Israel.” He probably entered the city, like many visitors, through the southern gate near the Siloam Pool and then climbed to the Temple up the monumental staircase of Robinson’s Arch. His Apostles, G
alilean provincials who had never visited the city, were dazzled by the grandeur of the Temple: “Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!” Jesus, who had often seen the Temple, replied, “Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
Jesus expressed his love for and disappointment in Jerusalem but he foresaw the abomination of desolation. Historians believe that these prophecies were added later, because the Gospels were written after Titus had destroyed the Temple. Yet Jerusalem had been smashed and rebuilt before, and Jesus was reflecting the popular anti-Temple traditions.c “Destroy this Temple and I shall build another not made by human hands,” he added, echoing his prophetic inspiration, Isaiah. Both saw beyond the real city to a heavenly Jerusalem that would have the power to shake the world, yet Jesus promised to rebuild the Temple himself in three days, perhaps showing that it was the corruption, not the Holy House itself, that he opposed.
By day, Jesus taught, and healed sick people at the Bethesda Pool just north of the Temple and at the Siloam Pool to its south, both crowded with Jewish pilgrims purifying themselves to enter the Holy House. At night he returned to his friends’ home in Bethany. On Monday morning, he again entered the city but this time he approached the Royal Portico of the Temple.
At Passover, Jerusalem was at its most crowded and dangerous. Power was founded on money, rank and Roman connections. But the Jews did not share the Roman respect for military kudos or cold cash. Respect in Jerusalem was based on family (Temple magnates and Herodian princelings), scholarship (the Pharisee teachers) and the wild card of divine inspiration. In the Upper City, across the valley from the Temple, the grandees lived in Grecian-Roman mansions with Jewish features: the so-called Palatial Residence excavated there has spacious receiving-rooms and mikvahs. Here stood the palaces of Antipas and the high priest Joseph Caiaphas. But the real authority in Jerusalem was the prefect, Pontius Pilate, who usually ruled his province from Caesarea on the coast but always came to supervise Passover, staying at Herod’s Citadel.
Antipas was not the only Jewish royalty in Jerusalem. Helena, the Queen of Adiabene, a small kingdom in today’s northern Iraq,d had converted to Judaism and moved to Jerusalem, building a palace in the City of David, donating the golden candelabra over the doorway of the Temple sanctuary and paying for food when there were bad harvests. Queen Helena too would have been there for Passover, probably wearing the sort of jewellery recently discovered in Jerusalem: a large pearl inlaid in gold with two drop pieces, each with an emerald set in gold.
Josephus guessed that two and a half million Jews came for Passover. This is an exaggeration but there were Jews “out of every nation,” from Parthia and Babylonia to Crete and Libya. The only way to imagine this throng is to see Mecca during the haj. At Passover, every family had to sacrifice a lamb, so the city was jammed with bleating sheep—255,600 lambs were sacrificed. There was much to do: pilgrims had to take a dip in a mikvah every time they approached the Temple as well as buy their sacrificial lambs in the Royal Portico. Not everyone could stay in the city. Thousands lodged in the surrounding villages, like Jesus, or camped around the walls. As the smell of burning meat and heady incense wafted—and the trumpet blasts, announcing prayers and sacrifices, ricocheted—across the city, everything was focused on the Temple, nervously watched by the Roman soldiers from the Antonia Fortress.
Jesus now walked into the towering, colonnaded Royal Portico, the bustling, colourful, crowded centre of all life, where pilgrims gathered to organize their accommodation, to meet friends, and to change money for the Tyrian silver used to buy sacrificial lambs, doves, or, for the rich, oxen. This was not the Temple itself nor one of its inner courts but the most accessible and public section of the entire complex, designed to serve like a forum. In the Portico, Jesus attacked the Temple establishment: “Is this house, which is called by thy name, become a den of robbers?” he said, overturning the tables of the money-changers while quoting and channelling the prophecies of Jeremiah, Zachariah and Isaiah. His demonstration attracted attention but not enough to warrant any intervention by Temple guards or Roman soldiers.
After another night in Bethany, he returned to the Templee the next morning to debate with his critics. The Gospels cite the Pharisees as Jesus’ enemies, but this probably reflected the situation fifty years later when their authors were writing. The Pharisees were the more flexible and populist sect, and some of their teachings may have been similar to those of Jesus. His real enemies were the Temple aristocracy. The Herodians now challenged him about paying taxes to Rome, but he replied adeptly, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
Yet he did not call himself the Messiah, emphasizing the Shema, the basic Jewish prayer to the one God, and the love of his fellow men: he was very much a Jew. But then he warned the excited crowds of the imminent Apocalypse that would of course take place in Jerusalem: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” While Jews held various views on the coming of the Messiah, most agreed that God would preside over the end of the world, which would be followed by the creation of the Messiah’s kingdom in Jerusalem: “Sound in Zion the trumpet to summon the saints,” declared the Psalms of Solomon, written not long after Jesus’ death, “announce in Jerusalem the voice of one bringing good news for the God of Israel has been merciful.” Hence his followers asked him: “Tell us what shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?” “Watch therefore for ye know not what hour your Lord will come,” he answered, but then he spelt out the coming Apocalypse: “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes,” before they saw “the Son of Man coming in clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Jesus’ inflammatory gambit would have seriously alarmed the Roman prefect and high priests, who, he warned, could expect no mercy in the Last Days: “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”
Jerusalem was always tense at Passover but the authorities were even more jumpy than usual. Mark and Luke state, in a couple of neglected verses, that there had just been some sort of Galilean rebellion in Jerusalem, suppressed by Pilate, who had killed eighteen Galileans around the “tower of Siloam” south of the Temple. One of the surviving rebels, Barabbas, whom Jesus would soon encounter, had “committed a murder in the insurrection.” The high priests decided to take no chances with another Galilean predicting their destruction in an imminent Apocalypse: Caiaphas and Annas, the influential former high priest, discussed what to do. Surely it was better, argued Caiaphas in John’s Gospel, “that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation perish not.” They made their plans.
The next day Jesus prepared for Passover at the Upper Room—the Cenacle, or Coenaculum—on the western hill of Jerusalem (later known as Mount Zion). At the supper, Jesus somehow learned that his Apostle, Judas Iscariot, had betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver, but he did not change his plan to walk around the city to the tranquil olive groves of the Garden of Gethsemane just across the Kidron Valley from the Temple. Judas slipped away. We do not know if he betrayed Jesus out of principle—for being too radical or not radical enough—or out of greed or envy.
Judas returned with a posse of senior priests, Temple guards and Roman legionaries. Jesus was not instantly recognizable in the dark, so Judas betrayed him by identifying him with a kiss and received his silver. In a chaotic torchlit drama, the Apostles drew their swords, Peter lopped off the ear of one of the high priest’s lackeys and a nameless boy ran off stark naked into the night, a touch so eccentric, it rings of truth. Jesus was arrested and the Apostles scattered except for two who followed at a distance.
It was now almost midnight. Jesus, guarded by Roman soldiers, was marched around the southern walls through the Siloam Gate to the palace of the city’s éminence grise Annas, in the Upper City.f Annas dominated Jerusalem and personified the rigi
d, incestuous network of Temple families. Himself a former high priest, he was the father-in-law of the present incumbent Caiaphas and no less than five of his sons would be high priests. But he and Caiaphas were despised by most Jews as venal, thuggish collaborators, whose servants, complained one Jewish text, “beat us with staves”; their justice was a corrupt money-making scam. Jesus, on the other hand, had struck a popular chord and had admirers even among the Sanhedrin. The trial of this popular and fearless preacher would have to be conducted shiftily, by night.
Some time after midnight, as the guards built a fire in the courtyard (and Jesus’ disciple Peter thrice denied knowing his master), Annas and his son-in-law assembled their loyal Sanhedrin members—but not all of them, because at least one, Joseph of Arimathea, was an admirer of Jesus and never approved his arrest. Jesus was cross-examined by the high priest: had he threatened to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days? Did he claim to be the Messiah? Jesus said nothing but finally admitted, “ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
“He hath spoken blasphemy,” said Caiaphas.
“He is guilty of death,” answered the crowd who had gathered despite the late hour. Jesus was blindfolded and spent the night being taunted in the courtyard until dawn, when the real business could begin. Pilate was waiting.47
PONTIUS PILATE: THE TRIAL OF JESUS
The Roman prefect, guarded by his auxiliary troops and watched by a tense crowd, held court on the Praetorium, the raised platform outside Herod’s Citadel, the Roman headquarters near today’s Jaffa Gate. Pontius Pilate was an aggressive, tactless martinet out of his depth in Judaea. He was already loathed in Jerusalem, notorious for his “venality, violence, theft, assaults, abuse, endless executions and savage ferocity.” Even one of the Herodian princes called him “vindictive with a furious temper.”
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