Jesus of Nazareth

by Gerhard Lohfink

  Thus Jesus’ entry is accompanied by many festival pilgrims who are on the road to the capital with Jesus. What does their cry mean? In part it comes from Psalm 118:25-26. Large groups of pilgrims were greeted in Jerusalem with “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” at the moment when they entered the space before the temple area. Here this welcoming cry has been transformed into an acclamation addressed exclusively to Jesus and expanded by praise of the now-inbreaking kingdom of David, that is, the messianic kingdom. In addition, the shout now comes from the pilgrims themselves.

  But we must note primarily something that is not immediately apparent to every reader today: what Mark is describing here is nothing less than a royal entrance. This is not the usual jubilation with which just any group of pilgrims was received when they arrived at the temple for a festival. Rather, the scene describes the entry of a king into his city, the arrival of the Messiah on Zion. In a sense he is taking possession of his city.

  That this is the precise intent of the narrative is shown by the presence of the donkey, which is spoken of in the Old Testament, in Zechariah 9:9 and in Genesis 49:11, as the mount destined for the Messiah. Without question, the use of the word “colt” is an allusion to Zechariah 9:9, which reads, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; [righteous] and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”2

  The words “righteous,” “victorious,” and “humble” in Zechariah 9:9 require explanation. This king is “righteous” because he is, before God and through God’s grace, the ultimate ruler who does the will of God entirely. He is “victorious” because God has rescued him from danger (Hebrew nosha’). He is called “humble” because he is a lowly person, poor before God. The external sign of this is that he rides not on a parade horse but on a donkey, the beast of the poor. He is the longed-for king in whom God is well pleased.

  Other signals in the text also point to a royal entry: ancient cities received a royal ruler with branches and garments spread on the road, and “hosanna,” originally a plea (“help!”), had become a cry of homage and rejoicing. Whether or not the fact that the cry “hosanna” was originally meant for God is intended to play some role, it serves at least to introduce the subsequent homage, “blessed is the one who comes.” And that is said of Jesus. So the narrative depicts a royal entrance, a “taking possession” of the city.3

  If we look at the historical event itself there is no compelling reason to question an entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem during which he was celebrated as the Messiah. He was not only surrounded by excited festival pilgrims from Galilee who had seen his deeds of power or heard about them—most recently the healing of the blind beggar Bartimaeus in Jericho (Mark 10:46-52). There had apparently been earlier attempts in Galilee to appoint Jesus a (messianic) king (John 6:15).

  The crucial question is about Jesus’ own attitude to the whole business. Had the “Davidic-Messianic expectations” of the people coalesced “in the atmosphere of Jerusalem”4 and been immediately poured out on him—against his will, so to speak? That is how many New Testament scholars see it today. They say either that Jesus did not want any of it or—still more radically—that the event was a simple arrival in Jerusalem with a crowd of pilgrims, and it was only Christian legend that, after Easter, elevated and stylized it as a royal entry.

  I cannot share that skepticism. It has little to do with historical criticism and a good deal to do with the desire to create for ourselves a pleasant and modernized Jesus who fits our present ideas and offers as little resistance to the observer as possible. I am convinced that Jesus really did enter into the city on a donkey, the mount of the poor and simple people—and that he did so deliberately on the model of Zechariah 9:9.

  Nowhere in the texts is there the smallest indication that Jesus distanced himself from the acclamations of the crowd around him. Apparently, in entering Jerusalem on an ass’s colt Jesus was deliberately exhibiting an unmistakable sign. He wanted to come to the city as a poor, unarmed king, the messiah of peace of Zechariah 9:9 and the one who proclaimed the reign of God, as in Zechariah 14:9 (“and the LORD will become king over all the earth”). The radical rejection of all force and violence stated in Zechariah 9:10 (“He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations”) fits Jesus’ self-awareness very well. Apparently he knew Zechariah 9:9 and applied the text to himself. As we saw above (chap. 11), Jesus read his Bible with an unfathomable sensitivity to what is essential.

  If Jesus, when entering the city, was acting deliberately on the words of the book of Zechariah, that, of course, presumes that in that hour he made himself publicly known as the Messiah. We will have to speak in detail later about his messianic awareness (see chap. 19, “Jesus’ Sovereign Claim”). Here, we can anticipate this much: Jesus was extremely reticent about using the word “messiah.” The concept could all too easily be misunderstood in a political sense. In addition, Jesus’ claim dissolved a sometimes superficial notion of the messiah. The Old Testament itself offered a sufficient basis for a deeper understanding of the concept and for transforming, purifying, and seeing it in a new light—quite apart from the fact that in the time of Jesus the expectation of a messiah was much more varied and nuanced than is often supposed. We may take it as given that when the people shouted “blessed is the [now] coming kingdom of our ancestor David,” Jesus would have understood it in a deeper sense than many of those who were shouting it. He had to take all possible misunderstanding on himself.

  At any rate, taking possession of the city would have been so important to him that in this instance he accepted the possibility of being misunderstood. The solemn entrance into the city was connected with his understanding of the reign of God. That reign was breaking forth. It had to be proclaimed everywhere, but especially in the capital city. And it had to be not only proclaimed but made present in a sign by him as representative of the reign of God. That was the reason for the action in the temple that came next and was intimately connected with his taking possession of the city.5

  If Jesus wanted to enter Jerusalem as the humble king of Zechariah 9:9, that ultimately presumes that he was aware that everything would be decided in Jerusalem. A confrontation would ensue. Probably he had no illusions about the outcome of that confrontation, but he had to summon Jerusalem to decision because there the temple stood, there was the center of Israel, there the people of God gathered for the greatest feast of the year. There, at the Passover feast, all Israel was represented, and the proclamation of the reign of God must necessarily be as public as possible. This certainly suggested a provocative entry into the city.

  I also assume that the evangelists correctly interpreted Jesus’ entry into the city of Jerusalem. He wanted to establish a symbol, against the background of the book of Zechariah. The question of the extent to which the developing situation as he approached the city exerted external pressure to establish this sign, or to what degree he himself deliberately performed it, is not at all decisive, since in both cases it would be true that his entry became a vocal, resonant sign-action (cf. Luke 19:40), and he willed it to be so.6

  The Temple Action

  When Jesus entered Jerusalem as Messiah and representative of the reign of God, to proclaim that reign in the capital city as a climax to all his work in Galilee, he could not avoid the temple. The ancient principle obtained: the king, or the ruler, is responsible for the temple.7 So the action in the temple associated with the entry into Jerusalem is no accident. The proclamation of the reign of God in Jerusalem also affected the temple and its surroundings; in fact, it applied to the temple above all. Therefore the temple action almost had to follow. In Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels it occurs immediately after the entry into the city, and in Mark’s gospel it is closely associated with it. Mark relates it as follows:

  Then they came to Jerusalem. And he
entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers.” And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. (Mark 11:15-18)

  Obviously all this took place neither in the priests’ court nor in the courts of the men or of the women. It happened on the edges of the gigantic “court of the Gentiles” surrounding the central part of the temple. There, on the south side, in the “royal hall,” stood the booths of those who sold doves and changed money. The doves were sold to the poor who could not afford a sacrificial animal; the money changers for a fee exchanged coins for Tyrian double drachmas and tetradrachmas, the only money with which one could pay the annual temple tax.8 The extensive court of the Gentiles, however, was not only populated by those visiting the temple; it was also crossed by people looking to avoid walking the long way around. They used the temple area as a shortcut into the city or between its different quarters.

  It is completely impossible that Jesus could have “cleansed” this huge area. Consequently, interpreters prefer to speak now of a “temple action” by Jesus. He must have demonstratively overturned tables and booths and scolded people carrying loads who took shortcuts over the temple mount. He could only establish a sign. And such a sign demanded also a word of interpretation. What did he say? Currently, biblical scholars are increasingly convinced that this interpretative word was Jesus’ so-called temple saying. What does that mean? According to Mark, when Jesus was being interrogated by the Council, “false witnesses” came forward and asserted, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands’” (Mark 14:58). In that form it is an incredible saying. It contrasts the gigantic temple, probably the greatest in the world at that time, with another temple not made by human hands, that is, established by God. And Jesus himself will build it. We can understand that even the authors of the gospels were alarmed by that saying. Mark attributes it to false witnesses. But they did not agree, and so their statements were useless. Luke, in depicting the interrogation, simply omits the scene with the temple saying (Luke 22:66-69). Matthew softens it; in his gospel the false witnesses do not assert that Jesus said he would tear down the temple but that he could do it (Matt 26:61). Finally, John interprets the saying as referring to the “temple of his body,” that is, to Jesus’ resurrection (John 2:19-21).

  Apparently, then, the early church had problems with the saying, and understandably so, since, after all, it was the Romans who destroyed the temple, and it was not rebuilt. But even the attempts to come to terms with the difficult temple saying and interpret it correctly show that there must have been such a saying. We cannot reconstruct it precisely. It must have referred to the temple of the end time. The Old Testament—and especially the book of Zechariah—had already assumed that at some time there would be such a temple in the midst of a Jerusalem gleaming with holiness.9 It is also clear that this eschatological temple is ultimately God’s creation. But Jesus must have said that the rebuilding of the final temple was already beginning with him. That, at any rate, would correspond exactly to his idea of the coming of the reign of God and the role he himself was to play in it. The temple action would then be an indication, a sign, in fact the initiation of this new building of the temple of the end time.10

  Certainly Jesus would scarcely have said these things about the temple at the time of the action itself. The temple saying fits much better in a situation in which he was accosted by representatives of the Council on account of the action that had already taken place. As Mark 11:27-33 shows, there was such a situation the very next day. During the temple action itself Jesus must have spoken more directly and less enigmatically. What Mark reports as happening at that time fits much better: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17). The words “den of robbers” are in Jeremiah’s temple speech (Jer 7:1-15): the sacrifices in the temple must correspond to a just society; otherwise God can no longer dwell in this place, and the temple will be destroyed.

  The phrase “house of prayer for [all] nations” is from the last ten chapters of Isaiah (specifically Isa 56:7). The immediate context speaks of the gathering of Israel (Isa 56:8), and the broader context describes the pilgrimage of the nations to the eschatological Jerusalem (Isa 60) and the glory of the city newly rebuilt by God (Isa 62). So the words with which the temple action is accompanied in Mark’s gospel echo both the prophets’ sharp critique of the temple and their vision of it in the end time. Then the symbolic action in the court of the Gentiles would not have been fundamentally directed against the temple as such but against everything that did not correspond to the holiness of the eschatological temple.

  In connection with Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God that, of course, meant that the eschatological temple is beginning now. Now God is requiring holiness in his house, and it is Jesus himself through whom God is creating the new temple. Thus the temple action and the temple saying are subject to the radical “today” that shapes Jesus’ whole message and practice. Because the reign of God is already breaking in and the new creation of Israel has already begun, the business of the temple in its present form cannot continue. The hour of the eschatological temple has arrived.

  Did Jesus make a concrete image of this new eschatological temple for himself? We do not know; all we can be sure about is that the early Christian communities after Easter very quickly came to regard themselves as the eschatological temple, a sanctuary built of living stones.11 They did so long before the temple was finally destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.

  The Sadducaic priestly nobility that held power in Jerusalem apparently understood quite clearly the degree to which their own image of the temple was being called into question by Jesus. Just as in the case of the Torah the issue was not merely one of marginal questions about the interpretation of the Law, so here it was not simply about marginal issues regarding the temple area—for example, whether the money changers and dove sellers should not be carrying on their business in the city instead of being in the outer courts of the temple. Rather, it was about Jesus’ right to see the cult in Jerusalem wholly in light of his message about the reign of God, and thus also his right to intervene. That is precisely what was so emphatically contested by the high priests, the scribes, and the elders, that is, the Council (or Sanhedrin), the highest religious authority in Israel.

  The Last Meal

  Luke, before describing the institution of the Eucharist, records the following words of Jesus: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). The saying makes it clear that Jesus knows what is coming. He will suffer; he will be killed. For that very reason this last meal he will celebrate with the Twelve has a special significance for him. Jesus’ whole longing rests on this meal. It was not just any meal, but the Passover feast. That is how Luke sees it, and so do Mark and Matthew also.

  Because Jesus sees his death coming, he has to give it an interpretation.12 The Passover meal itself gave him the opportunity to do so, because this very meal was and had been from ancient times saturated with signs, references, and interpretations. There were the bitter herbs, the unleavened bread, the lamb, and the cup of blessing (later numbered as the third cup). The meal made present the exodus from Egypt and looked forward in hope to the Messiah. An ancient Aramaic interpretive word over the unleavened bread read, “See, this is the bread of affliction that our ancestors had to eat when they came out of Egypt.”13

  Among Jesus scholars there is dispute about whether
Jesus’ last meal was a Passover meal at all. While the tradition of the first three evangelists clearly speaks of a Paschal meal in the night before the fifteenth of Nisan, the Fourth Gospel stresses that the day of Jesus’ crucifixion was the fourteenth of Nisan, so that Jesus died at exactly the hour in which the Paschal lambs were being slaughtered in the temple.14 But precisely that would be Johannine theology: Jesus is thus depicted as the true Paschal lamb. Consequently, John does not represent Jesus’ last meal as a Passover supper.

  In what follows I will give preference to the accounts of the first three gospels: Jesus’ last meal was the Passover meal in the night before 15 Nisan. The counterarguments have weight, but they are in no way decisive.15 At times they ignore the situation altogether. For example, it is argued that the Passover meal was celebrated in the family, with women and children, while Mark says that Jesus took his last meal with only the group of the Twelve.16 Indeed, that is how Mark portrays it. And that must have been Jesus’ precise intention: not to celebrate the Passover meal as it was usually done, with his natural family, but with his new family, and not with a random selection of disciples who might have been available. Instead, as Mark emphatically states, he wanted to celebrate it with the Twelve (Mark 14:17-18). His last meal had the familial intimacy that is proper to the Paschal supper, and yet the choice of participants points emphatically to Israel, to the eschatological gathering and new creation of the people of God that Jesus had begun with his circle of twelve. Here the usual ritual may not be held up against Jesus’ freedom. In what follows I will rely on Mark’s account for the description of the details.17 He depicts the special character of the meal as follows:

  During the meal Jesus takes the bread, speaks the usual thanksgiving prayer over it, breaks it, and hands it to the Twelve. That is the prescribed ritual. It is the table prayer before the main course, after the appetizers have been eaten and the father of the family has recalled the people’s being led out of Egypt. It is true that Mark says nothing about the appetizers, the Passover liturgy, and other elements of the meal. The tradition he is following assumes all that as familiar and a matter of course. Mark and his tradition relate only what is special and unique about this one Passover meal.18 One of those things was that Jesus interpreted the broken bread he handed to his meal companions with the words “This is my body.”