An incident occurring on this final stretch of the journey increases the expectation of the one who is to come and focuses the wayfarers’ attention upon Jesus in an altogether new way. Along the path sits a blind beggar, Bartimaeus. Having discovered that Jesus is among the pilgrims, he cries out incessantly: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mk 10:47). People try to calm him down, but it is useless, and finally Jesus calls him over. To his plea, “Master, let me receive my sight”, Jesus replies, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.”
Bartimaeus could see again, “and he followed [Jesus] on the way” (Mk 10:48-52). Now that he could see, he became a fellow pilgrim on the way to Jerusalem. The Davidic theme and the accompanying Messianic hope now spread to the crowd: Was it possible that this Jesus, with whom they were walking, might actually be the new David for whom they were waiting? As he made his entrance into the Holy City, had the hour come when he would reestablish the Davidic kingdom?
The preparations that Jesus makes with his disciples reinforce this hope. Jesus comes from Bethphage and Bethany to the Mount of Olives, the place from which the Messiah was expected to enter. He sends two disciples ahead of him, telling them that they will find a tethered donkey, a young animal on which no one has yet sat. They are to untie it and bring it to him. Should anyone ask by what authority they do so, they are to say: “The Lord has need of it” (Mk 11:3; Lk 19:31). The disciples find the donkey. As anticipated, they are asked by what right they act; they give the response they were told to give—and they are allowed to carry out their mission. So Jesus rides on a borrowed donkey into the city and, soon afterward, has the animal returned to its owner.
To today’s reader, this may all seem fairly harmless, but for the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus it is full of mysterious allusions. The theme of the kingdom and its promises is ever-present. Jesus claims the right of kings, known throughout antiquity, to requisition modes of transport (cf. Pesch, Markusevangelium II, p. 180). The use of an animal on which no one had yet sat is a further pointer to the right of kings. Most striking, though, are the Old Testament allusions that give a deeper meaning to the whole episode.
The first recalls Genesis 49:10-11—Jacob’s blessing, in which Judah is promised the scepter, the ruler’s staff, which is not to depart from between his feet “until he comes to whom it belongs; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples”. Of him it is said that he binds his donkey to the vine (49:11). The tethered donkey, then, indicates the one who is to come, “to [whom] shall be the obedience of the peoples”.
Even more important is Zechariah 9:9, the text that Matthew and John quote explicitly for an understanding of “Palm Sunday”: “Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Mt 21:5; cf. Zech 9:9; Jn 12:15). The meaning of these prophetic words for the understanding of the figure of Jesus we have already considered at some length in our exegesis of the beatitude concerning the meek (cf. Part One, pp. 80-84). He is a king who destroys the weapons of war, a king of peace and a king of simplicity, a king of the poor. And finally we saw that he reigns over a kingdom that stretches from sea to sea, embracing the whole world (cf. ibid., pp. 81-82); we were reminded of the new world-encompassing kingdom of Jesus that extends from sea to sea in the communities of the breaking of bread in communion with Jesus Christ, as the kingdom of his peace (cf. ibid., p. 84). None of this could be seen at the time, but in retrospect those things that could be indicated only from afar, hidden in the prophetic vision, are revealed.
For now let us note this: Jesus is indeed making a royal claim. He wants his path and his action to be understood in terms of Old Testament promises that are fulfilled in his person. The Old Testament speaks of him—and vice versa: he acts and lives within the word of God, not according to projects and wishes of his own. His claim is based on obedience to the mission received from his Father. His path is a path into the heart of God’s word. At the same time, through this anchoring of the text in Zechariah 9:9, a “Zealot” exegesis of the kingdom is excluded: Jesus is not building on violence; he is not instigating a military revolt against Rome. His power is of another kind: it is in God’s poverty, God’s peace, that he identifies the only power that can redeem.
Let us return to the narrative. The donkey is brought to Jesus, and now something unexpected happens: the disciples lay their garments on the donkey. While Matthew (21:7) and Mark (11:7) simply say: “and he sat upon it”, Luke writes: “They set Jesus upon it” (19:35). This is the expression that is used in the First Book of Kings in the account of Solomon’s installation on the throne of his father, David. There we read that King David commanded Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah: “Take with you the servants of your lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride on my own mule, and bring him down to Gihon; and let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet there anoint him king over Israel” (1 Kings 1:33-34).
The spreading out of garments likewise belongs to the tradition of Israelite kingship (cf. 2 Kings 9:13). What the disciples do is a gesture of enthronement in the tradition of the Davidic kingship, and it points to the Messianic hope that grew out of the Davidic tradition. The pilgrims who came to Jerusalem with Jesus are caught up in the disciples’ enthusiasm. They now spread their garments on the street along which Jesus passes. They pluck branches from the trees and cry out verses from Psalm 118, words of blessing from Israel’s pilgrim liturgy, which on their lips become a Messianic proclamation: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mk 11:9-10; cf. Ps 118:26).
This acclamation is recounted by all four evangelists, albeit with some variation in detail. There is no need here to go into the differences, important though they are for “tradition criticism” and for the theological vision of the individual evangelists. Let us try merely to understand the essential outlines, especially since the Christian liturgy has adopted this greeting, interpreting it in the light of the Church’s Easter faith.
First comes the exclamation “Hosanna!” Originally this was a word of urgent supplication, meaning something like: Come to our aid! The priests would repeat it in a monotone on the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, while processing seven times around the altar of sacrifice, as an urgent prayer for rain. But as the Feast of Tabernacles gradually changed from a feast of petition into one of praise, so too the cry for help turned more and more into a shout of jubilation (cf. Lohse, TDNT IX, p. 682).
By the time of Jesus, the word had also acquired Messianic overtones. In the Hosanna acclamation, then, we find an expression of the complex emotions of the pilgrims accompanying Jesus and of his disciples: joyful praise of God at the moment of the processional entry, hope that the hour of the Messiah had arrived, and at the same time a prayer that the Davidic kingship and hence God’s kingship over Israel would be reestablished.
As mentioned above, this passage from Psalm 118: “Blessed is he who enters in the name of the Lord!” had originally formed part of Israel’s pilgrim liturgy used for greeting pilgrims as they entered the city or the Temple. This emerges clearly from the second part of the verse: “We bless you from the house of the Lord.” It was a blessing that the priests addressed and, as it were, bestowed upon the pilgrims as they arrived. But in the meantime the phrase “who enters in the name of the Lord” had acquired Messianic significance. It had become a designation of the one promised by God. So from being a pilgrim blessing, it became praise of Jesus, a greeting to him as the one who comes in the name of the Lord, the one awaited and proclaimed by all the promises.
It may be that this strikingly Davidic note, found only in Saint Mark’s text, conveys most accurately the pilgrims’ actual expectations at that moment. Luke, on the other hand, writing for Gentile Christians, completely omits the Hosanna and the reference to David, and in its place he gives an exclamation reminiscent of Christmas: “Peace in heaven and glo
ry in the highest!” (19:38; cf. 2:14). All three Synoptic Gospels, as well as Saint John, make it very clear that the scene of Messianic homage to Jesus was played out on his entry into the city and that those taking part were not the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but the crowds who accompanied Jesus and entered the Holy City with him.
This point is made most clearly in Matthew’s account through the passage immediately following the Hosanna to Jesus, Son of David: “When he entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying: Who is this? And the crowds said: This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee” (Mt 21:10-11). The parallel with the story of the wise men from the East is unmistakable. On that occasion, too, the people in the city of Jerusalem knew nothing of the newborn king of the Jews; the news about him caused Jerusalem to be “troubled” (Mt 2:3). Now the people were “quaking”: the word that Matthew uses, eseísthē (seíō), describes the vibration caused by an earthquake.
People had heard of the prophet from Nazareth, but he did not appear to have any importance for Jerusalem, and the people there did not know him. The crowd that paid homage to Jesus at the gateway to the city was not the same crowd that later demanded his crucifixion. In this two-stage account of the failure to recognize Jesus—through a combination of indifference and fear—we see something of the city’s tragedy of which Jesus spoke a number of times, most poignantly in his eschatological discourse.
Matthew’s account has another important text concerning the reception given to Jesus in the Holy City. After the cleansing of the Temple, the children in the Temple repeat the words of homage: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (21:15). Jesus defends the children’s joyful acclamation against the criticism of “the chief priests and the scribes” by quoting Psalm 8: “Out of the mouths of babies and infants you have brought perfect praise” (v. 2). We will return later to this scene in our discussion of the cleansing of the Temple. For now let us try to understand what Jesus meant by the reference to Psalm 8, with which he opened up a much broader salvation-historical perspective.
His meaning becomes clear if we recall the story recounted by all three Synoptic evangelists, in which children were brought to Jesus “that he might touch them”. Despite the resistance of the disciples, who wanted to protect him from this imposition, Jesus calls the children to himself, lays his hands on them, and blesses them. He explains this gesture with the words: “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mk 10: 13-16). The children serve Jesus as an example of the littleness before God that is necessary in order to pass through the “eye of a needle”, the image that he used immediately afterward in the story of the rich young man (Mk 10:17-27).
In the previous chapter we find the scene where Jesus responds to the disciples’ dispute over rank by placing a child in their midst, taking it into his arms and saying: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Mk 9:33-37). Jesus identifies himself with the child—he himself has become small. As Son he does nothing of himself, but he acts wholly from the Father and for the Father.
The passage that follows a few verses later can also be understood on this basis. Here Jesus speaks no longer of children, but of “little ones”, and the term “little ones” designates believers, the company of the disciples of Jesus Christ (cf. Mk 9:42). In the faith they have found this true littleness that leads mankind into its truth.
This brings us back to the children’s Hosanna: in the light of Psalm 8, the praise of these children appears as an anticipation of the great outpouring of praise that his “little ones” will sing to him far beyond the present hour.
The early Church, then, was right to read this scene as an anticipation of what she does in her liturgy. Even in the earliest post-Easter liturgical text that we possess—the Didachē (ca. 100)—before the distribution of the holy gifts the Hosanna appears, together with the Maranatha: “Let his grace draw near, and let this present world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. Whoever is holy, let him approach; whoever is not, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen” (10, 6).
The Benedictus also entered the liturgy at a very early stage. For the infant Church, “Palm Sunday” was not a thing of the past. Just as the Lord entered the Holy City that day on a donkey, so too the Church saw him coming again and again in the humble form of bread and wine.
The Church greets the Lord in the Holy Eucharist as the one who is coming now, the one who has entered into her midst. At the same time, she greets him as the one who continues to come, the one who leads us toward his coming. As pilgrims, we go up to him; as a pilgrim, he comes to us and takes us up with him in his “ascent” to the Cross and Resurrection, to the definitive Jerusalem that is already growing in the midst of this world in the communion that unites us with his body.
2. The Cleansing of the Temple
Mark tells us that after the welcome he received, Jesus went into the Temple, saw everything that was there, and as it was already late he returned to Bethany, where he was staying that week. On the following day, he went into the Temple again and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying: “He overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons” (11:15).
He justified this action using a quotation from Isaiah that he combined with a passage from Jeremiah: “ ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations[.]’ But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mk 11:17; cf. Is 56:7; Jer 7:11). What was Jesus doing? What did he want to say?
In the exegetical literature there are three principal lines of interpretation that we must briefly consider.
First, there is the thesis that the cleansing of the Temple constituted an attack, not on the Temple as such, but only on its misuse. After all, the traders were licensed by the Jewish authorities, who made a large profit from their activities. To this extent the trading of the moneychangers and cattle-merchants was legitimate according to the rules in force at the time; indeed, it made sense to exchange the widely circulated Roman coins (considered idolatrous, since they bore the emperor’s image) for Temple currency in the spacious Court of the Gentiles and to sell animals for sacrifice in the same place. Yet this mixture of Temple and business did not correspond to the purpose for which the Court of the Gentiles was intended in terms of the Temple’s overall layout.
In acting as he did, Jesus was attacking the existing practice that had been set up by the Temple aristocracy, but he was not violating the Law and the Prophets—on the contrary: he was implementing the true law, Israel’s divine law, in opposition to a custom that had become deeply corrupt and had become “law”. Only this can explain the failure to intervene on the part of either the Temple police or the Roman cohort that stood ready in the castle Antonia. The Temple authorities merely asked Jesus by what authority he acted in this way.
This supports the thesis that Vittorio Messori in particular has argued at length, namely, that in cleansing the Temple, Jesus was acting in accordance with the Law and opposing the Temple’s misuse. Were we simply to conclude that Jesus “appears as a mere reformer defending Jewish precepts on holiness” (as Eduard Schweizer says, quoted in Pesch, Markusevangelium II, p. 200), we would fail to do justice to the significance of the incident. Jesus’ words show that his claim goes deeper, since by acting in this way he was seeking to fulfill the Law and the Prophets.
Now we come to a second, conflicting exegesis—the political, revolutionary interpretation of the incident. Even at the time of the Enlightenment, attempts were made to portray Jesus as a political agitator. But the two-volume work by Robert Eisler, Iesous basileus ou basileusas (Heidelberg, 1929/1930), was the first to argue consistently from the whole of the New Testament corpus that “Jesus was a political revolutionist of apocalyptic stamp, who attempted an uprising in Jerusalem and was taken captive and put to death by the Romans” (Hengel, Was Jesus a Revolutionist? p. 4). The book created quite
a stir, but given the particular circumstances of the 1930s, it had little lasting impact at the time.
Not until the 1960s did an intellectual and political climate emerge in which this vision could acquire explosive force. Now it was Samuel George Frederick Brandon, in his book Jesus and the Zealots (New York, 1967), who made the exegesis of Jesus as a political revolutionary seem academically plausible. He locates Jesus in the line of the Zealot movement, which looked to the priest Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, for its biblical foundation. Phinehas had run his spear through an Israelite who had become involved with an idolatrous woman. He was considered a model for those who were “zealous” for the Law, for the worship of God alone (cf. Num 25).
The Zealot movement traced its historical origins to the initiative of Mattathias, father of the Maccabee brothers, who expressed in these words his opposition to the attempt to absorb Israel into the uniform Hellenistic culture, thereby robbing it of its religious identity: “We will not obey the king’s words by turning aside from our religion to the right hand or to the left” (1 Mac 2:22). This declaration led to an uprising against the Hellenistic tyranny. Mattathias put his words into action: he killed the man who, according to the instructions of the Hellenistic authorities, wanted to sacrifice publicly to the gods. “When Mattathias saw it, he burned with zeal . . . he ran and killed him upon the altar. . . . Thus he burned with zeal for the law” (1 Mac 2:24-26). From that moment, the slogan “zeal” (in Greek, zēlos) became the byword for readiness to stand up for Israel’s faith with force, to defend Israel’s law and freedom by treading the path of violence.
According to the thesis of Eisler and Brandon—which led to a great wave of political theologies and theologies of revolution in the 1960s—Jesus belongs within this line of the “zēlos” of the Zealots. The cleansing of the Temple serves as the central proof of this thesis, since it was unambiguously an act of violence that could not have been achieved without violence, even though the evangelists did their best to conceal this. Moreover, the fact that the people hailed Jesus as Son of David and harbinger of the Davidic kingdom is construed as a political statement, and the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans for claiming to be “King of the Jews” is seen as definitive proof that he was a revolutionary—a Zealot—and that he was executed as such.
Jesus of Nazareth: From His Transfiguration Through His Death and Resurrection Page 2