Incongruities vanish, however, the moment we put these events into the historical and political context of Jerusalem in early 37 CE. Josephus reports that Herod Antipas accompanied Vitellius on his march to Petra. Antipas wanted to be seen as the good, dependable tetrarch, the man Rome could rely on: one who could be given Philip’s tetrarchy, currently under Vitellius’s control, as a reward for exemplary behavior. Pilate’s apparent looseness of control makes perfect sense once we see that in 37 CE he was in serious trouble for having allowed his severity to turn into action so provocative that it threatened both fundamental order and Vitellius’s campaign against Nabataea. Pilate’s situation had not been settled. He was still prefect, but there was a question mark over his future. A politically sensitive decision involving crucifixion of an alleged “Galilean” regarded by followers as exceptionally righteous would have hovered on the razor edge of his competence—especially if the Syrian governor was present, or very near. Pilate was in enough trouble as it was. The likelihood of Pilate retaining his job when the matter was finally settled was low. The Emperor Tiberius’s expected successor, Caius “Caligula,” was a friend of Herod Agrippa, and Herod Agrippa wanted Judea for himself. Besides, the chief case against Jesus was one of blasphemy, a religious charge; such slippery issues were bound to make a Roman official nervous. Pilate would have been delighted to “wash his hands” of the whole affair.
Now, what if Vitellius was present to observe the proceedings? Here was an opportunity perhaps, to judge for himself what this Pilate was like when confronted by a restive people. Was he as violent and vicious as the Samaritan Senate declared? Was he a liability to Rome? Bring on the prisoner! Over to you, prefect! And Pilate does not want to make a judgment. Is he weak? Has his judgment suffered?
The gospel story of a custom that a prisoner should be released at the feast has no evidence to support it. I refer to Jesus’s accusers’ demand for the release of an alleged criminal or terrorist leader, Barabbas. However, we have seen that when Syria’s governor arrived in Jerusalem he was willing to make concessions to popular feeling, including high ranking sackings. Nevertheless, the “release” from custody of the formerly “imprisoned” priestly robes was doubtless a significant enough concession for Roman authority to make; over half a century later, Josephus considered it remarkable. The “Barabbas” story makes little historical sense. Releasing known enemies for no obvious political return would have been ruinous policy. Had the enemies of Jesus—and of John too—in the temple organization been at the occasion in sufficient numbers, and given that they were convinced Jesus was a blasphemer and someone who would create, or who was creating, a serious challenge to their regime, then the call to have the prisoner crucified would have raised Vitellius’s eyebrows. People who preferred Caesar to a “King of the Jews” were to be encouraged. Pilate would have listened. Would he be seen as weak, or even unjust, if he accepted the call for the death penalty, or as strong: someone who understood the need of the moment and how to master it—one who could see the essential Roman interest of the moment?
As far as Barabbas is concerned, it is worth mentioning as a reasonable speculation that while the name makes no sense as a real Hebrew name (it means “son of the father”), “Barabbas” might have been an error for the Greek “Brabeus,” which means “a judgment,” “umpire” or “umpire’s decision,” as in the games. The cry “We want Barabbas!” then could have been a literary corruption of an original clamor for a deciding judgment in the face of Pilate’s unease and political insecurity. Such might explain Pilate’s seeking Herod Antipas’s opinion. The gospel writers want us to believe it was the baying mob (“the Jews”) who secured the decision, but the ultimate “thumbs down” in our historical scenario would most likely have come (perhaps secretly) from the authority of the governor of Syria, and it would have done the Christian cause no good at all if this detail were repeated unequivocally years later, if indeed such was ever known outside of government circles.
If this scenario bears any resemblance to what really happened, we may conclude that Jesus’s execution resulted from an expedient complicity of the Syrian governor, Pilate, Jesus’s enemies in the temple hierarchy, and, possibly, Herod Antipas. According to Saul of Tarsus, writing years after events in which he may very well have taken part, Jesus’s condemnation was simply God’s will; without the shedding of blood there could be no redemption. Saul, or Paul’s theory of vicarious atonement took precedence over any historical quibbles. Mere men were blind instruments of primordial destiny. If the dark spiritual powers governing unredeemed humanity had actually known what they (“the princes of this world”) were really doing, and who they were condemning, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8) for, according to Saul/Paul, the Lord’s hanging on wood was the trigger in the snare that trapped them (1 Corinthians 1:23).
It looks very much like Jesus’s crucifixion can be understood politically as the result of a disturbed time, a perceived, if temporary breakdown of order within the Roman control of Judea, and a fateful moment, which the messianic party failed to capitalize on, as they may have had cause to hope, and which the Temple Sadducaean Party did their utmost to exploit.
There were new powers, waiting in the wings, to fill the vacuum, ready to see off every living legacy of the Baptist in the new order.
Josephus informs us that once Vitellius had absorbed the news of Tiberius’s death, he had no choice but to recall his army from their march to Petra. The reason was that “upon the devolution of the empire upon Caius [Caligula], he [Vitellius] had not the like authority of making this war, which he had before.” Tiberius’s war order was void. Until further orders, he would have to retire his army to their quarters.
Aretas himself, Josephus reports, had consulted his diviners when he heard of the impending attack on Petra. They had told him that “it was impossible that this army of Vitellius’s could enter Petra; for that one of the rulers would die, either he that gave orders for the war, or he that was marching at the other’s desire, in order to be subservient to his will, or else he against whom this army is prepared.” Like his account of the battle between Aretas and Antipas, Josephus rounds the story off with an oracular prediction and a note of Vitellius’s retiring to Antioch.
The dénouement to our story however, is not quite so harmonious. At Tiberius’s death, Herodias’s brother Herod Agrippa was released from the captivity into which Tiberius had cast him for having been overheard favoring Caligula over himself. Coming to power, Caligula rewarded Agrippa’s preference with the gift of his half-uncle Philip’s tetrarchy of Trachonitis, Ituraea, and Batanaea. Salome also benefited from the new order. Apart from the “head of the Baptist,” Philip’s widow also received the hand in marriage of Agrippa’s brother, Aristobulus of Chalcis. Aristobulus would eventually become King of Armenia Minor (55–72 CE) and as such would help Nero against the Parthians. As for Antipas, his best-laid plans were now awry; Herodias was incensed.
Agrippa returned to Judea in 39 CE (one Marullus had apparently been prefect since late 37 CE, having replaced either Marcellus or Pilate) to the horror and annoyance of his sister Herodias. She found Agrippa’s newfound airs unbearable. Agrippa had once come penniless to her husband, begging support. Anxious lest Agrippa acquire Judea and Samaria, Herodias persuaded Antipas, much against his will, to travel to Rome to make a case for Caligula that he, Antipas, inherit Judea. When the couple saw the emperor in Rome, Caligula was already in receipt of a letter from Agrippa accusing Antipas of making overtures to Artabanus II, King of Parthia, enemy of Rome. When asked about the distribution of his troops, Antipas’s answer confirmed Caligula’s enflamed suspicions. He exiled Antipas to Lyons, Gaul. Caligula then offered Herodias her husband’s tetrarchy. Herodias bravely declared she had married her husband to suffer ill, as well as good, fortune: Herodias’s last great moment. Enraged at the rejection, Caligula stripped Herodias of her possessions and sent her off to Gaul with her husband. He then g
ave Antipas’s tetrarchy to Agrippa.
After Caligula’s assassination in 41 CE, his successor, Claudius, whom Agrippa had befriended, gave Agrippa official control of Judea and Samaria, making Agrippa a great power in the East and, in Josephus’s judgment, a wise one. According to the Acts of the Apostles, Agrippa persecuted the “primitive Christian Church” on account of its opposition to the existing religious order and for believing Jesus was the Messiah and had been resurrected (Acts 12:1ff.). According to the version of events in Acts, Agrippa’s persecution just missed having the benefit of an extremely able heretic-investigator called Saul. Saul had had a nervous breakdown on the road to Damascus involving a complete overturning of his religious convictions; he realized that to attack Jesus was to attack himself and to pursue Jesus was to pursue himself. In due course a sublimely confident, revived “Paul” (Roman name) would turn his attentions to followers of John the Baptist.
With regard to Damascus, Paul left intriguing details:
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them, which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother. (Galatians 1:15–19)
In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me: And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands. (2 Corinthians 11:32)
Both of these verbatim snippets flatly contradict the account of Saul’s conversion and subsequent activities in Acts 9:10–30. Luke has Saul being brought into the Jerusalem assembly practically straightaway. Even the detail about his having been lowered in a basket down the walls of Damascus was, according to Acts, “because the Jews took counsel to kill him” (v. 23). Luke knows nothing of Aretas’s governor wanting to get his hands on Saul. Was, I wonder, Aretas trying to get his own back on someone who (perhaps working for Herod Antipas) had opposed John the Baptist, the righteous man who had tried to save Aretas’s daughter from the dishonor of divorce?
Aretas IV had taken control of Damascus, formerly a city of the Decapolis, in Syria, during the war of 36–37 CE. If credit is given to Luke’s account in Acts, Saul must have been stuffed with boundless confidence to think he could walk into Damascus, armed only with paper authority from Jerusalem’s religious authorities, to arrest and bind men and women and drag them back to Jerusalem. Luke seems unaware of the political realities. Why would Aretas’s governor in Damascus allow synagogue leaders in his city to accede to letters from Jerusalem’s high priest, involving the loss of citizens’ liberties? The cities of the Decapolis prided themselves on being free cities. If Damascus was less free under Aretas, it was certainly not in the high priest’s jurisdiction. Given the recent bitter conflict, Damascus would hardly have been a welcoming place for an agent of Herodian and Sadducean control. However, neither Paul’s own accounts, nor those of Acts make it precisely clear who he was working for when he, the most zealous, most uncompromising, and deadliest persecutor among Jesus’s enemies “wasted” the “church of God” (Galatians 1:13). The point made in Acts that Saul went to the high priest for letters to give to synagogues outside of Judea does not tell us who he represented, or who provided the muscle. In 39–40 CE, he could have been Herod Agrippa’s agent. Agrippa was now tetrarch of Philip’s old territory, some twenty miles south of Damascus.
In Acts, Saul simply appears. He is a young man holding the coats of those stoning the “first Christian martyr,” called Stephen (which means “crown”). However, it is impossible to take Acts as reliable history, though there is history behind it, and historical personages appearing in it, as in the Gospels.
For those wondering why we have gone beyond the beheading of John the Baptist (if only by a few years), it is to try to understand the source of the long-running polemic against John the Baptist, his baptism, and spiritual status, so to establish whether or not Christian tradition has represented John accurately. There can be little doubt that the source of the anti-John polemic has been treated very generously indeed, even though he first appears as a destroyer of almost everything John and Jesus had established:
But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel, which was preached of me, is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. (Galatians 1:12–14)
Saul admits to having been thoroughly vicious in his treatment of the church. He offers no apology; he did what he believed right, indeed could pride himself on his extra-extraordinary zeal. He got more out of the Jews’ religion than almost anybody. But he had decided to change tack. Or rather, it had been decided for him; he had found Christ not in anybody’s teaching; he had found the Son of God in himself.
Since Aretas, whose governor was in control of Damascus when Paul “saw the light,” died in 40 CE, Saul’s change of direction in life must have occurred between 37 and 40. At a reasonable outside, we might date it to 39 CE, though it could have been 38. In 39 CE Agrippa returned to Judea from Rome, the year in which Antipas and Herodias left Galilee and Perea never to return. Josephus gives us very little information as to what was happening in Judea between late 37 and 39; perhaps he just could not find anything to say about it. He was himself a baby and toddler at the time.
It is reasonable to suppose that the people who pushed for Jesus’s execution were the same as those who opposed his followers in Jerusalem and elsewhere thereafter, when they had the chance. Unless Saul had an equally startling conversion to the cause of “threatenings and slaughter” (Acts 9:1) as he experienced on the road to Damascus, he was likely to have been party to the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus: a rather staggering thought, but not without merit.
Now that we have a historically realistic date for the crucifixion, and for the execution of John, and have been able to put these events within their political context as far as we can, we see that Saul was not, as popularly imagined, a kind of second generation arriviste into the “Christian story” but a man of the time, a player, albeit a shady one, until he “came out of the shadows,” as it were, in the late 30s and early 40s. But did we ever really know who “Paul” was? And if Saul’s violent activities now bring us closer to the crucifixion, would it be baseless to suspect the presence of Saul’s hand in the arrest and execution of John the Baptist as well?
Saul/Paul never detailed the extent of his intimidations and slaughters: no names, no detail, no apology. For him, it was all a kind of inner struggle; Paul was never anything less than right about everything. If he was humble, as he admitted, it was for a purpose; if he was a fool, then likewise. Wisdom baffles brains; and if he had no brains, why are you reading this? And if Saul condemned to death in the name of God, then was it not right? Paul, after all, was never in a moment’s doubt that without the shedding of blood, there could be no salvation. Jesus had to die. John, we may suppose, likewise. It was God’s will.
If Saul had that much blood on his hands, and if a spiritual awakening did finally, and suddenly, dawn on his angry-young-man consciousness, is it any wonder he collapsed in a neurotic heap of catastrophic psychic self-recrimination, hearing “a voice”: “Saul, Saul, why are you pursuing me?”
Oh, you did not know the Greek verb diōko is just as well translated as “pursue,” as “persecute?” It is a subtle difference, but rather significant, is it not?
Why are you pursuing me?
Was it a voice crying in Paul’s
wilderness?
Chapter Seven
JOHN AND JESUS
Comrades in a Secret Plan
WHAT PICTURE of John the Baptist would we enjoy in the Gospels if John had been released by Herod Antipas, instead of being executed? Would we even have any Gospels? What would have happened to the main story?
The orthodox view of John the Baptist requires John to bow out just in time for Jesus to take center stage. The “herald” scenario only works in terms of Jesus being the one heralded if Jesus can be shown as the one who comes “after” John. Otherwise, we must assume that the “one” who was coming after was someone or something different. As we have seen, the biblical prophecies employed by the evangelists strongly suggest that the way was being prepared for the Lord God to come to his people. That the chosen mode of coming meant that the coming one turned out not to be the “Lord God” directly, but the “Son” to be followed by the Holy Spirit or “Paraclete” appears to be the conclusion of Jesus’s followers, not John. How John himself might have seen the figure of the messiah is still an open question. The New Covenanters, and popular zeal, required a messiah who would lead a holy war to a swift victory over the “Sons of Darkness.”
If John was the herald, Jesus the one to “come after,” then the herald scenario required John’s death—and pretty quickly, too. If this were a novel, one might ask, “Why has the author killed off the hero”—or, arguably, one of the two leading characters—“so soon?” Why does Luke go to the trouble of giving us such a big buildup for John, an entire birth narrative involving parents and miracles (1:5–80), if John is simply going to back offstage, out of the limelight? Since John did not, as far as we can tell, “hand himself over” to Antipas and beg for execution—I’ d rather die than hang around and spoil Jesus’s chances!—we must presume that the killing of John was traumatic for his followers. According to Josephus, Judeans regarded John’s death as a catastrophe that so displeased God that it caused another catastrophe (for Antipas at least): his army’s defeat by King Aretas’s forces. The public, according to Josephus, believed that God was displeased with Antipas for killing John. You will not find this thought in the New Testament.
The Mysteries of John the Baptist Page 17