Passion, Death & Resurrection © Henry Wansbrough 2005
Chapter One: The
1. The Quest for the Historical Jesus
2. ‘A Passion Narrative with extended Introduction’
Chapter Two: Politico-Historical Background to the Execution of Jesus
1. The Crucifixion of Jesus a Historical Fact
2. The Governance of Judaea in the time of Jesus
3. Pilate’s Governorship of Judaea
1. The Evidence of Philo
2. The Evidence of Josephus
Chapter Three: The Agony in the Garden
1. Mark’s Account
1. The Markan Authorship
2. The Failure of the Disciples
3. The Prayer
2. Matthew’s Account
3. Luke’s Account
Chapter Four: The Arrest
1. Mark’s Account – the Betrayal
2. Matthew’s Account – Jesus Betrayed
3. Luke’s Account – the Captive Healer
4. John’s Account – ‘I am He’
Chapter Five: Before the High Priest
1. Mark’s Account
2. Matthew’s Account
3. Luke’s Account – Preparation of Charges
4. John’s Account – Condemnation by Caiaphas – Confrontations with Annas
Chapter Six: Jesus before Pilate
1. Mark’s Account
1. Interrogation by Pilate
2. The Barabbas Scene
2. Matthew’s Account
1. Matthew’s Techniques in the Pilate Narrative
2. The Messiah Rejected
3. Interrogation before Pilate and Herod – Luke’s Account
3. Disciples under Persecution
4. Jesus before Pilate in John
1. A Climax of Johannine Themes
2. The Artistry of the Scene
Chapter Seven: The Crucifixion
1. Mark’s Account
2. Matthew’s Account
1. The Mockery
2. The Apocalyptic Signs
3. Luke’s Account
1. The Framework
2, The Christological Focus
3. A Scene of Repentance and Healing
4. John’s Account
1. Jesus Reigns
2. The Foundation of the Church
1. The Quest for the Historical Jesus
The basic thrust and purpose of the historical Jesus has been seen and interpreted in many ways. Did his followers later present as a religious innovator and founder of a new religious way someone who had in fact been a mistaken apocalyptic visionary, a philosopher, a social reformer, or a political revolutionary? Is it possible that the gospels do not convey a true picture of Jesus? Is the true Jesus obscured rather than revealed by the gospel accounts? Did the early community fabricate a Jesus to their own liking or their own needs? Did they misunderstand or distort the true thrust of his proclamation? If they did, this must cause a major difficulty for a Christian. Must not a Christian hold that the gospels, the inspired Word of God, constitute a reliable record? A reliable record, however, is not the same as dead-pan reporting, if such exists. A record is always interpreted. The camera, some hold, can never lie, but the selection and juxtaposition even of genuine photographs can give an interpretation of a scene. No journalist reports events without some message to convey, some impression to mediate. Even a historian writes only to convey a particular interpretation of the course of events or the career of a subject.
Every writer, before beginning to write, must decide what is important to include or exclude, and how the various elements interrelate. Such decisions in themselves constitute personal interpretations. Every writer or narrator sees even a ‘fact’ from a particular point of view. A car mechanic, the driver, a policeman and an exasperated father (owner of the car!) will report a car crash from different points of view, even if they are trying to be objective. Each holds different aspects to be important. Each will describe differently what happened; indeed, each will conceive ‘what happened’ differently. They will also focus on different aspects of the previous history which led up to the accident/‘accident’, in order better to understand what happened. Writing for colleagues, one may focus on mechanical failure, another on weather conditions, a third on impatience, a fourth on upbringing. They may interpret the event by varied literary or proverbial allusions to ‘a stitch in time saves nine’, ‘a cloud the size of a man’s hand’, ‘the largest parking lot in Europe’, ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’.
For some decades in the mid-twentieth century it was widely held that the gospels might have some basis in history, but that they could not be considered historical works. The earliest Christians were considered simply not to have any interest in history because the imminence of the end of the world removed any point in preserving historical records, and because they failed to distinguish between the words of the historical Jesus and the words ‘spoken’ to the ‘prophets’ of the early communities in the name of the Risen Lord. The gospels were held to be unique, sui generis documents, conveying the message of Jesus with scant regard for any kind of history.
The first claim has been greatly moderated by recent work (see p. 7ff). The second has been fruitfully addressed by Richard Burridge 1992. Burridge points out that a first pre-requisite for understanding any piece of writing is to know in what type of writing, what genre it falls. A love poem is to be read differently from a legal document. A report in The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Independent are all to be evaluated from different points of view, according to the ends which these newspapers have. Burridge persuasively situates the gospels in the general genre of biography. But within the class of biography at that time were several different sub-classes, such as laudatory biographies (encomia), political pamphlets under the guise of biographies, philosophical works under the guise of biographies, and biographies of properly religious figures which concentrate on the religious message. It is into the last class that the gospels fall. This means that their chief concentration is on the message and significance of the events, but without excluding the historical basis for such significance. It is, consequently, not always easy to establish exactly what did happen or exactly what was said, simply because the ‘bare facts’ are not the most important element. The problem must be considered in detail, and under several different heads.
It is impossible to take the words and actions of Jesus in the gospels as literally true and exact in the way which would be provided by an unedited camcorder or tape recorder. In what sense, then, are they to be regarded as true history?
1. The words of Jesus are reported differently in different gospels. On divorce did Jesus say ‘Everyone who divorces his wife, except for the case of an illicit marriage, makes her an adulteress, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery’ (Mt 5.32), or did he say ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marriesa nother she is guilty of adultery too’ (Mk 10.11-12), or did he vary his teaching on two different occasions? How is it that the literary style of Jesus in John is indistiguishable from that of the author (where do Jesus’ words end and the authorial comment begin in Jn 3.10-21?) and quite different from that of the synoptic Jesus?
2. Variations between different accounts of the same (or probably the same) incident show that there has been a good deal of latitude and development in the handing down of stories . Are the stories of the Feeding of the Five Thousand in Mark 6.30-44 and the Feeding of the Four Thousand (8.1-10) in fact variant versions of the same incident? And if they are, what of Jesus’ reference to them in Mark 8.19-20 as two incidents? The story of the cure of the Canaanite Woman’s daughter in Matthew 15.21-28 must be the same as that of the Syro-Phoenician’s daughter in Mark 7.24-30, despite differences of detail. But, to go on to a more extreme case, is the incident of the cure of the Centurion of Capernaum’s son (Mt 8.5-13; Lk 7.1-10) the same as the incident of the cure of the Royal Official of Capernaum’s son (Jn 4.46-53). Furthermore, are the Mt/Lk/Jn story an account of the same incident, with variations, as is the case with the two Canaanite/Syro-Phoenician stories? Is the story of the miraculous catch of fish, followed by the call of Peter, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (Lk 5.1-11) an account of the same incident as the account of the miraculous catch of fish, followed by the call of Peter after the resurrection (Jn 21.1-19). One very obvious difference here is that the Luke story takes place early in Jesus’ earthly ministry, and the John story after the resurrection.
3. Many of the incidents are crafted with a particular purpose – as
is almost always the case in the telling of stories. For instance the story of
the Multiplication of Loaves in Mark 6.30-44 is carefully crafted to bring out
the parallel with 2 Kings 2.42-44 and so to show that Jesus is repeating the
wonder wrought by Elisha, who in turn was repeating the wonder wrought by
Moses. Thus Jesus is shown to be a new Moses. Similarly, the numbers are
stylized (twelve baskets of scraps correspond to twelve tribes of
The same interpreted re-telling of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem cannot be missed: Matthew 21.8-9 indicates that ‘Very great crowds spread their cloaks on the road, while others were cutting branches… and the crowds who went in front and those who were following…’. On the other hand, Mark 11.8-9 has only ‘Many people… and those who went in front and those who followed’. Mark’s account gives the basis for the flavoured and interpreted account in Matthew. Furthermore, what did the crowds cheer? Mark has them cheer ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed the coming kingdom of our father David’, quoting Psalm 117, and focussing on the coming of the kingdom. Matthew shows the crowds cheering ‘Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’, that is, directing the cheers not to the kingdom but directly to Jesus himself.
4. The sequence of events is difficult or impossible to establish. The order of pericopes in the synoptic gospels is largely dependent on that given by Mark, though Matthew departs from it in clearly defined patterns: he presents five major sections, each composed of action followed by discourse, and to this end gathers together teachings (e.g. in the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5-7) and a collection of ten miracles (chapters 8-9). The motives for Luke’s departures from Mark’s order may similarly be clearly catalogued. For example he narrates the arrest of John before the Baptism of Jesus to solve the embarrassing problem of Jesus submitting himself to John for baptism. He advances the scene of Jesus’ explusion from Nazareth (Mark 6.1-6) as part of his operation of creating a major prophetic scene by which Jesus sets out his programme in ‘the Nazareth Manifesto’ (Luke 4.16-30). On the whole, however, the order remains that of Mark, and Mark manifestly does not relate events in their chronological order, but rather groups them according to subject-matter. First there is a collection of healing miracles in and around Capernaum (1.21-2.1), then a collection of controversies with the Pharisees in Galilee (2.1-3.6 – balanced in the second half of the gospel by the collection of controversies with the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem in 12.1-37). The positioning of the two instances of opening the eyes of the blind is clearly symbolic, coming as they do each before a major revelation, an opening of the eyes of the blind disciples (8.22-26; 10.46-52).
So the lynch-pin of generally-accepted chronology, the week of the
Passion, may well also be a creation of Mark. This would parallel Mark’s
careful spacing of Jesus’ final day by mention of the hours of prayer at third,
sixth and ninth hours (15.25, 33, 34). The singing of Psalm 119, ‘Blessed is he
who is coming in the name of the Lord’, and the waving of green branches (Mark
11.8-9) fit naturally into place at the Festival of Sukkoth or Tabernacles in
the autumn, rather than at the time of the conventional Palm Sunday, just
before Passover. Is it likely that Jesus – however long or short his ministry –
saved up the few days of his solitary visit to
Towards some Solutions
For practical purposes it is reasonable to begin an overview of scholarly reaction to such problems with the great work of Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906). The original German title of this work, Von Reimarus zu Wrede, makes clear that the book is itself basically a survey of the earlier history of thought on the matter. Reimarus heads the procession of scholars (or speculators) surveyed by Schweitzer because in 1778, ten years after Reimarus’ death, fragments of his work were published, in which he makes the important distinction between the Jesus of history (who failed to establish an earthly messianic kingdom) and the Christ of faith (to whom his followers, having stolen his body, attributed resurrection). Schweitzer surveyed the progress of the debate about the historical Jesus as far as the publication of William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret in 1901. Schweitzer himself then concluded that Jesus had been a mistaken apocalyptic visionary, who went to his death in the expectation that it would introduce a new world-order. Schweitzer’s famous conclusion was:
Jesus…. in the knowledge that he is the coming Son of Man. lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn and he throws himself upon it. Then it does turn and crushes him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, he has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great man, who was strong enough to think of himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind, and to bend history to his purpose, is hanging upon it still (p. 403).
The strength of Schweitzer’s viewpoint was that he recognised the eschatological dimension of Jesus’ message of the Kingdom. Its limitation was that he understood too literally and failed to translate, or to de-code, the apocalyptic language and symbols in which this eschatological vision was expressed. Such a misunderstanding was, perhaps, more easily understandable in an age when the bulk of apocalyptic writings of the first century had only recently begun to be unearthed, when the genre of apocalyptic was still less widely appreciated. Before such nineteenth century discoveries, this style of writing was known only from the later prophetic books of the Old Testament, especially Daniel, and from the New Testament Book of Revelation, a slim basis on which to form a rounded concept of the way apocalyptic works. Inherent in this genre of writing are cosmic disturbances, lurid images of violence, figures moving easily between earth and heaven (in both directions), heraldic and speaking animals, far-reaching symbolism derived from the Old Testament. The basic message of such literature is always reassurance that God will soon intervene to rescue his people from persecution. But prediction of concrete events plays little or no part in its prophetic writings, which seek to interpret history rather than to foretell how it will unfold. Against this background the apocalyptic sayings of the gospels take on a very different feel, and so a very different meaning, and can hardly form a basis for the view that Jesus expected this space-time contiuum to cease to exist with his death..
The scholarly world scarce had time to digest Schweitzer’s findings before the outbreak of the First World War. Immediately after the First World War concentration switched to the new methods of Form Criticism, one of whose presuppositions was that it is impossible to penetrate to the bedrock of what actually happened in the lifetime of Jesus. A basic position of the form critics was that we can go no further back in history than to trace the influences, questions and concerns of the early communities which formed the units of the gospel tradition. The first generation of Christians was so concerned with the imminent coming of the Day of the Lord that they had no time for history. They had no interest in conserving the memory of their founder. That colossus, Rudolf Bultmann, whose influence dominated New Testament scholarship during the middle decades of the twentieth century, particularly held that research into the life of Jesus was an impossibility. Adopting the position of William Wrede (The Messianic Secret in the Gospels, 1901, but translated into English only 1971), Bultmann held, for instance, that Jesus never thought of himself as Messiah, or claimed to be Messiah. It was his disciples, after his death, who invented these claims, and worked them into the accounts of his ministry. The inventive power of the Christian community was immense. According to Bultmann, the story of the testing of Jesus in the desert, more elaborate in Matthew and Luke than in Mark, was pure invention: ‘The story of the temptation is a legend which arose out of reflection on the quality of Jesus as Messiah, or rather on the nature of the Christian belief in Jesus as Messiah’. Indeed, on theological grounds Bultmann declared that it was not even desirable to return to the ‘Christ according to the flesh’, for ‘It is not the Christ according to the flesh who is the Lord, but Jesus Christ as he is encountered in the proclamation’.
Such was Bultmann’s authority that reputable scholars no longer attempted the task which Bultmann had declared to be impossible and mistaken, of establishing the true facts of Jesus’ life. It was not until 1953 that one of Bultmann’s former students, by now himself a prestigious professor, Ernst Käsemann, in a lecture entitled ‘The Problem of the Historical Jesus’, reversed this trend and initiated what has become known as ‘The New Quest of the Historical Jesus’. The New Quest was concerned principally with the authenticity of the sayings of Jesus, rather than his deeds. It set out to establish criteria by which these sayings may be judged authentic or inauthentic. It operated, of course, against the background of the accepted and permanent findings of the Form Critics that the needs, concerns and problems of the earliest communities played an important part in the handing down of the tradition and in the formation of the gospels.
A variety of criteria for separating out the authentic words of Jesus was proposed, such as:
· ‘Multiple Attestation’ – a saying is historically reliable if it is attested in several different sources, not simply in Mark (and derivatively in Matthew and Luke), and the hypothetical Sayings Source ‘Q’, but also in John, whose material is deemed to represent an independent tradition . More reliable still is it if the tradition is contained also in Paul. An instance of this would be the narrative of the institution of the eucharist, given in the synoptic gospels and 1 Corinthians 11. Another is Jesus’ objection to the Jewish tolerance of divorce, present in the synoptic gospels and 1 Corinthians 7. The major difficulty about this criterion is that even in the score of years between Jesus’ ministry and 1 Corinthians, a tradition foisted on Jesus a dozen years after his death could have taken the slightly divergent forms attested in the gospels and 1 Corinthians.
· ‘Friend and Foe’ – if Jesus’ friends and foes concur in asserting something it has a high claim to historicity. An instance of this would be Jesus’ exorcisms, since the opponents of Jesus, in explaining away Jesus’ exorcisms by his alliance with Satan or Beelzebul (Mark 3.21-26), tacitly admitted that such exorcisms occurred.
· ‘Criterion of Embarrassment’. The progressive silence of the gospels on the humiliations of Jesus’ passion and death confirm what is anyway obvious, that it was embarrassing for Christians to admit that their leader died the humiliating and disgusting death of a criminal slave. The crucifixion would hardly have been invented by the followers of Jesus if it had not happened. Similarly the gospels show a degree of embarrassment at the Baptism of Jesus: how is it that Jesus submitted himself to John’s baptism, thereby joining a community of repentant sinners and tacitly classing himself as a repentant sinner? Mark describes the incident with John the Baptist. Then Matthew shows his embarrassment by inserting (inventing?) a snippet of dialogue, in which Jesus explains to the Baptist that the baptism is not John’s action on Jesus, but their joint action ‘it is fitting for us so to fulfill all justice’ (Mt 3.14-15). Luke takes a more radical solution, by first describing the arrest of John, and then not mentioning John at all in the baptism-scene. In addition, by Luke the focus is taken off the baptism itself, which becomes only a time-marker for the descent of the Spirit on Jesus to begin his ministry (as the descent of the Spirit on the disciples at Pentecost begins their ministry).
· ‘Criterion of Dissimilarity’. This criterion, to which Norman Perrin (one of the earliest pioneers of this technique) ascribes the greatest importance, is also the strictest. A saying is regarded as authentic if its content is at variance both with the Judaism which preceded Jesus and with the doctrines and interests of the young Christian community. It cannot, therefore, stem either from another contemporary teacher or from the early community. This criterion has three unsatisfactory features. Firstly, it is too strict, and must exclude many of Jesus’ authentic sayings. Secondly, we do not know enough about the highly varied contemporary Judaism to be sure that a saying is in disharmony with all the currents of contemporary Judaism. Thirdly, it leaves Jesus without forbears from the past and without influence for the future. One saying which passes this test is the shocking saying, ‘Leave the dead to bury their dead’ (Mt 8.22).
The difficulty of this process, however, was the application of these criteria. Scholars differed widely about whether such and such a saying was shown by these criteria to be authentic. Perhaps the ultimate absurdity of the use of the method was reached in The Jesus Seminar, a fraternity of scholars who began in 1985 to meet twice a year in various North American universities to study the sayings of Jesus, colour-coding them for authenticity from red (‘That’s Jesus’) through pink and grey to black (‘There’s been some mistake’). An extreme product of the strong anti-historical attitude of this Seminar may be found in Gerd Lüdemann’s book, Jesus after 2000 Years, what he really said and did (SCM Press, 2000). Lüdemann discusses in turn every unit of the gospels, considering successively Redaction, Tradition and Historical yields. Judgements abound in this vein: on Mark 7.24-30, ‘The historical yield is nil, as the narrative must be derived from debates in the early Christian community’ (p. 51). On John 6.35, ‘This saying is inauthentic. Jesus did not understand himself as a bringer of salvation’ (p. 471). Lüdemann’s lame conclusion is, ‘I have come to the conclusion that Jesus is a sympathetic, original figure, a man of wit and humour at whom I sometimes chuckle. But… he sometimes becomes too serious for me. In his confident dialogue with God, Jesus seems to me almost ridiculous, for here he makes the mistake of so many religious people: he sees himself at the centre of the world’ (p. 692).
A new and different approach was pioneered by E.P. Sanders, which
has been characterized by N.T. Wright as ‘The Third Quest’
. For Sanders the starting-point is not the sayings, each considered in
isolation, but the actions of Jesus, and more specifically the action of Jesus
Nevertheless, Sanders also gives a fairly narrow inventory of basic facts about Jesus which are ‘almost beyond dispute’:
1. Jesus was born c. 4BCE near the time of the death of Herod the Great.
2. He spent his childhood and early adult years in
3. He was baptized by John the Baptist.
4. He called disciples.
5. He taught in the towns, villages and countryside of
6. He preached ‘the
7. About the year 30 he went to
8. He created a disturbance in the
9. He had a final meal with the disciples.
10.He was arrested and interrogated by the Jewish authorities, specifically the high priest.
11. He was executed on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate.
At the same time, the extent to which Sanders diverges from the picture of Jesus acceptable to popular piety – and the conjectural nature of a reconstruction - may be seen from his outline of the death of Jesus:
It is possible that, when Jesus drank his last cup of wine and predicted that he would drink it again in the kingdom, he thought that the kingdom would arrive immediately. After he had been on the cross for a few hours, he despaired, and cried out that he had been forsaken. This speculation is only one possible explanation. We do not know what he thought as he hung in agony on the cross. After a relatively short period of suffering he died, and some of his followers and sympathizers hastily buried him.
Sanders’ basic picture of Jesus’ endeavour has been highly
influential. There have not, however, been lacking other reconstructions of his
fundamental orientation. One of the earliest pictures in the New Quest was that
of S.G.F. Brandon. In Jesus and the
Zealots (1967) he argued from the fact that Jesus was crucified by the
Romans that he was in fact a violent revolutionary, after the pattern of the
Zealots who spearheaded the Jewish Revolt in 66AD. Jesus’ disciples then
falsely presented him as a religious rather than a political leader – insofar as
the two can, in a theocratic situation like Judaism, be distinguished. One
persuasive point in
Another attempt at interpreting Jesus was pioneered by in 1988 by F. Gerald Downing. Downing’s starting-point is that the Galilee of Jesus’ time was highly hellenized, and Greek would have been currently spoken. Further, ‘our early Christian documents are addressed to people for whom it was natural to converse and think in Greek’ (p. v). Downing observes that Jesus’ disciples were sent out more or less in the same guise as Cynic preachers. The Cynics were popular philosophers who radically questioned the whole basis of the accepted criteria of success in that and any age, namely wealth and prestige. Their wandering teachers dressed in much the same way as the Christian missionaries are instructed to do in Matthew 9.35-10.16; Mark 6.6-11, etc. ‘A raggedly cloaked and outspoken figure with no luggage and no money would not just have looked Cynic, he would obviously have wanted to’ (p. vi). Downing then assembles a collection of Cynic sayings and teachings which are not entirely dissimilar to some of those of Jesus in the gospels. For instance parallels to ‘It is not the healthy who need the doctor but the sick. I came to call not the upright but sinners’ (Mark 2.17) are given as Antisthenes’ remark, ‘Physicians can attend the sick without catching the fever’ and Diogenes’ saying, ‘The sun visits dung-heaps without getting dirty’ (p. 122). Jesus’ sayings on forgiveness are put in parallel to Seneca’s question, ‘Who gets angry with a patient he is trying to cure?’ (p. 123). Such a position encounters a host of difficulties:
It is highly doubtful whether
· The sayings catalogued as parallel to those of the gospels are only distantly similar to gospel teachings, though the gospel sayings do share with them the outspoken criticism of current systems of value, and especially the emphasis on human dignity and respect for individuals .
· There is no parallel in these Cynic sayings of Jesus’ overwhelming sense of his mission from God to establish the Reign of God. There is no echo of the eschatological ring which sounds so strongly in all Jesus’ teaching. The miracles, which formed such an important part of the tradition of Jesus and his followers, are totally lacking.
A slightly different background is presupposed by John Dominic
He holds that Jesus does indeed fit well against the background of the Cynics,
in a world of aristocratic and plutocratic oppression. He characterizes Jesus
and his followers as ‘hippies in a world of Augustan yuppies’ (p. 421). There
is, however, a difference: the Cynics exercised their mission in the cities,
whereas Jesus and his followers were peasant Jewish Cynics: ‘his work was among
the farms and villages of
Quite different is the position of Geza Vermes, who, at least since
the publication of his Jesus the Jew
in 1973, has been writing to depict Jesus against a thoroughly Jewish
It happened that there was a snake in the locality which injured people. They went and reported it to R. Hanina ben Dosa. He said to them, ‘Show me its hole’. He placed his heel on the entrance of the hole, and the snake come out, bit him and died. He put it on his shoulder [so disregarding purity-regulations] and carried it to the school. He said to them, ‘See, my children, it is not the snake that kills, but sin.’ In that hour they framed the saying, ‘Woe to the man who meets a snake, but woe to the snake that meets R. Hanina ben Dosa’ (p. 244).
The miracle, the disregard for the interpretation of the purity Law, the pithy, balanced saying, all are reminiscent of the stories about Jesus in the synoptic gospels. Yet Vermes grants that Jesus towers over all these contemporary figures, ‘Jesus was a solitary giant among the ancient Hasidim’ (p. 256), both by the perceptiveness of his teaching, the strength of his resolve and, above all, by his eschatological outlook in declaring the nearness and the actual presence of the Kingdom of God.
Enough examples have been given to show what diverse evaluations have been made of the historicity of the sayings and deeds of Jesus given in the gospels, and how widely differing are the interpretations of even respected mainline scholars. The gospels cannot be treated as naïve or straightforward history, written according to the canons of modern history or modern factual reportage. Or can they? This question must be addressed not only to the gospels but also to ‘the canons of modern history or modern factual reportage’. The difference between the technique of the modern historian and the technique of the evangelist is that the modern historian claims to separate the account of the event from the interpretation, while the evangelist weaves into the account the interpretation which he and the community perceive in the event. Just as a modern account may bring out the meaning and significance of an event by allusion or comparison to a previous well-known event which the historian considers a parallel, so the evangelist frequently inclines to bring out the sacred significance of an event in the life of Jesus by allusion and comparison to passages in the sacred books, the Bible.
What, then, are the gospels, and has the story told in them been stretched and packaged to point a lesson? Our subject is the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, so that our primary question is whether the whole story is told with an eye to or affected by these final events of the story of Jesus. It is arguable that the evangelists see the Passion, Death and Resurrection as the climax of Jesus’ whole life, and so present it as leading inevitably to these events, to the extent that they can already be sensed in the earlier events of his life.
2. ‘A Passion Narrative with Extended Introduction’
As long ago as 1892 Martin Kähler described the gospel of Mark as ‘a passion narrative with extended introduction’. The same may be said of all the gospels. The Passion comes as no surprise, but has been prepared for throughout the gospel; it is the summit without which the gospel would make no sense. In each of the gospels the expectation of the Passion has been woven into all the preceding narrative. The reader senses and knows right from the beginning that Jesus is the Christ who is destined to suffer and to die.
In the first gospel, Mark, expectation of the Passion permeates the gospel particularly on three levels.
Firstly, the reader is prepared for the Passion by the frequent allusions or ‘flash-forwards’ which occur. The clue to the gospel is given in the Voice from heaven at the baptism. This is the climax of Mark’s brief introduction which shows the reader who Jesus is, before the reader settles back to watch the disciples themselves discovering slowly, so slowly, who Jesus is. The introduction provides the basis for the characteristic Markan feature of irony, a narration on two levels, when the reader understands what is happening at a different level to the understanding of the actors on the ground. At the same time the actors are discovering that Jesus is first the Messiah and then the suffering Messiah, while the reader, already knowing that Jesus is, in some sense, ‘son of God’, is discovering fully by the action which unrolls in the course of the gospel what it means to be ‘son of God’. But already in the Voice from heaven there is a hint of the Passion. The words of the Voice, ‘You are my son, the beloved; in you I am well pleased’ already form an allusion to the opening of the Servant Songs in Isaiah 42.1. The Servant of the Lord in Isaiah is to suffer and be humiliated, achieving vindication and the glory of God only through suffering. If Jesus is being called to be the Servant, then the ‘favour’ of God includes suffering and rejection. Such is the destiny already appointed to Jesus at his baptism.
Next, in the controversies with the Pharisees in 2.1-3.6, a similar hint occurs at crucial points. The controversies are skilfully arranged in a chiasmus, highlighting the Passion at the two key spots, the centre and the end. In the centre comes the hint, ‘The time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them’ (2.20). Similarly at the end the outcome of the controversies is a warning of persecution to come: ‘The Pharisees went out and began at once to plot with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him’ (3.6). The rest of the chapter is devoted to the deepening opposition to Jesus, even from his own family, presented in a typically Markan ‘sandwich’: family – scribes – family (3.13-35). This represents a crescendo of opposition, to which Jesus finally reacts with the Parable of the Sower, a summative comment on his inability to attract a widespread and loyal following: most of the seed goes to waste, and only a small proportion of it produces an increasingly encouraging yield, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. Very soon, the fate of the Baptist at the hands of Herod will itself be warning enough for those who have heard the similarity of Jesus’ preaching to that of John. It is further stressed by the ominous, ‘they came and took his corpse and laid it in a tomb’ (6.29), the same phrase, with the same rough word for ‘corpse/body’ as occurs of Jesus’ burial in 15.45-46.
A second indication of the inevitability of the Passion is provided by the consistent emphasis on the certainty of persecution for the disciples. Mark frequently indicates emphasis by triple repetition, and nowhere in a more pronounced fashion than in the events of the Passion. So the Passion is formally prophesied by Jesus three times. Each of these great formal prophecies of the Passion (8.31; 9.31; 10.32-34) is followed by a misunderstanding by the disciples and a re-iteration by Jesus that sharing his sufferings is a pre-requisite for being a disciple: ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me’ (8.34); ‘if anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all’ (9.35). Finally, to the sons of Zebedee who ask for seats at his right and left Jesus can promise only, ‘The cup that I shall drink, you shall drink’ (10.39). The company with Jesus, on his right and left, will be the company kept by the two criminals crucified with him, a grim Markan irony! Most strongly of all, the accent of Mark 13, the long discourse on the future of the followers of Jesus – by far the longest and most carefully-crafted single discourse in Mark – is all on the inevitability of persecution to be undergone by his disciples, from which they will eventually be delivered: ‘You will be handed over to sanhedrins; you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake’ (Mark 13.9).
Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly of all, the disciples cannot understand their Master until they have seen and realised in experience that Jesus can reach his destiny only through the Passion. Immediately after the Transfiguration they are warned that they should ‘tell no one what they had seen until after the Son of man had risen from the dead’ (Mark 9.9). It is at the moment of Jesus’ death that the climax occurs. The first human being to acknowledge Jesus as ‘son of God’ is the centurion at the foot of the cross. This is a clear signal that Jesus’ true quality of divine sonship is revealed only in his suffering and death. No wonder the disciples were forbidden to proclaim the message when they had been able to understand only a preliminary part of it, still needing to be completed by an understanding of the centrality of the Passion to a full comprehension of Jesus’ person and significance.
Each of the evangelists has his own way of bringing the coming Passion to the attention of his audience. Matthew hints at it already in the Infancy Story by Herod’s attempt to kill the child after the Magi slip away (Matthew 2.16-18). The murderous Jewish king contrasts with the appreciative gentile Wise Men, presaging the future hostile reaction of his subjects – just as at the end condemnatory Jewish crowds (‘His blood be on us and on our children’) contrast with the acquitting gentile Pilate (‘I find no cause in him’)..
The presage of suffering for the community is further ominously
stressed in the Beatitudes. The eight
Beatitudes themselves form a finely-wrought and beautifully balanced poem,
coming to a climax in the final Beatitude, ‘Blessed are those who are
persecuted in the cause of righteousness; the
It is neither certain nor relevant exactly where or when Matthew was writing, but tension between Matthew’s community and other Jews, personalized in ‘the scribes and Pharisees’, runs through the book. Matthew’s values are those of Judaism. From the beginning he presents Jesus as son of David and second Moses. The moral values which he presents are those of fulfilment of the Law, but in the new way of Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shows how his followers’ justice (dikaiosu,nh) must exceed the justice of the scribes and Pharisees, fulfilling scripture more perfectly than scribes and Pharisees can ever claim to do. At the same time, Matthew hints that – by contrast to Mark’s community – in his community those ‘boundary-markers’ of Judaism, sabbath and food-laws, were still observed. This strong emphasis on Judaism makes the criticism of the scribes and Pharisees (23.1-36) all the more confrontational. The disciples are warned that ‘they will hand you over to sanhedrins and in their synagogues you will be flogged’ (Mt 10.17). and that hostility will bring division right inside families (10.34-35).
Whether a formal break has occurred between Matthew’s kind of Judaism and a more normative Jewish community has been hotly disputed, but certainly they were on the cusp of such a break, and felt themselves to be a persecuted minority. An unprovable but imaginatively helpful context for such a community of Jewish disciples of Jesus as the Christ is the large Jewish community at Antioch on the Syrian coast, where his followers were first called ‘Christians’ (Ac 11.26). Here after the Sack of Jerusalem in 70 the Jews themselves were persecuted by their gentile townsfolk. The role of persecuted minority of a persecuted minority would have sharpened hostility to the degree which underlies much of Matthew’s writing, and accounts for the tension which is so palpable in his gospel.
In his own way Luke also makes the Passion the backbone at least of the second half of the gospel, in the form of the great journey up to Jerusalem (Luke 9.51-18.14), where Jesus the prophet is to perish, since ‘it would not be right for a prophet to die away from Jerusalem’ (13.33). But already earlier there have been sinister developments.
Before ever Jesus’ ministry begins we are ominously warned by Simeon’s dire prediction to Mary that the child is destined to be a sign which will be opposed, and that a sword will pierce her own heart (Luke 2.34). Again, at the end of the story of the Testing in the Desert, the devil leaves Jesus, but only ‘until the opportune moment’ (4.13), leaving the reader in suspense as to when this opportune moment will arrive. This opportune moment begins when ‘Satan entered into Judas’, leading him to make his pact with the chief priests (22.3).
When the ministry begins Luke treats us to one of those masterly
scenes in which he conveys a rich theological lesson in the form of an
historical story. He transforms the scene of the expulsion from
The Great Journey up to
John’s style of teaching is overwhelmingly allusive and ironical. By these means the reader is kept constantly aware of the impending Passion, Death and Resurrection. This gospel is full of hints and deeper layers of meaning which can be seen and appreciated by those who will see them, by those who already have some understanding of the message, though on the surface they lack significance or seem merely poetical. Typical of this allusiveness are the three terms ‘the Hour’, ‘lifted up’ and ‘glorified’.
From the beginning of the gospel Jesus is awaiting a mysterious ‘Hour’,
and by his expectation heightens the tension also for the reader. So at the
Repeatedly the mention of the Hour awakens the reader’s expectation
and accelerates the forward movement of the gospel. Mysterious, almost furtive,
reminders of this significant moment do little to relieve the puzzlement. ‘The
Hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in
The tension finally begins to mount sharply in the last scene of the ministry, when the leaders of the Jews have already decided to do away with Jesus, since ‘it is better that one man should die for the people than that the whole nation should perish’, as the high priest says with consummate Johannine irony (11.50). The Johannine equivalent of the Agony in the Garden brings a bright focus on the Hour. Jesus is filled with anguish at the approach of the Hour, and yet he cannot – as he does in the synoptic gospels – pray that it should pass him by: ‘Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? “Father, save me from this Hour”? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this Hour’ (12.27). Jesus is utterly focussed on this Hour, and we begin to see the dual aspect of the Hour of which we have heard so much. It is an hour of dread as well as an hour of accomplishment, since Jesus continues immediately, ‘Father, glorify your name’ (12.28). As a banner-headline over the whole Passion Story stands the solemn declaration of Jesus’ acceptance of all that is to come, ‘Jesus, knowing that his Hour had come to pass from this world to the Father’ (13.1), repeated at the opening of the High Priestly prayer (17.1), ‘Father, the Hour has come’. Thus throughout the story of Jesus the Hour is woven into the fabric of the narrative as a destined and unalterable factor of the future.
The second vehicle of allusive expectation is the expression ‘lifted
up’. As with so many Johannine expressions, it is fertile with misunderstanding.
Nicodemus misunderstands birth a;nwqen as being a second physical birth when Jesus means birth ‘from
above’ (3.3-6). The Samaritan misunderstands the ambiguous offer of ‘living
water’, taking it to be fresh water when Jesus really means the water of life.
The Jews misunderstand Jesus’ teaching about eating his flesh as cannibalism
(6.32). It is as though misunderstanding is a deliberate policy of Jesus’
teaching, to provoke the puzzled question which in John so often leads on to
further explanation. So with ‘lifted up’. The promise that Jesus will be
‘lifted up’ first appears with a comparison to the brazen serpent lifted up onto
a standard during the wanderings of
Again, during the controversy with the Jews in the Temple that leads to attempts to stone Jesus for blasphemy, this mysterious lifting up is to be the occasion when they will recognise his divinity: ‘When you have lifted up the son of man, then you will know that I am He’ (8.28). We have already almost reached the statements in the High Priestly prayer in which Jesus explains that his coming Passion will be the occasion for his glorification and the revelation of the fullness of God’s love (17.1-6). A third time this ‘lifting up’ appears, ‘ “When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself”. By these words he indicated the kind of death he would die’ (12.32). To the crowd at the festival it can hardly indicate the kind of death he would die. Only to a prescient reader, knowing the outcome, is it a prophecy of the Passion and redemption.
Nor are these mysterious expressions the only presages of the coming
Passion. Ominous allusions are scattered throughout the gospel, forming a
backcloth which protrudes through the rest of the scenery and prepares the
reader for the final climax. At Jesus’ very first appearance, in the
The importance of this sketch is that it shows how, in each of the gospels, the future events of the Passion are already in view during the account of Jesus’ ministry, and how the expectation of the Passion influences that account. This certainly does not mean that history has been falsified to accommodate later events. On the other hand, events take on quite new significance if they are seen as part of a pattern: incidents, controversies, sayings take on a new dimension if they are seen to be a prelude to the Passion. The sketch also provides a suggestion that the accounts of the Passion will themselves be shaped to bring out their significance as part of a pattern. The historian will surely describe an event differently if it is seen as a world-shaking and world-forming event, rather than a single incident, however tragic, in the life of an individual.
In order to appreciate the theological orientation of the evangelists it is well to try to discern the historical process as it would be seen by an author interested only in the politico-historical dimension of events. This will enable us to see in what way and to what extent the gospel accounts have developed and expressed a point of view which would not be related by a politico-military historian.
In order to appreciate the colour of a picture it is useful to see the black-and-white uncoloured outline. The analogy is not quite exact, for, as we said earlier, every historian selects and constructs the picture according to some preconceptions, but it will serve as a rough image.
Politico-Historical Background to the Execution of Jesus
Before the examination of the gospel narratives of the Passion two
other essential background matters must be examined. First, there is no
reasonable historical doubt that Jesus was crucified. Secondly, certain aspects
of the political situation of
1. The Crucifixion of Jesus a Historical Fact
The fullest early outside evidence for Jesus, meagre but significant, comes from the Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the last two decades of the first century. On many subjects he is biassed and distorted, but there is no reason to suppose that two of these three passages are inaccurate.
In The Antiquities of the Jews (18.5.2) Josephus has a fairly full paragraph on John the Baptist, ‘who was a good man and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism, because the washing would be acceptable to God.’ Herod Antipas arrested him in case he should raise a rebellion among the people, ‘for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise’. Josephus includes this fact because the subsequent defeat of Herod’s army was attributed by many Jews to divine judgement for this action. This slightly more serious analysis than the popular version of John’s death given by Mark and Matthew is valuable. It shows that John’s influence and baptism was still remembered over half a century later. About Jesus himself, of course, it says nothing.
One mention of Jesus is merely in passing, which makes it all the more persuasive. He adds to the account of the stoning of James in 62 AD that he was ‘the brother of Jesus who was called Christ’ (Antiquities, 20.9.1). So Josephus accepts that at least some people claimed Jesus to be the Messiah. The other mention of Jesus is more important and also more controversial. The text we now have in Josephus is generally accepted to have been expanded by Christian writers in an easily detectable way:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it is right to call him a man, for he accomplished surprising feats – a teacher of such men as receive truth with pleasure. He won over both many Jews and many Greeks. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Antiquities, 18.3.3)
The probable insertions are indicated by italics. The first is a thinly-veiled claim for his divinity, the second a clear claim that he was the Messiah, and the third an acknowledgement of the resurrection appearances in accordance with the scriptures. None of these would have been made by Josephus himself.
There is, however, no reason to suppose that the crucifixion was added to Josephus’ original text. Whatever the significance seen by Christians after the event, there is no reason to suppose that the crucifixion of Jesus was other than a dreary, routine event. Crucifixion was a dreadful punishment, which chilled even the brutal Romans. Cicero, admittedly in a rhetorical passage where he is accusing a provincial governor of illegally crucifying a Roman citizen, calls it (In Verrem 2.5.165, 169) a crudelissimum taeterrimumque supplicium (a most cruel and disgusting punishment), and servitutis extremum summumque supplicium (the extreme and ultimate punishment of slavery). To crucify a Roman citizen was an unspeakable offence, but as a death for recalcitrant slaves and provincials it was nothing remarkable. After the slave-revolt of Spartacus 6,000 slaves were crucified beside the roads as a deterrent to others (Appian, Bellum Civile 1.120), and during the Jewish revolt escapees from besieged Jerusalem were sadistically nailed up in the sight of the defenders until there was no room left on the trees of the Mount of Olives (Josephus, Bellum Judaicum 5.451). At the time the crucifixion of Jesus would therefore merit no mention in the historians. The passing reference in the Roman historian Tacitus half a century later is all the more convincing. He is explaining the origin of the Christians to whom Nero attributed the Great Fire of Rome: ‘The initiator of this group, Christ, was executed during the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate’ (Annals, 15.44).
2. The Governance of
After the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC his kingdom was divided
between his four surviving sons, known as the ‘tetrarchs’ (‘rulers of a
quarter’). The southern-western and most important quarter, Judaea,
territory was then subjected to direct Roman rule. Most of the territory of the
Roman empire was governed by senators, very senior administrators of
would, however, be a mistake to imagine Rome as an occupying power, in the same
sense as England occupying India or Russia occupying Poland - British soldiers
or KGB men everywhere, answerable to ubiquitous District Commissioners or
Kommissars. The Roman principle everywhere in their vast empire was to leave as
much as possible of the government to the natives. Roman rule did not replace
the local government, but rather was superimposed on it, so that the standard
work can state that the governors ‘were there to fight Rome’s wars, collect
Rome’s taxes and exercise such supervision of the socii as was necessary for
the security of Rome, Romans living in the provinces and the socii themselves’
(Lintott 1993, p. 54). The governor, whether prefect or senator, did not have a
large staff and certainly no permanent bureaucracy. His staff was small, strictly personal,
selected by himself, and both brought out and returning to
To keep the peace both externally and internally. That this was conceived as
the primary task for the early governors of
To ensure the collection of taxes for
3. To oversee the administration of certain cases of justice. On the
whole Roman magistrates were cavalier in their treatment of provincials, though
they had to be considerably more careful in cases involving Roman citizens. Theoretically
provincials had no rights, and could be punished summarily, though obviously
such behaviour, unmitigated, would not make for a peaceful or happy province. Scholars
continue to be divided on whether the death penalty was reserved to the Roman
authority, or whether local courts had this right. Helen K. Bond has a neat
footnote (p. 16) on the matter, pointing out that there was at least one case
in which the Jews could execute even a Roman citizen, namely trespass on the
sanctuary of the temple (Josephus, BJ 6.4.125).
The statement in John 18.31, and the presumption throughout the Passion
Narratives, that only the governor has authority to impose the death penalty,
is often treated as ‘theologically motivated’. The only useful legal evidence
is provided by an imperial decree for
from these tasks government was carried on by the regime which had existed
before the Roman take-over. In the case of
In his tasks the High Priest was assisted by others. The conventional picture is that there was a body called ‘the Sanhedrin’, though the exact function, status and composition of this body remains a matter of controversy. E.P. Sanders points out that ‘this general consensus rests on a harmonization of Josephus, the Gospels and the Talmud’. The Great Sanhedrin eventually became the ruling body in Judaism, and it is easy to read the situation back from the Talmud into the time of Jesus five hundred years earlier. Martin Goodman cautions that ‘all assertions about the function and composition of the Sanhedrin are fraught with problems because of a radical conflict between the evidence of the rabbinic sources of the second century A.D. and later and that of the New Testament’ (p. 113). On two occasions Josephus gives different accounts in different works: in The Jewish War he mentions a group of councillors round the king, but in The Antiquities of the Jews (written in 93/94, some 20 years later, when the rabbis, gathered at Yavneh, had already begun to have some authoritative power) calls them the Sanhedrin (BJ 1.208-11 cf. Ant 14.177; BJ 1.434, cf. Ant 15.172-3). However, both these occasions describe incidents before the reign of Herod the Great, nearly a century before the events of the Passion. Even if the Sanhedrin existed before Herod’s reign, it is unlikely that the autocratic Herod would have left it in place or brooked the restrictive powers of such a council. Nor in fact is there any sign of it in the historical records. The situation is obviously much more fluid than is normally supposed. Sanders gives a significant summary of Josephus’ account of the events in Jerusalem leading up to the outbreak of war in 66 AD, where the leading parties are described variously as ‘the chief priests’, ‘the powerful’, ‘the best known men’. Only once (BJ 2.331) is a report to the council (boulh.) mentioned..This suggests that there was at most an informal body of respected men.
In evaluating the New Testament evidence it is important to note three separate uses of the term ‘sanhedrin’:
· Mark 13.9//Matt 10.17 ‘They will deliver you to sanhedrins’. These are some sort of local bodies, perhaps reflecting the councils of elders which ruled the Jewish communities of the Diaspora.
· John 11.47 ‘The chief priests and the Pharisees called a sanhedrin’, that is, a meeting. This is the sole occurrence of the term in John. Should Luke 22.66 be included in the same sense, ‘Jesus was brought into their meeting’, or should it be the place, ‘meeting-hall’?
· The body before which are arraigned Jesus (Mark 14.55; 15.1; Matt 26.59; Luke 22.66) and the early followers of Jesus in Acts 4-6. Whether the body mentioned at the arraignment of Jesus is an official lawcourt, let alone a constitutional body, remains very dubious. It could equally well have been an informal gathering of elders. On the other hand, the body to which the tribune delivers Paul in Ac 22.30-23.9, ‘the chief priests and the entire Sanhedrin’ does seem to be firmer and more formal.
is no reason to suppose that the machinery and bodies of a modern democracy or
constitutional monarchy existed. In Josephus as in the New Testament it is
clear that the High Priest was in control of day-to-day affairs in
difficulty is to explain the different situation which seems to have existed as
a background to Acts and later. At the beginning of the Jewish War Josephus
3. Pilate’s Governorship of
It has long been standard practice to represent Pontius Pilate as a monster. The difficulties about this are double. Firstly, there is a contradiction: his rule in general is represented as inhumanly cruel and unyielding, while at the same time his conduct at the trial of Jesus is represented as weak, in that although he repeatedly declared Jesus innocent, he finally condemns Jesus to an unjust death. Is it plausible that the same man could display such contrary characteristics? Secondly, the extra-biblical sources, responsible for the denigration of the governor, are so patently arguing from their own political motivations that a sound source-criticism casts heavy doubt on their presentation of the evidence. I first raised this question in an obscure little article, ‘Suffered under Pontius Pilate’ in Scripture 18 (1966), p. 84-93. The matter was taken up by B.C. McGing, ‘Pontius Pilate and the Sources’ in CBQ 53 (1991), p. 416-38, followed by the magisterial treatment of his doctoral student, Helen K. Bond, in Bond 1998.
1. The Evidence of Philo
The extra-biblical sources about Pilate are delicate to handle,
being highly rhetorical and slanted to prove their author’s point about
relationship between Judaism and
With the intention of annoying the Jews
rather than of honouring Tiberius, he set up gilded shields in Herod’s palace
Writing less than ten years after Pilate’s term of office ended, Philo should be well in control of the facts, but his presentation of them is suspect on several grounds:
· Philo’s presentation of history here and throughout this work is typical of the genre of ‘pathetic history’, seen also in the Book of Esther and Second Maccabees. Motives are freely and groundlessly attributed to the actors according as to whether the author approves of them or not. Those who favour the Jews always end up doing well, and their opponents being visited by dreadful punishments.
· The character traits ascribed to Pilate, ‘who was a man of inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition’ (#301) and indulged in ‘venality, violence, thefts, assaults, abusive behaviour, frequent executions of untried prisoners and endless savage ferocity’ (#302), are stock traits regularly ascribed by Philo to other officials whom he reckoned to be enemies of the Jews (see McGing 1991, p. 432-33; Bond 1998, p. 31).
· The motive of annoying the Jews is implausible in itself, granted that the shields were on the inside rather than outside of the palace, and especially in view of the fact that they ‘bore no figure and nothing else that was forbidden apart from’ the barest inscription. Pilate would normally have put up a statue, which would have been offensive, going against the prohibition of graven images. However, the normal entitulature of the emperor, ‘divus, divi filius, pontifex maximus’ (=god, son of a god, high priest) was presumably quite enough to be offensive. The Jews objected to any divine title being given to anyone other than God, especially in God’s own holy city. The rivalry suggested by pontifex maximus may also have riled the High Priest. Nevertheless,.far from being provocative, it could be argued that Pilate was carefully tactful, limiting his honour for the emperor to an aniconic inscription on the inside walls of the palace.
The purpose of Philo’s letter
was to dissuade Gaius from setting up an equestrian statue of himself in the
2. The Evidence of Josephus
the one piece of superficially damaging evidence produced by Philo may also be
interpreted to show Pilate’s care not to offend the Jews, is the evidence given
by Josephus, some decades later, any more damning? In The Jewish War (2.169-177) Josephus relates two incidents involving
Pilate. But, as Helen Bond points out (p. 50-57), his purpose is not to blacken
Pilate but to demonstrate his thesis – one of the main themes of the work -
that respectful and peaceful protest can achieve its object, while violent
resistance to the might of Rome is useless or counterproductive. ‘The emphasis
is not so much on Pilate’s initial action
as the Jewish reaction and what
effect this produces on the Roman prefect’ (p. 55). In the first incident
peaceful protest achieves its objective; in the second violent resistance leads
only to bloodshed. Josephus stresses elsewhere in the work the astonishing
devotion of the Jews to their Law, and the effect which it has in swaying the
Roman authorities (1.148 on Pompey; 2.195-198 on Petronius; 2.236-244 under
Cumanus’ governorship; 7.406 at
Pilate, being sent by Tiberius as
procurator to Judaea, in an underhand way introduced into
On the ensuing day Pilate took his seat on
his tribunal in the great stadium and summoning the multitude, on the pretext
of giving them an answer, gave the arranged signal to his soldiers to surround
the Jews with a ring of weapons. Finding themselves surrounded by troops three
deep, the Jews were struck dumb at this unexpected sight. Pilate announced that
he would cut them down if they refused to admit Caesar’s images, and signalled
to the soldiers to draw their swords. Thereupon the Jews, as by concerted
action, flung themselves in a body on the ground, extended their necks, and
shouted that they were ready rather to die than to transgress the Law. Overcome
with astonishment at such intense religious zeal, Pilate gave orders for the
immediate removal of the standards from
On a later occasion he provoked a fresh
uproar by expending upon the construction of an aqueduct all the sacred
treasure known as Korbonas; the water was brought from a distance of 400 furlongs.
Indignant at this, the populace formed a ring round the tribunal of Pilate,
then on a visit to
The sudden introduction of these two incidents (the previous three decades of Roman rule having been passed over without comment), and their position before similar instances of the effect of Jewish piety on the Romans, makes it clear that this, rather than any interest in Pilate for himself, is the centre of Josephus’ focus. It is, however, possible also to hazard some deductions about Pilate’s character.
is no suggestion that Pilate was acting out of cruelty or malice, just that two
of his actions upset his subjects. The former was an offence against their
sensitivities to the Law. It is, however, quite possible that Pilate’s
introduction of the iconic standards by night was precisely an attempt to avoid
upsetting the Jews in
years later, however, Josephus gives a somewhat different account of Pilate’s
activity in his Antiquities of the Jews.
Again here his interest is not primarily in Pilate. He recounts the incidents
as part of the worsening relationships between
in the third incident, the suppression of a messianic uprising in
[The armed enthusiasts] posted themselves in a certain village named Tirathana, and, as they planned to climb the mountain in a great multitude, they welcomed to their ranks new arrivals who kept coming. But before they could ascend, Pilate blocked their projected route up the mountain with a troop of cavalry and heavy-armed infantry, who in a confrontation with those who had gathered in the village slew some and put the others to flight. Many prisoners were taken, of whom Pilate put to death the ringleaders and those who were most influential among the fugitives.(18.87 – based on Loeb translation)
Samaritans appealed to Vitellius, the legate of
This statesmanlike gesture of Vitellius might be seen to contrast
with Pilate’s failure to understand the Jews. It would support the possibility,
suggested by Martin Goodman,
that Roman governors of
3. The Evidence of Inscriptions
So far we have attempted to understand Pilate from the literary
sources. Archaeology may also tells us something of the man and his rule. In
fact archaeology has so far given us only two traces. One is the solitary
inscription recording his name, found at
This presumably commemorates either the building or the repair of a building (it is impossible to establish which building or what type of building) in honour of the emperor Tiberius. At least it shows that Pilate was anxious to honour the emperor.
The other possible archaeological source of information is Pilate’s
coinage. It has frequently been suggested that these were deliberately
provocative, since they incorporated pagan symbols, even religious symbols. Coins
in the ancient world, like postage-stamps in the modern world, were a recognized
means of propaganda, proclaiming to the world the loyalties or interests or
triumphs of the city or authority which issued th em. Portraits of rulers, particularly of the
Roman emperor, were normal. Jewish coinage, however, studiously avoided images
of living things or people. The sole exception is a single coin of Herod the
Great, which does have an eagle.
The last of the Hasmonean rulers of
The Agony in the Garden
1. Mark’s Account
1. The Markan Authorship
In the middle of the twentieth century, when scissors-and-paste theories were popular, a long series of scholars suggested that in the account of the Agony in the Garden Mark is combining two accounts, e.g. one source is , 33b, 35, 40, 41, 42a, the other is 14:33a, 34, 36-39. However, the traits of Mark’s personal style are unmistakable throughout the narrative. Most noticeable of all is the triple repetition which is such a feature especially of the Passion Narrative (triple prophecy of the Passion; three questions to Jesus at the Jewish investigation; Peter’s three denials; Pilate’s three assertions of Jesus’ innocence; the threefold division of time on Good Friday). Linguistically the passage is so full of Markan characteristics at every level that only the sketchiest of oral sources, or rather suggestions, can lie behind Mark’s final composition.
The relationship of the Markan account to two other New Testament texts remains intriguing. It is not surprising that there seems to have been a tradition in early Christianity about Jesus’ agonized prayer at the prospect of his passion. This tradition took various forms. A similar saying occurs in John 12.27-28,
Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. A voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it and will again glorify it’.
The similarities are manifest: distress at the coming Passion, prayer to the Father, mention of the ‘hour’, acceptance of the Father’s will. But the mode is thoroughly Johannine. John portrays the Passion of Jesus not as the moment of Jesus’ humiliation but as the Hour of his exaltation and glorification. John’s Jesus is nevertheless fully human, so that his soul is troubled by the approaching trial (12:27a). However, it is the moment of his glorification and that of his Father (), to which he has looked forward (2:4; ; ) and will look forward (13:1; ). Accordingly, he thrusts aside the thought of praying to be delivered from it. The image of the cup of suffering seen in the synoptic accounts of the prayer in the garden will also be present at Jesus’ arrest in the garden (). There again Jesus accepts the cup in an atmosphere of triumph, for it comes at the conclusion of the arrest-scene, where his divinity has shone through by his use of the mysterious divine 'I am he' (18:5, 6, 8) and the awestruck reaction of the arresting-party in falling to the ground.
There are further echoes of the tradition in the Letter to the Hebrews 5.7-8:
During his life on earth he offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and with tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and, winning a hearing by his reverence, he learnt obedience, son though he was, by his sufferings.
The details of this tradition about Jesus’ prayer are almost entirely different from those of the synoptic scene, though again it is centred on the same motifs of prayer in distress and acceptance in obedience to the divine will. It has been judged to have its origin in an early Christian hymn (compare Philippians 2.6-11). This would account for the poetic pleonasms (prayers and supplication, cries and tears – none of these words occurs elsewhere in Hebrews), and the echoes of the prayers of the persecuted just man in the psalms, especially Psalm 116.1-8. In the ‘winning a hearing by his reverence’ there may be also a link to the voice from heaven in John 12.28b and perhaps even to the angel in Luke 22.43. It is a valuable testimony to the vigour and variety of early Christian reflection on the Passion.
The integration of Mark’s narrative into
the earlier part of the gospel is also strong. Not only is the same little
group of three disciples chosen to be alone with Jesus as at the
Transfiguration, but just as at the Transfiguration Peter ‘did not know what to
answer’ (9.6), so now – and in the same words (slightly ineptly, since no
‘answer’ was required!) – ‘they did not know what to answer’ (14.40). The
understanding of events is also strikingly increased if the story is read in
the context of the eschatological discourse of Mark 13. There, as here, the
theme of the impending approach of the eschatological ‘hour’ of testing and the
need to keep awake is heavily underscored. The moment of testing persecution is
described in 13.11 as ‘that hour’, a pregnant phrase recalling the threatening
biblical Day of the Lord. The finale of the chapter stresses that no one can
tell when it will arrive (13.32), whence the need to keep awake (13.33, 34, 35,
37). This forms the obvious background for the contrast between Jesus, who sees
himself confronting the ‘hour’ (14.35), and the disciples whose persistent inability
to keep awake is the hallmark of their failure. A final eschatological note is
sounded by Jesus’ h;ggiken (14.42, ‘has drawn near’), a reminiscence of the same word,
expressing the arrival of the eschatological Reign of God at the opening of his
ministry, ‘The time is fulfilled and the
2. The Failure of the Disciples
The failure of the disciples, so prominent throughout the gospel, comes to a head in the Passion Narrative. In this scene it is perhaps more central than even Jesus’ prayer. As possibly with Peter’s denials (see below), the contrast between the intensity of the first prayer of Jesus and the flatness of the other two (in 14.39 Mark is content to say ‘he prayed saying the same word’, and on the third occasion no prayer is given at all) suggests that Mark had sufficient material only for one prayer, and himself spun it out into three for emphasis. On the other hand, Jesus’ triple return to the disciples and his reproaches to them are richly described. One important feature may be that, having spoken in the singular to Peter, he then speaks in the plural to all the disciples (14. 37, 38). Is he speaking just to the group present in the garden, or to all disciples undergoing temptation?
The importance of the theme of the failing disciples is so great in Mark that the evangelist must intend it to bear on some contemporary situation of his own community. In the first stage of the gospel the presentation of the disciples is reasonably positive: the first four are called and respond immediately and without question (1.16-20). They are called to be with Jesus and to go out and proclaim, with power to expel evil spirits (3.13-15). They are the privileged recipients of the mystery of the Kingship (4.11). They are sent out on their mission, which they fulfill (6.12-13) and seem to receive Jesus' congratulations on returning (6.30-31). Yet even at this early stage all is not well. In direct contrast to his previous contrast between insiders who understand the mystery and outsiders who do not, Jesus shows disappointment that they do not understand the parable of the Sower and will therefore be incapable of understanding the parables (4.13). In the storm on the lake there is a sharp exchange, the disciples treating Jesus to sarcasm and Jesus replying with the accusation of cowardice (4.38-40). At the first multiplication of loaves they fail to appreciate Jesus' power to solve the difficulty, and douse him with sarcasm, 'Are we supposed to go off and buy...?' (6.37) Their failure to understand about the multiplication of loaves is pointed by Mark using typically Markan double negatives and double question. After the dispute over the tradition of the elders their lack of comprehension is again underlined by the Markan dual phrase, 'Are even you so lacking in understanding? Do you not realise that...?' (7.18). Finally in the discussion after the second bread-miracle they still totally fail to understand the situation, again eliciting a Markan double question, 'Do you still not realise nor understand?' (8.17)
After the symbolic healing of the blind man Peter does reach the turning-point of acknowledging that Jesus is the Christ (8.29), but both he and the other disciples fail to understand what this means. So, after each of the three great prophecies of the passion, the disciples show misunderstanding, and need the lesson of their sharing in their Master's suffering to be reinforced. In 8.32 Peter remonstrates with Jesus, is rebuked as 'Satan', and provokes Jesus's teaching to the disciples about self-denial. In 9.32 the second prophecy is immediately followed by the quarrel about precedence, which Jesus corrects with his teaching on the primacy of service. In 10.35 the third prophecy is followed by the ambitious and self-seeking request of James and John, to which Jesus opposes the same teaching on the primacy of service.
Once the passion sequence starts, the situation worsens dramatically. First one of the disciples betrays Jesus, immediately after the highest symbol of friendship, sharing the same dish. Then the inner group of disciples falls asleep in the garden three times. The bitterness of this occasion is underlined by the special involvement of precisely those three disciples who had been favoured with special revelation at the Transfiguration (the link is stressed: again in their abashed confusion they 'knew not what to answer'). James and John had also stoutly protested that they could share Jesus' cup (Mk ). Soon they will abandon him at the arrest and flee, despite their promises (14.31 and 50). The height of irony will be reached in the naked flight of the young man: as at the beginning they forsook all to follow Jesus, now one of them forsakes all to get away! Finally comes Peter’s denial in the high priest’s hall, despite his assertion of fidelity till death (14.31).
Time and again the other evangelists reduce or remove the criticism of the disciples in Mark: they must have found it inappropriate. So Mark is teaching some lesson strongly. Theodore T. Weeden (‘The Heresy that Necessitated Mark’s Gospel’ in ZNW 59 , p. 145-158) suggested that his purpose was to counter a view of Jesus as a pure miracle-worker, putting no value on his Passion. A variety of other views has been held, but in some way this stress must be related to the difficulty which any disciple of Jesus has in personally taking on board the demand to follow the Master in suffering.
3. The Prayer
On the one hand, there is a firm tradition,
expressed both here and in John 12.27-28 amd Hebrews 5.7-8, that Jesus
struggled in prayer with the prospect of the tortured death that he faced. (How
much did he already know? Did he know that Judas had already set the arrest in
motion? Did he realise the depths of the hostility of the
1. The Psalms.
From the earliest times Christians
attempted to make sense of the stunning events of the Passion by seeing what
happened as the fulfilment of scripture. So the earliest tradition, taken up
and quoted by Paul, asserts that Christ ‘died for our sins according to the
scriptures’ (1 Cor 15.3). According to the very literalist exegetical frame of
mind then current, seen at its clearest in Matthew (e.g. Matthew 27.3-10) and
the scriptural exegesis of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this was to be seen and
demonstrated not primarily by the fulfilment of the logic and thrust of the
scriptures as a whole. In the twenty-first century the view that the rejection
of Jesus was the fulfilment of scripture would be shown with broader
brush-strokes. It was the climax of human disobedience and blindness to the
divine will, as seen from Adam onwards, but more especially in the story of
Zc 13.7 I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.
Am 2.16 Even the bravest of warriors will run away naked
Ps 41.6 I am deeply grieved, even to death.
Ps 35.11 False witnesses come forward against me.
Is 53.7 Like a sheep dumb before its shearers.
Is 50.6 I have not turned my face away from insults and spitting.
Ps 22.18 They divide my garments among them, cast lots for my clothes
Ps 22.7 They jeer at me and wag their heads
Ps 22.1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Ps 38.11 Even the dearest of my friends keep their distance.
Is 53.12 He was numbered among evil-doers
Am 5.18 Darkness at
Hence the detail in the Gethsemane narrative, ‘going on a little further’ (14.35) may be a reminiscence of the same phrase in Gn 22.5, intimating that Jesus’ sacrifice is a fulfilment of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac. Accordingly, the prayers of Jesus during his Passion are shown to be those of the persecuted Just Man in the psalms: Psalm 41.6 in Mark 14.34; further examples at Mark 15.34; Luke 23.46.
2. The image of the Cup.
This image is used variously in the Bible, sometimes of the cup of divine wrath which the guilty must drink (e.g. Isaiah 51.17; Jeremiah 25.15-16), but also more generally, and frequently in the inter-testamental literature, of the painful cup of death. The usage here should accord with the two earlier uses by Jesus in the gospel, first when he asks the sons of Zebedee whether they are willing to share his cup and to be plunged into the baptism into which he must be plunged (10.38-39). Secondly, it is surely to be understood in continuity with the cup of the new covenant which Jesus shared at the Supper (14.23-24), indicating Jesus’ continuing awareness of this dimension of his coming Passion.
3. ‘Abba, Father’.
For the prayer itself Mark is using or imitating the formulae of early Christian prayer, with the Aramaic Abba immediately followed by its Greek translation (o` path.r). This double formula of a particular Aramaic word, regarded almost as a talisman, occurs elsewhere in the New Testament (1 Cor ; Rev 1:7, maranatha, meaning either ‘Come, Lord!’ or ‘The Lord is coming’). Jesus' consciousness that God was his Father was treasured by the early community (e.g. Ga 4.6), and this usage, stemming from Jesus himself, but rare in the synoptic gospels, was greatly extended, especially in John. The unadorned use of Abba for God was held by that great scholar Jeremias Joachim (in Joachim 1965) to be unique to Jesus. He held that Jesus’ contemporaries would use it only in combination with other, more reverent and distant titles (e.g. ‘O Lord, father and ruler of my life’, Sira 23.1; also now 1 QH 9.35-36). He also held that it is the affectionate child’s way of addressing a father, indicating the warmth and intimacy of that relationship, so ‘Daddy’. However, Fitzmyer’s detailed study of Aramaic of the period shows that only after 200 AD did this become current, and at the time of Jesus ‘Abba’ was more formal usage, and young children called their father Abi rather than Abba. By its use of ‘Abba’ and by the focus on obedient submission to God’s will, Jesus’ prayer already in Mark (and more explicitly, as we shall see, in Matthew) recalls the atmosphere of early Christian prayer such as The Lord’s Prayer. As elsewhere, Mark uses the triple repetition to emphasize the intensity of Jesus' prayer.
2. Matthew’s Account
In Matthew's account, besides many little characteristic verbal changes of style, three changes of emphasis are visible. Firstly, Matthew tones down the lurid colours in which Mark paints Jesus' agony of mind: for Mark's word for Jesus' almost stunned distress (evkqambei/sqai), Matthew has the more seemly 'grieved'. Instead of Mark's uncontrollable 'falling (repeatedly, if the imperfect is taken seriously, as though Jesus were simply stumbling and unable to remain on his feet) to the ground' the biblical attitude of reverent prayer is indicated by 'fell face to the ground in prayer' (26:39). This is in accord with Matthew's generally more dignified, and even hieratic, presentation of Jesus.
Secondly Matthew fills out the second prayer of Jesus. After the Jewish manner of respect for the Lord, both prayers are impersonal: 'let this cup pass from me', instead of Mark's direct request, 'remove this cup from me'. This grammatical change also enables Matthew to assimilate Jesus’ prayer to the Lord's Prayer, which he has set down at the very centre of the Sermon on the Mount, 'Your will be done' (26:42 as 6:10). It may be presumed that, since Jesus is the model for his disciples, he will pray the same phrases as he taught them to pray, or rather en revanche, his prayer at this desperate time becomes the model for the prayer of all disciples in desperation. The intimacy of both first and second prayers is stressed by the affectionate address, 'My father' (26:39, 42); this perhaps indicates both similarity and distinction between Jesus and his disciples, who are instructed to pray with the plural 'Our father' (6:9). At the same time, a certain hesitancy is shown - perhaps the hesitancy of respect - by the repeated 'if it is possible' (26:39), 'if it is not possible' (26:42), instead of Mark's confident 'for you all things are possible' (14:36). After this elaboration of the second prayer, Matthew can transfer to the third prayer Mark's minimal account of the second, 'saying the same words' (Mk ; Mt 26:44).
Matthew's third concern is to underline the solidarity which exists between Jesus and his disciples. This is clear from the beginning: instead of Mark’s typical impersonal ‘they came’, Matthew has ‘Jesus came with them’. As always, he tones down their failure, by omitting Mark's critical 'they did not know what to say to him' (Mark ). He also takes the spotlight off Peter by removing Jesus' intimate and disappointed question to him, 'Simon, are you asleep?' (Mark ), and by putting into the plural the criticism, 'Could you not stay awake with me one hour?' (Matthew 26:40). This now concerns not only Peter but all the disciples. Twice he adds 'with me' to 'stay awake' (26:38, 40); they should share in his passion, as they frequently do in Matthew Jesus' community will benefit from his permanent presence (1:23; 18:20; 28:18-20) and will share in his ministry of forgiveness (9:8; 18:18). To underline still further the unity of Jesus with his disciples at this moment, where Mark twice has simply ‘he came back’, Matthew states explicitly ‘he came back to the disciples’ (26.40, 45). If one cannot speak of Jesus’ emotional dependence on the disciples at this critical moment, Matthew does at least intimate that he is glad to be with them.
3. Luke’s Account
Luke's version of the scene on the Mount of
Olives (there is no mention of 'Gethsemane'; he often omits odd-sounding
place-names, and has little interest in the topography of
The most notable difference in Luke is the presentation of Jesus himself. Quite definitely, though not yet so emphatically as in John, Jesus is in control of his Passion and Death: he will be arrested only when he has exercised his healing ministry () and given the arresting party his consent, 'This is your hour' (). He dies only when he has commended his spirit into his Father's hands (). So now, Jesus does not collapse onto the ground, but 'knelt down', as Christians later do in earnest prayer of petition (Ac 7:60; 9:40; 20:36; 21:5). There is no sign of distress: his single prayer is calm and resigned, with the same resignation shown later by Christians (Ac ). But there is nothing lacking to the intensity of his prayer.
The verses 22:43-44 are missing in some MSS, but are widely quoted in the second century. If they are considered part of Luke's gospel they contain two features, showing the preparation of Jesus for his Passion. Both have analogies in the Books of Maccabees to which the genre of Luke-Acts is so similar. Firstly, Jesus is represented as an athlete about to enter a contest, with his adrenalin up, rather than terrified and horror-struck as in Mark. There is no question of sweating blood, as piety has often asserted; it is merely that his sweat flowed like blood. This is the physical condition of those preparing for martyrdom in the Books of Maccabees (2 Macc ; ; 4 Macc 6:6, 11). Secondly, an angel appears to show that Jesus' prayer is regarded, just as in Mark 1:13 at the earlier testing in the desert, and as two angels came to strengthen Eleazar at his martyrdom (4 Mc ). After his prayer Jesus stands confidently upright, and comes to tell his followers to do the same in their prayer during temptation.
The second scene in the Garden undergoes considerable development through the gospels, beginning with a little, rather chaotic and puzzling scene in Mark and moving through to a Johannine presentation which is in some ways the key to his Passion Narrative.
1. Mark’s Account – the Betrayal
Consonant with his consistent emphasis on the failure of the disciples, in Mark all is centred on the betrayal by Judas and the flight of the disciples. This is another instance of Mark’s technique of framing for contrast: he frames the account of Jesus’ fidelity with that of the infidelity of his followers.
The scene has been prepared firstly by the introduction to the Last
Supper (14.17-21). It is easy to read this scene with the emphasis given to it
by Matthew 26.20-25, which in fact is subtly different: in Matthew the scene of
dipping in the dish leads up in the final verse to the identification of the
traitor as Judas. This had been prepared by the question and answer of each of
the disciples and Jesus in 26.22-23. By inserting ‘This is the one’ (ou-toj) into Jesus’
answer Matthew indicates that a sort of identity-parade is in progress. In Mark
the emphasis is different, concentrating not on the identity of the traitor so
much as on the depths of treachery shown by one who has shared a meal, ‘he who
eats with me’ (Mark 14.18, omitted by Matthew). The disciples do not ask, as in
Matthew, ‘Surely it is not me, Lord?’, but merely protest, ‘Certainly not me!’.
In Mark, accordingly, the scene ends, ‘Better for that man if he had never been
born’, without the positive identification given by Matthew. A second
preparation has been given by Mark on the way to
Betrayal continues as the accent of Mark’s description. As soon as Judas appears his desertion is underlined by ‘one of the Twelve’, an expression used three times of Judas, and of him alone (Mark 14.10, 20, 43; Matthew 26.14). The contrast is marked in the next verse: he betrays Jesus but had shown his solidarity with his captors by working out an ‘agreed sign’ with the armed mob. The agreed sign was to be a kiss, but Judas does not stop at this. He respectfully calls Jesus ‘Rabbi’ and gives him an affectionate kiss – not file,w but katafile,w, which expresses especial warmth, often a caress – and the trap is sprung.
Then follows the first curious episode, one of the bystanders
drawing his sword and cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest.
Who are these two, assailant and victim? Matthew 26.51 will precise that the
assailant is ‘one of those with Jesus’, and John 18.10 will identify him
further as Peter. But there is no hint of this in Mark, and nowhere else in
Mark are the disciples described as oi` paresthko,tej (the bystanders).
Furthermore, it is odd that any of them should be armed, though Luke’s addition
at the Last Supper, 22.36-38, would permit this. In John 18.10 the servant’s
name has become Malchus, in accordance with the law of increasing detail as stories
are passed down. It is curious that he is called ‘the servant of the high priest’, and Ben Viviano
has suggested that he is the Servant of the high priest in an honoured sense of
‘right-hand man’ or vizir. The removal of his ear would then disqualify him
from sacred office, according to Leviticus 21.18 LXX, and the incident can be
read as a reflection on the whole
Finally the fulfilment of scripture links back to the opening bracket in 14.27 as the disciples flee, a flight which culminates in the burlesque of shameful desertion represented by the young man’s naked flight (see above). Pious tradition identifies the young man as Mark, the author of the gospel, perhaps on the grounds that he alone had the humility to mention it, while Matthew and Luke wanted to spare his blushes. To add to the confusion, the author of the gospel is then identified with John Mark, at whose family house the early community met (Acts 12.12). It is only surprising that the sheet (duly initialled) is, as yet, nowhere presented for veneration.
2. Matthew’s Account – Jesus betrayed
In many of the stories he shares with Mark, Matthew conveys an aura of solemnity and dignity about Jesus. In the Healings of Simon’s Mother-in-Law and the Woman with a Haemorrhage the crowds disappear and the sick woman stands reverently alone with Jesus. So in the arrest sequence Jesus is in complete control. The kernel is his response to Judas. His address, ‘Friend!’, carries an invitation to repent, though also a reproach, for Matthew uses it twice elsewhere, on both occasions with an overtone of reproachful irony, to the labourer who grumbles at his wages and at the Master’s generosity (20.13), and in the mouth of the King who asks the guest without a wedding garment for an explanation (22.12). In Matthew’s writing it must also include an allusion to Sira 37.2, showing Jesus’ awareness of the implications of Judas’ actions, ‘Is it not a deadly sorrow when a comrade or friend turns enemy?’
The enigmatic phrase which follows has eluded uncontroverted explanation: is it an exclamation, ‘Friend, what you have come for!’? Is it a question, ‘Friend, what have you come for?’? Is it elliptical, ‘Friend, do what you have come for.’? In any case, it indicates Jesus’ control of events. Only after this invitation can they arrest Jesus (‘then they came forward’ adds Matthew).
Matthew makes the assailant of the high priest’s servant ‘one of those with Jesus’, which enables him to lead on to three fearless teachings of Jesus, already captive. The first is typically Matthean in form (nicknamed by Goulder a ‘machaeric’), and may well be Matthew’s application of the Wisdom saying in Gn 9.6, ‘He who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed’. The second again shows Jesus’ majestic and fearless response, as he refuses (in typically Matthean language and with typically Matthean hyperbole – 12 legions of angels should make 72,000) a supernatural aid from his Father. The third introduces the important teaching with which Matthew will conclude in 26.56: this moment is the fulfilment of the whole of scripture. This is the penultimate (the last being 27.9-10) and the most sweeping of the formula-quotations which stake out Matthew’s gospel, showing that the whole of Jesus’ life was centred on the fulfilment of scripture.
3. Luke’s Account – the Captive Healer
Luke simplifies the narrative, but also adds his own artistry. He has no interest in the arrangement of the sign, but increases the drama by its simplicity: first the crowd appears, then Judas detaches himself and goes straight up to Jesus to kiss him. Jesus knows that his kiss is the act of betrayal and challenges Judas – a challenge that stays hanging in the air. With his regard for picturesque material detail, Luke tells us that it was the right ear that was severed.
This gives the occasion for the first instance in which Jesus
continues to exercise his healing ministry throughout the Passion, just as he
will heal the enmity between Herod and Pilate, and as the whole
Preparing also for Calvary, Luke omits any flight of the disciples,
for Luke spares the disciples so that, instead of deserting, on
On several small points there is an intriguing link to John.
Firstly, the ‘hour’ is mentioned, which is so important in the expectation of
the Passion in John. Only in Luke it is used in reverse, for the hour is that
of his captors: ‘This is your hour and the reign of darkness’. The symbolism of
the darkness for the darkness of evil also rejoins that of John 13.30 (‘As soon
as Jesus had taken the piece of bread, he went out. It was night’). A third
point is the presence of soldiers: John has the detachment of Roman soldiers,
but Luke curiously includes in the arresting-party the ‘generals’ (literally)
4. John’s Account – ‘I am he’
The awesome scene of the arrest dominates John’s Passion Narrative. It sets the tone once and for all: Jesus is in total control, and himself exercises command, deciding what will happen and when it will happen. His captors merely follow his directions.
First we have the composition of place, which is in itself
indicative and important. Mark and Matthew put the scene on the Mount of
Olives, in a ‘plot of land’ called
1. The Knowledge of Jesus
After the briefest description of the arresting party, astoundingly Jesus comes out and takes the initiative. All the stress is on his knowledge and control of the situation. His uncanny knowledge of the unknowable and his foreknowledge have been features of the gospel. He sees and knows Nathanael under the fig-tree (1.48-50). He never needed evidence about anyone, for he could tell already (2.25). He knew from the outset who did not believe and who was to betray him (6.64). He knows that his ‘hour’ is not yet, and shows no fear of this moment (7.5). His knowledge amazed his opponents (7.14-17). He knows that his prayer to raise Lazarus to life will be answered (11.41-42). Especially from the beginning of the preliminaries to the Passion Narrative, Jesus’ knowledge of what is to happened is underlined (13.1, 3). He knows in detail what Judas will do, and not merely does not stand in his way, but tells him positively, ‘What you are to do, do quickly’, with a certainty which suggests to the others that Judas is going on a specific errand (13.27). The whole of the Last Supper narrative is heavy with foreboding, set off by Jesus washing the feet of the disciples as an acted parable of the act of service which is to come, and extended into the mysterious talk of going away and returning (14.28-30; 16.5, 16, etc). This foreknowledge of Jesus is presented by John so uncompromisingly that on its own it poses a serious difficulty for understanding the balance with Jesus’ human acquisition of knowledge. It must be weighed against such statements as Luke 2.52, ‘Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature and in favour with God and with people’.
2. The Self-Presentation of the Johannine Jesus
In the synoptic gospels Jesus concentrates on presenting and
bringing to reality the renewal of the Reign of God. In John the
The hour is coming – indeed it is already here – when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and all who hear it will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
And because he is the Son of man has granted him power to give judgement. For the hour is coming when the dead will leave their graves at the sound of his voice. (5.25-28)
The most expressive way of all, however, is in Jesus’ use of the phrase ‘I am’ (evgw, eivmi). Like many of John’s phrases (‘living water’, ‘born again’) this is in itself ambiguous, and can be understood in several ways. At one level it is simply a self-identification, as in answering the door, ‘Yes, it’s me’. This is the level at which it should probably be understood in the synoptic gospels, e.g. when Jesus appears walking on the water and calms the fears of the disciples that they are seeing a phantasm by identifying himself, ‘Courage! It’s me! Don’t be afraid!’ (Mark 6.50). At a deeper level the Johannine Jesus uses it as a means to claim for himself ways in which God had always been understood in the Bible: ‘I am the light of the world (8.12, compare Ws 7.26)… the good shepherd (10.7-18, compare Ezekiel 34)… the resurrection (11.25)… the way, the truth and life’ (14.6, compare Psalm 36.9). At a still deeper level it is used absolutely and without predicate with allusion to the unpronouncable Name of God. At Exodus 3.13 God revealed his Name to Moses as ‘Yahweh’. With the widespread Hebrew love of giving a meaning to names, this was explained as meaning ‘I am who I am’. By the time of Jesus this was understood, at any rate in hellenistic Judaism (and John was not written in narrowly Palestinian circles), as meaning o` w'n, He who Is, perhaps best rendered philosophically as ‘absolute Being’. There is also allusion to the frequent use of this expression to designate God in Deutero-Isaiah, especially in polemical passages against idolatry and polytheism, e.g. Isaiah 43.11, ‘No god was formed before me, nor will be after me. I am, I am Yahweh’.
The great round of controversies between Jesus and ‘the Jews’ in the
If you do not believe that I am He (evgw, eivmi), you will die in your sins (John 8.24).
When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am He, evgw, eivmi (8.28)
In all truth I tell you, before Abraham ever was, I am, evgw, eivmi (8.58).
Now in the Garden Jesus takes the initiative to use the title.
Instead of Judas starting off the process by his greeting, Jesus asks the first
question. It is the question asked throughout the gospel of all who seek Jesus,
first by the disciples in the
The same emphasis on Jesus’ control of the scene continues in the final two elements of the arrest. Jesus commands on the authority of scripture that the disciples should be let go free (18.8-9). Finally he commands Peter to sheath his sword, not for any reason of morality, but for a Christocentric reason, lest Peter should interfere with the Father’s will for the Son to drink the cup (18.11).
Before the High Priest
The first question to be faced with regard to this gospel scene is its historical intention. Is Mark relating what he knows to have happened from historical information, or is he deducing what must have happened, relying on a Christian view of the condemnation and death of Jesus? The former alternative is the traditional Christian position. It is normally undergirded with the assertion that, unlike the Agony and the Arrest, this was an inherently public scene, to which there would have been many witnesses. Mark, as the trusted representative of the Christian community, could not simply have spun this story from his perspective of faith. He would never have got away with it. He would have been howled down if he had invented things. Anyway, it bears the stamp of eye-witness detail. Nevertheless, the position that Mark is relying exclusively on detailed historical information brings with it certain difficulties:
· ‘The stamp of eye-witness detail’ simply means that the story is well told. It must be conceded from the outset that Mark is a brilliant story-teller, which was no doubt part of the reason why he was chosen to put down the first record of the Good News to have survived.
· The contention that a story not based on historical knowledge, and not corresponding more or less exactly to known facts, could not have survived the criticism of the Christian community presupposes a modern view of historical writing. If both Mark and his audience shared a different perspective on how history should be written, a record of the message of Jesus less mechanically consonant with known facts could well have been the most acceptable. As we have seen, p. 4-5. comparison between the gospel writers leaves no doubt that they felt justified in massaging and even changing known historical details to express their theology more clearly. Comparison with other contemporary writers – historical writers, let alone those concerned to present a particular message – leaves no doubt that it was felt legitimate for historians to use a good deal of latitude, e.g. in the composition of speeches. Josephus often gives considerably different versions of an event in his two works, The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews. Luke’s three versions of the Vocation of Paul within the same work (the Acts of the Apostles) show significant variations.
· The gospel of John contains no record of an appearance before the high priest and the sanhedrin after Jesus’ arrest. He mentions long before a meeting of the high priest, Caiaphas, with his advisors at which the decision is taken to do away with Jesus (11.47-53). After Jesus’ arrest there is only an appearance (18.19-24) before Annas, the former high priest, which has some similarities with the Mark/Matthew account, especially in the details about Peter’s denials.
· The two judicial appearances, before the high priest and before Pilate, are so similar in structure that they appear to have been modelled on each other, or at least composed by the same hand (see below).
· Though Mark and Matthew relate what is basically the same event, the differences in Luke’s account could almost suggest that he is narrating a different event. The most striking difference is that the high priest is absent from his story – but see below. Mark’s account is so imbued with his own language and narrative techniques that it is hard to see that he could have been relying on any written source. At most, he is putting an orally-received narrative into his own words. Among the narrative techniques may be mentioned Mark’s technique of intercalation or ‘sandwiching’ (see note 23) and his triple repetition (see note 25). As in the triple repetition during the Agony, he seems to have enough material for one account (14.66-68 give a lively account in his best eye-witness style), while the second and third are somewhat flat. As for language, Mark’s own Greek text is replete with his characteristic style.
1. Mark’s Account
The account has three centres of interest, the false accusations
The threat to destroy the
The interest of this saying is that the renewal of the
I went on looking till the Lord of the sheep brought about a new house, greater and loftier than the first one, and set it up in the first location which had been covered up. All its pillars were new, the columns new and the ornaments new as well as greater than those of the first, the old house which was gone. All the sheep were within it.
At the other extreme, in the first century AD, possibly after the
destruction of the
Tg Is 53.5 He will build the temple which was profaned because of our transgressions and delivered up because of our sins.
Tg Zc 6.12 The Messiah will be revealed and will be exalted and he will build the temple of the Lord.
same hope is strongly attested at
Or 4Q174, commenting on 2 Sm 7.10: ‘This is the house which [he will build for them] in the last days… This is the house into which [the unclean shall] never enter… [Its glory shall endure] for ever; it shall appear above it perpetually.’
the main Rule of the Community (1 QS 8.5-9) it is, as in 1 Cor 3.16, the
community which forms the
The Council of the Community shall be established in truth. It shall be that tried wall, that precious cornerstone, whose foundations shall neither rock nor sway in their place. It shall be a most holy dwelling for Aaron, with everlasting knowledge of the covenant of justice, and shall offer up sweet fragrance.
renewal of the
is a strong case to be made that it was this attitude towards the
it is the
then does Mark attribute the pivotal saying about the
False witnesses have risen against me, and are breathing out violence (Ps 27.12). False witnesses come forward against me, asking me questions I cannot answer (Ps 35.11).
Jesus’ lack of response is also a scriptural allusion. His silence echoes that of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53.7: ‘Ill-treated and afflicted, he never opened his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep dumb before its shearers, he never opened his mouth’. This theme will recur in the trial before Pilate and before Herod (15.4; Luke 23.9).
The two charges from false
witnesses, then, provide no evidence. But the statement about renewal of the
high priest’s question focusses on two titles, ‘Messiah’ and ‘son of the
Blessed One’. To these Jesus adds a third, the mysterious self-identification,
‘son of man’. The expression ‘son of God’ is used in the Bible in several ways,
and the discovery of what it means when used of Jesus has been the process of
Mark’s gospel. It can be used of angels (Job 1.9), of
reaction of the high priest in accusing Jesus of blasphemy has been variously
interpreted. One difficulty has been to see how Jesus’ reply is technically
blasphemous. Later rabbinic rules demand that blasphemy should include the name
of God, but we have no knowledge of such technicalities at the time of Jesus.
Nor was it blasphemous to claim to be the Messiah. However, the Greek word blasfhme,w is
considerably wider than ‘blaspheme’, and can include other arrogant and
insulting behaviour. It must also be remembered that we are moving on the
Markan rather than the historical level.
Two assertions are being made, the first about the position of Jesus, the
second about the reaction to it by the high priest. The first assertion, made
by means of the scriptural allusions, amounts to putting Jesus on a level with
God, seated at the right hand of God on the divine throne, and coming with the clouds
at the Day of the Lord. A further dimension is suggested by the clash between
‘seated’ and ‘coming’: if the two are meant to be simultaneous, the only way in
which Jesus can be both seated and coming is if he shares the mobile throne of
God, the chariot-throne described in Ezekiel 1. In later Jewish mysticism the
chariot-throne in this vision of Ezekiel became an important focus; but it is
already an important centre of devotion at
The mockery which concludes the interchange between Jesus and the high priest and his council is a fulfilment of the Song of the Servant in Isaiah 50.6,
I have offered my back to those who struck me,
my cheeks to those who plucked my beard.
I have not turned my face away from insult and spitting.
The humiliation of the spitting and mockery is an unpleasantly suitable response to the accusation of arrogance implied by the high priest’s charge of blasfhmi,a. It is also a typical instance of Mark’s irony that they should mock Jesus for the prophecy which Mark’s readers know to be true. It is made more ironical by occurring just when Jesus’ prophecy about Peter’s betrayal is at the point of fulfilment.
Peter’s triple denial brings to a climax the theme of the inadequacy and failure of the disciples which has been such an important element in Mark’s gospel. The scene is brilliantly expressed by Mark. It is easy to imagine Peter penetrating right into the courtyard (e[wj e'sw), lost in the crowd of retainers (sugkaqh,menoj) and warming himself at the fire, and then slipping out after the first challenge. Inherent in the positioning is the contrast between Jesus’ steadfastness and Peter’s cowardice. There is also a strong contrast between the sturdy Peter and the servant-girl. The word paidi,skh is a dimuntive and may suggest ‘a slip of a girl’; the same word is used of the idiotic servant-girl in Ac 12.13 who shuts out Peter after his miraculous release from prison. As in the case of the triple prayer in Gethsemane, there is some suggestion that Mark himself tripled the denial, for the flatness of the second denial contrasts with the liveliness of the first, suggesting that Mark lacked material. Traces of the break would remain in Peter’s exit at 14.69, which also makes the next denial awkward. But the third denial is lively enough.
2. Matthew’s Account
Matthew does a good deal towards tightening up Mark’s account. Stylishly he brackets the scene neatly through Peter going ‘in inside’ (eivselqw.n e;sw) at the beginning and coming ‘out outside’ (evxelqw.n e;xw) at the end. The change to the long drawn out imperfect tense (hvkolou,qei, ‘he was following, he kept following’) from the snappy aorist in 26.58 may also be intended to indicate Peter’s hesitant and stealthy approach.
1. Theologically more important, however, is the decisive build-up in three successive ‘shots’. First they deliberately seek false witness in order to put him to death; this neatly exploits Mark’s accent on false witnesses not because of their falsity but – in reliance on the psalms – because of their hostility.
Then a sharp distinction is
made by the Matthean ‘but afterwards’ and the two witnesses, firmly indicating the validity of their witness to
Jesus’ saying, and making Mark’s 14.59 (‘But even on this point their evidence
was conflicting’) inappropriate. The saying itself is simplified and altered
too, no longer indicating that Jesus will
destroy the Temple, but that he could.
It is a statement of his messianic power, a greater than the
3. This leads on to a noble and dramatic build-up to Jesus’ crucial declaration: the high priest rises to his feet, is twice confronted with Jesus’ silence and then elicits full solemnity by putting Jesus under oath by the living God – an awesome biblical challenge (cf. Dt 4.33; Gn 24.3; Jg 17.2). At the same time the high priest is unaware that he is ironically echoing Peter’s confession in 16.16, ‘You are the Christ, the son of the living God’. The dramatic confrontation is increased by diverse touches: ‘Tell us!’, says the high priest insistently. ‘You said it yourself’, retorts Jesus emphatically, ‘and what’s more, from this moment on…’ Jesus accepts the titles offered by the high priest but amplifies them in his own sense (plh.n, ‘except’, suggests an adversative correction), stressing also his own knowledge and control, as at the very beginning of the passion sequence (26.2). The strength of the confrontation continues with the immediacy of the Matthean ‘then’ (to,te) and the high priest’s explosive, ‘He has blasphemed!’. In Mark 14.63 the high priest merely asks the question; in Matthew he begins by giving the answer, and re-iterates, ‘Look now! You have heard the blasphemy’. It is an angry and forceful scene, mercilessly rounded off by three further touches in the mockery: the mockers are no longer anonymous ‘certain people’ (tinej) as in Mark., but ‘they’, who can only be the councillors. Secondly, Mark’s blindfolding veil (14.65) is removed, lest it should protect Jesus from the spitting. Thirdly, the messianic point of the whole scene is once again stressed by the mockers’ gibe, ‘Christ, who is it that struck you?’
The same merciless dramatic intensity sharpens Matthew’s account of Peter’s denials.The three mark a crescendo of harrassment, each by different challengers as poor Peter moves vainly around to escape attention. First Matthew increases the intimacy by introducing the name of Jesus in 26.69. Despite this, Peter denies ‘before all’ (e;mproqen pa,ntwn), the public denial surely contrasting with the demand in Mt 10.33 for the disciple to confess Jesus before all (e;mprosqen tw/n avnqrw,pwn). On the second occasion Peter denies ‘with an oath’ – in the teeth of Jesus’ prohibition of oaths in the Sermon on the Mount (5.34). It is not surprising that on the third occasion Peter now runs out and ‘wept bitterly’ (26.75). The scene is made all the more tragic by being the last appearance of Peter in the gospel. In Mark there was at any rate the implication of forgiveness in the message at the empty tomb, ‘Go and tell his disciples and Peter’ (Mark 16.7); in Matthew there is no hint of reconciliation. Just as Peter’s bold attempt to join Jesus walking on the waters (Matthew 14.30) made him the apostle of failed good intentions, so now his bold attempt to stay with Jesus in his trials makes him the first publicly to deny his Master.
3. Luke’s Account – Preparation of Charges
account of the night’s activities given by Luke is importantly different from
those of Mark and Matthew. Most obviously, the timing and order of events is
different. It may well be more correct, for a nocturnal meeting of the high
priest and his council is not likely, especially on the eve of the Passover
Feast. Was Mark (followed by Matthew) drawn into this timing by the tradition
expressed in 1 Cor 11.23, ‘On the night he was betrayed…’? Luke will have known
that Roman magistrates held their levée early in the morning (Verres, the notorious
When the meeting (on the translation of the Greek word sanhedrin here, see above, p. 23) is eventually held the procedure is again different. The elders of the people, the chief priests and the scribes are present (Luke seems to feel that these last should be present as lawyers in preparing the charges), but there is no mention of the high priest himself anywhere in the proceedings. Consequently the proceedings have been qualified as ‘a kangaroo court’ and the participants likened to leaderless children, ganging up on their victim. However, as a preparation of charges it makes good sense, and perhaps Luke thought it beneath the high priest’s grandeur.
content of the proceedings has also been fine-tuned. For Luke the
4. John’s Account: Condemnation by Caiaphas, Confrontation with Annas
John 11.45-54; 18.12-27
all the material differences between John and the Synoptics, the disparity over
the investigation/trial by Caiaphas is at first sight the most intractable
(with the possible exception of the Call of the First Disciples). The
chronology of the synoptic gospels stems by and large from Mark, and Mark puts
Jesus’ only contact with and visit to
Once the tyranny of Markan chronology has been set aside, the way is open to accepting a three-stage process leading up to the trial by Pilate, namely:
1. Decision by Caiaphas, chief priests (and Pharisees?) to liquidate Jesus (11.46-54)
2. Arrangements with Roman authorities to provide armed assistance at the arrest
3. Investigation by Annas (18.12-14, 19-24).
The decision to kill Jesus in John
11.46-54 does not necessarily clash with the synoptic scene of the
investigation of Jesus by Caiaphas. It could well be a preliminary decision
made, as its position in John suggests, some time before the arrest. It is a
supreme example of Johannine irony, Caiaphas unknowingly acknowledging Jesus’
power to save the people and the scattered children of God. Josephus cites
other instances of prophecy by the high priest (War 1.68; Antiquities
11.327; 13.299). At the same time on another level Caiaphas is wrong, for their
action did not prevent the Romans coming and suppressing the
This is one of the isolated passages where the Pharisees take an
active role in proceedings towards the death of Jesus, as they also do in the
Johannine scene of the arrest (18.3). It is, however, notable that in the
reference back to both these scenes given in 18.12-14 those involved are
described simply as ‘the Jews’. A strong case is made by Urban von Wahlde,
‘there can be no doubt that these two sets of terms for religious authorities
stem from different authors’.
The earlier terminology, by which the opposition to Jesus comes from the
Pharisees, dates from a time when there was still memory of the actual groups
within Judaism (Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes) and of ‘family feuding’ within
Judaism between followers of Jesus and those who would not accept him (the
Pharisees), whereas later the memory of these distinctions has become blurred,
and opposition is simply from ‘the Jews’. This produces the strange situation
that those who are in fact Jews can be said to be ‘afraid of the Jews’ (John
7.13; 9.22; 20.19). Attempts have been made to relieve John of apparent
anti-Semitism by interpreting these passages as referring to the inhabitants of
2. Only in the Johannine account does the arresting party include Roman auxiliary troops ‘together with guards sent by the chief priests and the Pharisees’ (18.3), the troop or spei/ra being commanded by a tribune 18.12). Normally a spei/ra would indicate a cohort of 600. That it was a sizeable number, even if not a full cohort, is indicated also by the description of the commander as a cili,arcoj (literally ‘commander of 1,000’). The size of the detachment may be read as an indication of the power and dignity of Jesus whom they are to arrest. More important, however, is the very presence of Roman troops, which indicates that by this time the Jewish authorities have convinced the Romans that Jesus poses at least a prima facie threat. This links in with the absence in John of any attempt by a Jewish tribunal to prepare charges against Jesus.
3. The appearance before Annas has a quite different quality to the
synoptic appearance before Caiaphas and his council. Not only are the
personalities different. Annas, though called the high priest (18.19), was no
longer in office. He had been high priest for nine years till deposed in 15 AD,
but he retained a uniquely powerful position (Josephus, Antiquities 20.198) as father of five and father-in-law of one high
priest, the current incumbent Caiaphas (high priest 18-36 AD). Furthermore, the
meeting is a solemn one-to-one confrontation, apart from the intrusion in one
verse of a guard. Most notable of all, it can hardly be called an interrogation
by Annas. There is no suggestion of any accusation, charge or condemnation. Indeed,
any judgement of Jesus by the Jews is precluded theologically, for, as we shall
see, Jesus judges the Jews, not vice
versa. There is no need for Jesus to explain his position or his identity,
for he has already done so in the
Luke 22.67 ‘If you are the Christ, tell us’ He replied, ‘If I tell you, you will not believe’
John 10.25 ‘If you are the Christ, tell us openly.’ Jesus replied, ‘I have told you, but you do not believe’.
True, the confrontation begins with Annas addressing a question to
Jesus, but Jesus is in control of the whole scene and continues the teaching
which he has done in the
I am Yahweh and there is no other
I have not spoken in secret, in some dark corner of the underworld,
I am Yahweh, I proclaim saving justice. I say what is true (Isaiah 45.18-19).
In accordance with this divine status, the mockery by the attendants
in the synoptic gospels is reduced to one blow by a guard to which Jesus has
the final word with a dignified riposte. This too is reminiscent of Jesus’
teaching in the
8.46 ‘Can any of you convict me of sin? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me?’
18.23 ‘If there is some offence in what I said, point it out; but if not, why do you strike me?’
After the full and explicit Johannine teaching of Jesus in the
Jesus before Pilate
1. Mark’s Account
1. The Interrogation by Pilate (Mark 15.2-5)
Discovery of the historical facts behind the gospel account faces the same challenges as have already become evident in the discussion of earlier incidents. Were any of the disciples present? Hardly! Could they have heard from an eye-witness information which was eventually passed on to the evangelists? Are the very different accounts in the synoptic gospels and in John reconcilable? Mark has composed the scene from two elements, a dialogue between Pilate and Jesus, and the Barabbas incident. The other synoptic evangelists adapt or re-read the Markan scene to express their own theologies.
The Markan account is indelibly signed with Mark’s own hand. Firstly, with plenty of Markan expressions, e.g.the favourite Markan evperwta,w (8-22-17-2) twice, each time without le,gein, and here used with the frequent Markan inaccuracy (it really means ‘to question further’ and should be used only of a second or further question, 15.2 and 4), polla. used adverbially to mean ‘much’ instead of ‘many things’ (15.3), the ubiquitous pa,lin, ‘again’, (15.4), the double negatives (15.4 and 5). Secondly, it has the same structure as the account of the trial before the High Priest. Verbally there is a marked similarity:
14.53 They led Jesus away (avph,gagon) to… 15.1 They led Jesus away (avph,negkan)
14.60 Question evphrw,ta auvto.n 15.2 Question evphrw,thsen auvto.n
14.60 Surprise at Jesus’ silence to charges 15.4 Surprise at Jesus’ silence to charges
14.61 ‘Are you the Christ?’ 15.2 ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’
14.64 Jesus’ affirmative answer to presider 15.2 Jesus’ affirmative answer to presider
14.61 Further question pa,lin evphrw,ta auvto.n 15.4 Further question pa,lin evphrw,ta auvto.n
14.61 Silence of Jesus ouvk avpekri,nato ouvde,n 15.4 Silence of Jesus ouvk avpokri,nh| ouvde,n;
14.65 Mockery by participants and servants 15.16-20 Mockery by soldiers
Furthermore there is the similarity of multiple ineffective accusations, Jesus’ silence (after the manner of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53), and the fact that in each case progress can be made only through Jesus’ own answer, though each process ends inconclusively, without any sentence or verdict. Nor could this little scene represent any sort of trial; it lacks any sort of legal logic. There is no explanation why Pilate puts his pivotal first question: who has told him that Jesus is accused of being king of the Jews? This makes better sense in Luke’s scene, where Pilate’s question could at any rate be a sardonic reaction to the accusations of kingly behaviour which Luke introduces. Why do the chief priests continue with their ineffectual and unspecified accusations? If Mark had not put first the dialogue between Pilate and Jesus over his royalty (15.2), the progression between the chief priests handing Jesus over to Pilate and their accusing him would have been logical enough. As it is, the only purposes of 15.3-5 are to parallel the previous trial, to show Jesus fulfilling the scriptural silence and to excite Pilate’s wonder at his dignity. In this interrogation scene we are witnessing rather the expression of Mark’s view of Jesus than a record of a trial.
2. The Barabbas Scene (Mark 15.6-15)
The Barabbas incident is also fully Markan. It continues the Markan scheme of triples (three passion predictions, three returns to the disciples in Gethsemane, three accusations by the High Priest, three mockeries), and shows several other Markan stylistic features (periphrastic tenses in 15.7; h;rxato with infinitive in 15.8; delayed explanation with ga.r and a piece of psychological speculation in 15.10; the frequent pa,lin in 15.12 and 13, cf. p. 30 note 46). The most obvious feature, however, is also the most Markan, the ironic structure of the whole piece: it is as King of the Jews that Jesus is condemned. Mark’s readers accept him as King of the Jews, but it is precisely as king that his own people reject him and prefer Barabbas. The accent of the whole scene is to put the burden on the Jews, who are invited by each of Pilate’s questions to implicate themselves further: first, ‘Do you wish that I should release the King of the Jews?’, then the even more sarcastic, ‘Then what shall I do with him whom you call King of the Jews?’, and finally, ‘What evil has he done?’ In each of these cases Pilate is making the crowd reach a decision which is his responsibility and make a judgement which he himself should have made: the governor should decide on the release of a prisoner, the governor should decide on his right to the title, and the governor should assess what evil he has done.
manner of painting the scene does not, of course, affect its basic historicity.
No such festal amnesty of a prisoner is known anywhere in the Roman world, but
2. The Interrogation before Pilate – Matthew’s Account
It is fascinating to see how Matthew reads Mark’s account from his own very Jewish point of view. He makes subtle changes, well within the conventions permitted in Jewish historical writing, which for his Jewish Christian readership bring out the lessons of the story.
1. Matthew’s techniques in the Pilate narrative
The techniques which Matthew here uses are typical of Jewish writing of the time, dreams and scriptural allusions. It would be wholly mistaken to ask where Matthew got his information about these three little incidents, the death of Judas, the dream of Pilate’s wife and Pilate’s hand-washing. They are all elaborations or embroidery to enable the reader better to understand the meaning of the central events. To the Jewish and scriptural mind, each ‘incident’ is a justified deduction: things must have happened this way, or, if they did not, they should have done. A factual record or source was quite unnecessary.
First Matthew inserts the story of the death of Judas. It falls easily into the frequent biblical genre of an aetiological story, a story to explain a name, a feature of landscape or behaviour, in this case the name Hakeldama, ‘Field of Blood’. But it is also a midrash on at least two Old Testament texts (Zechariah 11.12-13 and Jeremiah 39.8-15). The basic significance of Judas’ suicide by hanging is to be found in the similar death of the only suicide told in the Hebrew Bible, that of Ahitophel, David’s companion and counsellor. Ahitophel betrayed his master and sided with the rebel Absalom. When his wise strategy for the defeat of David was fatally rejected by young Absalom (2 Sm 17.23), Ahitophel went off and hanged himself. However, as often, Matthew’s use of the Old Testament is here quite complicated. The quotation is not from Jeremiah but from Zechariah 11.13. There is a further complication, in that the mention of the treasury in Matthew 27.6 shows that the allusion includes two different textual readings of Zechariah 11.13, both (‘potter’) and (‘treasury’). We simply do not know what readings were current at the time Matthew wrote, before the standardization of the Hebrew text. Two stern details in Matthew’s account must be mentioned: firstly, Judas does not repent in a way which invites forgiveness. This is regularly described by the Greek verb metanoe,w; Matthew here avoids this technical term for ‘repentance’ and uses metamelhqei.j: Judas simply ‘changes his mind’. Secondly, Matthew takes the opportunity to mock the legalism of the chief priests and elders: their concern not to put the price of innocent blood into the sacred treasury is laughable when compared with the hounding of the innocent man in itself.
The dream of Pilate’s wife is similarly typically Jewish, though also one more instance of the gentile getting it right where the Jews get it wrong. A dream was considered one of God’s ways of imparting information, a sure image of things as they are, so that this dream is an incontrovertible assurance of the innocence of Jesus, corresponding to the frequent oracles received in dreams in the Bible (e.g. 2 Sm 7.4), and indeed in Matthew’s own infancy narrative (1.20; 2.13, 19). The language of these two verses is so thoroughly Matthean that there can be no doubt that he formed them himself. The insertion serves to give the positive divine reaction to the envy and jealousy which had motivated the handing over of Jesus.
It is also natural for Matthew to express Pilate’s denial of responsibility for the death of Jesus with the biblical gesture of washing the hands (26.24). This is the gesture prescribed in Deuteronomy 21.8 for the elders of a town at the end of an unsuccessful murder-investigation; it both implies Jesus’ innocence and attempts to distance Pilate from the responsibility of his condemnation. Whether Pilate would have been sufficiently at home with Jewish customs is one question, whether Matthew’s readers would understand the implications of this gesture is another. Matthew must have intended also an internal allusion to the contrast between Jew and gentile in his own infancy story: just as the gentile magi recognise the child Jesus as king, while the leader of the Jewish nation attempts to annihilate him, so the gentile Pilate acknowledges Jesus as king while his own people reject him. Indeed, right from the beginning (27.13-14) Pilate’s awed amazement is stressed. Yet it is not Pilate’s recognition of Jesus which finally drives him to action, so much as fear of a loss of control (qo,ruboj, riot); the blame still lies firmly with the Jewish crowd.
2. The Messiah rejected
Throughout his treatment of this scene Matthew concentrates the attention in a spine-chilling and almost brutal way on the rejection of Jesus, precisely as Messiah, by his own people. Firstly, he removes the motivation of Barabbas’ political involvement, given in Mark 15.7. Barabbas is now simply ‘a well-known prisoner called Barabbas’. He no longer has a nationalistic claim on their attention but is simply a nondescript prisoner, making the crowds’ choice of him less reputable. Secondly, Matthew makes it a straight choice between Jesus and Barabbas. In Mark Barabbas has been introduced but then left in the background, so that the reader could well wonder why he has been introduced at all. The crowd takes the initiative, to which Pilate responds by asking whether they want ‘the king of the Jews’ released. Barabbas becomes relevant only later, by a clever move of the chief priests. From the beginning of Matthew’s account, however, we are left in no doubt that there is a straight choice in progress, an either/or (27.17), and initiated by Pilate; the crowd has merely ‘come together’ not for any particular purpose, by contrast with Mark’s account, where they come specifically to ask for the release of a prisoner. In Matthew the choice between the two is unambiguously offered to the crowd: ‘release to the crowd whom they wanted’ (27.15), ‘whom do you want me to release to you?’ (27.17). Similarly, at the next stage, the chief priests and elders persuaded the crowds (plural, not singular as in Mark) not merely to gain Barabbas’ release, but ‘to ask for Barabbas and liquidate Jesus’ (27.20). It is not merely that Jesus will be left over if Barabbas is preferred, but they positively request Jesus’ destruction. This deliberate choice is further emphasized with maximum clarity by Pilate’s two separate questions, ‘Whom of the two do you want me to release to you?’ (27.21) and ‘What then shall I do with Jesus called Christ?’ (27.22). The grinding emphasis continues, ‘They all cried out…’ (27.22), ‘they continued to cry out’ (27.23 – Matthew neatly changes Mark’s aorist to the continuous imperfect). The responsibility is already removed from Pilate by the double change of the imperative, ‘Crucify him!’ (Mark 15.13 and 14) to the impersonal passive, ‘Let him be crucified!’ (Matthew 27.22 and 23), as though Pilate had nothing to do with it.
Most significantly, Matthew clarifies that it is the Messiah they are rejecting, ‘Barabbas or Jesus called Christ’ (27.17). And it is now the crowds rather than the chief priests (as in Mark 15.10) who have handed Jesus over out of jealousy. There may also be significance in Matthew’s change of verb: instead of Mark’s ‘he had ascertained (evgi,nwsken)’ Matthew has the more positive and absolute ‘he knew (h;|dei)’ – he just knew for a fact. According to Matthew (27.22) Pilate again points out to them Jesus’ position, ‘What shall I do with Jesus called Christ?’ (27.22) as they make the final choice.
The climax comes after the hand-washing, when Pilate challenges them and they respond deliberately and positively: ‘“I am innocent of this man’s blood. See to it yourselves!” And the whole people replied, “His blood on us and on our children”’ (27.25). The full strength of this declaration or self-curse must be appreciated. Hitherto the spectators have been designated as ‘the crowd’ or ‘the crowds’. Now they are given emphatically the sacred title of the People of God: it is the nation as a whole which responds, for the lao.j (the technical term here used) are the People whom Yahweh chose as his own.
This cry has been so frequently and so virulently used as a
theological justification for Christian persecution of Jews that it must be
examined more closely in its context. Christian apologetic has so often claimed
that ‘they invited condemnation and vengeance on themselves’. Matthew’s careful
designation of ‘the whole People’ definitively rules out any claim that he
considers only the chief priests and elders (cf. 27.20) to be implicated. Has
this casual group of spectators then invited condemnation on the whole Jewish
people for all time to come? Two important mitigating factors must be
considered: Matthew’s writing stems, as we have seen, from the situation of
acute conflict towards the end of the first century between Jews who saw Jesus,
the Messiah, as the fulfilment of the hope of
Secondly, it must be remembered that Matthew is writing towards the
end of the century. A generation after the events here described, destruction
did come upon the children of those who were here speaking, in the form of the Sack
of Jerusalem in 70. Has Matthew this particular retribution in mind? The
allusion to Jeremiah contained in the words of the people may indicate that
this is the case. There is a clear echo of the scene shortly before the Sack of
Jerusalem in 597 BC, when Jeremiah says to ‘the priests and prophets and all
the people’ threatening to kill him, ‘But be sure of this, that if you put me
to death, you will be bringing innocent blood on yourselves, on this city and
on its inhabitants’ (Jer 26.15). The principal meaning of these words would
then be that just as the destruction of
After this Matthean ascription of guilt, it remains only for Matthew to conclude the scene with a neat chiasmus, slimming down Mark’s rather bulky conclusion and again contrasting the two prisoners: avpe,lusen to.n Barabba/n…to.n Ihsou/n pare,dwken, ‘he released Barabbas…Jesus he handed over’.
3. The Interrogation before Pilate and Herod – Luke’s Account
Luke has very largely re-formed the Markan account to express his own theology. This is done so consistently and coherently that there is no need to suppose that he had any other factual source. Three ideas guide this re-formulation:
In this account Jesus is above all the teacher. In accordance with
Luke’s presentation of Jesus as prophet throughout the gospel, but as teacher
especially during the
It has often been remarked that Luke, the careful historian, insists that there must be charges mentioned, rather than allowing Pilate, as Mark does, simply to sail unmotivated and uninformed into the charge, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ (Mark 15.2). Who, as we asked earlier, has told Pilate of this claim? The three charges which Luke mentions are, of course, false, but the important aspect is that they all concern Jesus’ teaching.
· ‘We have found this man leading the people astray’ (23.2) – but the reader knows that the people are already astray (9.41).
· ‘opposing payment of tribute to Caesar’ – this would be a good charge to bring before any Roman governor, but again the pericope on tribute (20.20-26) has shown it to be false.
· ‘claiming to be Christ, a king’ – again, a good political charge, which in fact has never been part of Jesus’ teaching in Luke. ‘Are you the Christ?’ was the first of the questions put to Jesus in the preliminary hearing, and Jesus in Luke is primarily the prophet-messiah, not a king. The modified charge is, however, necessary to lead into Pilate’s question. It is the only time the kingship appears in Luke’s account of the trials. In the mockery by Herod Luke has carefully avoided this implication (23.11): no suggestion of imperial purple robe, of crown or of sceptre. In the rest of the trial this charge lies neglected.
Similarly, when the opponents of Jesus return to the charge, the charge is that he is inflaming the people with his teaching all over Judaea and all the way from Galilee’ (23.5). When Pilate declares Jesus innocent a second time, this is the charge he refutes: ‘You brought this man before me as turning the people away’ (23.14), again a matter of Jesus’ teaching.
Each of the synoptic evangelists has his own angle on the responsibility for Jesus’ condemnation. The Markan account showed Pilate actively shifting the responsibility onto the Jews. The Matthean account concentrated on the Jewish people rejecting their own Messiah. The Lukan account shows the Jewish authorities and people determinedly egging Pilate on to condemn Jesus, Pilate himself fighting an unsuccessful rearguard action. ‘The entire scene is composed in order to emphasize the responsibility of priests, rulers and people’ (Matera 1989, p. 549). There are two points to note.
The strength of Luke’s language
is striking. ‘They persisted’ (23.5); ‘but as one man they howled’ (23.18);
‘they shouted back’ (23.21); the single cry of Mark, ‘Crucify!’ is doubled and
put in the more pressing present tense; ‘but they kept on shouting at the top
of their voices, demanding that he should be crucified. And their shouts kept
growing louder’ (23.23). In counterpoint, it is to their demand that Pilate
accedes: far from condemning Jesus, he three times, in equally strong language,
declares Jesus’ innocence: ‘I find no case against this man’ (23.4); ‘I have
found no grounds in the man for any of the charges you bring against him – and
nor did Herod’ (23.14); ‘I have found no case against him that deserves death’
(23.22). At the mid-point Pilate, while protesting Jesus’ innocence, feebly and
illogically suggests a beating, an admonitory thrashing rather than the brutal
and often fatal scourging which was the first stage of crucifixion (The Greek paideu,w really
means ‘to teach a lesson’, quite different from the frage,llw which occurs in
the other accounts). In the end Pilate does not condemn him, but goes no
further than ‘he gave his verdict that their demand was to be granted’ (23.24).
The further motivation for this emphasis remains debated. Is Luke attempting to
show that the followers of Jesus pose no threat to
· Luke insists that the whole people is involved. This is surprising, for hitherto Luke has been careful to show a contrast between the people and their leaders. The leaders had been hostile, the people favourable. Now the situation has changed: in the early speeches of Acts the ‘Men of Israel’ are blamed squarely for demanding the death of Jesus (Ac 3.13; 4.27; 13.28). In the passion narrative itself Luke leaves no doubt: at the preliminary hearing in 22.66 he adds to Mark’s account ‘the elders of the people’ as gathered together. Similarly a[pan to. plh/qoj (‘the whole number’), who lead Jesus away to Pilate, suggests not merely the number of the elders, chief priests and scribes, but the whole gang of the people. It is they who produce the accusations and continuously play an active role. Pilate replies to ‘the chief priests and the crowds’ (23.4). In Pilate’s next scene he ‘calls together the chief priests and the rulers and the people’ (23.13). In the final verses the only purpose of the appearance of Barabbas is to whip the crowd up to greater insistence. Finally it is the vociferous fury of the crowd which wins the day pamplhqei. (‘in full number’, 23.18). Is all this preparing for the repentance which will occur at the Cross?
3. The Disciples under Persecution
The Church of his own day is constantly in Luke’s mind, and, as so often in the gospel, Jesus serves as a model for his disciples under persecution. His followers will be brought before kings and governors ‘for the sake of my name’ (Luke 21.12), so it is suitable that Jesus himself should be brought before both a governor and a king. Similarly in the story of Paul the Herodian King Agrippa is brought in to give his verdict on Paul (Ac 25.14), just as his uncle Herod Antipas was brought in to give his verdict on Jesus. The innocence of Paul will there be stressed (Ac 23.29; 25.25; 26.31; 28.18), just as Jesus’ innocence here.
The scene requires no separate factual source; it is constructed
with typical Lukan art and skill, for Luke
is a master at constructing such little scenes in order to express theological
truths (e.g. the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus, Peter’s Release from Prison
in Acts 12). The vocabulary and literary style are unmistakably characteristic
of Luke in his most sophisticated mode, as befits a story about a hellenistic
monarch. Luke shows his knowledge of Roman legislation by allowing Pilate to
seize on the mention of
4. Jesus Before Pilate in John
1. A Climax of Johannine themes
As will become apparent, the section-title ‘Jesus before Pilate’ is only superficially apt. Just as in the Annas scene it was questionable who was interrogating whom, so now it is questionable whether Pilate is judging Jesus or Jesus Pilate and others. Two themes which have been running parallel, and often intertwined, throughout the gospel here reach their climax, namely the revelation of Jesus’ identity and the theme of judgement. The whole gospel may be viewed as one great judgement scene, for forensic terms appear constantly: truth and falsehood, judge, judgement, witness, bear witness, advocate.
Throughout the gospel of John the person of Jesus has been being
revealed. This is one of the major distinctions between the synoptic gospels
and John: in the former Jesus is proclaiming the reign of God, concentrating on
God, with little attention to himself; in the latter he is revealing himself. In
the synoptics Jesus says little about himself, and most of what he does say is
hidden under the self-description as ‘son of man’; in John the evgw, eivmi (‘I
am’) sayings are of paramount importance. The kingdom of God, so central in the
synoptics, is mentioned only twice (Jn 3.3, 5), for John uses as its equivalent
‘eternal life’ (which barely occurs in the synoptic gospels), which is to be
obtained in and through Jesus. The
explicit revelation starts immediately. During the first days in the
From then on the progressive revelation occurs, and the witnesses
judge themselves by their confrontation with Jesus and their reaction of
acceptance or rejection. We see being carried out the process announced by
Jesus: ‘The Father judges no one; he has entrusted all judgement to the Son’,
and ‘whoever listens to my words and believes in the one who sent me has
eternal life and has passed from death to life’ (5.22, 24). Hence, at the
marriage feast of
The discourse after the Last Supper has made clear that the Hour of Jesus is the moment of full revelation, for the Priestly Prayer (Jn 17) is bracketted by ‘Father, glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you’ and ‘I have made your name known and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them’ (Jn 17.1, 26). The judgement-scene is one of the great moments of this revelation.
2. The Artistry of the Scene
1. The Chiasmus
The Greek letter chi (written ‘X’) gives its name to a pattern common in ancient and especially biblical literature (e.g. Matthew 23.16-22), a pattern of concentric opposites, of which the climax is normally the central element, with a secondary climax at the end. In this scene the basic shape is given by the alternation of outside and inside the Praetorium. This already brings into prominence the absurd irony of the fussy adherence by the Jews to purity regulations – in refusing to enter the Praetorium - while they are engineering a far greater injustice than ritual defilement.
18.28 The Jews demand death outside
18.33 Pilate questions Jesus inside
18.38 Jesus declared innocent outside
19.1 JESUS CROWNED KING inside
19.4 Jesus declared innocent outside
19.8 Pilate questions Jesus inside
19.12 Jews obtain death: WE HAVE NO KING BUT CAESAR outside.
The central element is therefore the scourging, mockery and crowning of Jesus. As we have seen, the scourging has occurred differently in the accounts of Mark/Matthew and of Luke. In the former it was the cruel preliminary to execution, in the latter a lighter, admonitory form of correction. In all the synoptics, however, it occurs only at the end of or after Pilate’s judgement. In John it occurs illogically, half-way through the proceedings, when the scourging has no legal justification and the mockery constitutes an untimely interruption. John must have had a non-historical reason for so displacing it, namely to bring into prominence the kingship of Jesus through the chiasmus which he builds.
Jesus’ royal dignity is one of the keys to John’s presentation of
the Hour, the moment of exaltation of Jesus, which sounds again and again
throughout the narrative. The dialogue between Jesus and Pilate in the first
half of the chiasmus (18.33-39) is centred upon the explanation of what kind of
kingship it is, kingship not of this
world, but a kingship of witness to the truth. Pilate writes himself off by his
contempt for truth, merely throwing out the careless question, ‘What is truth?’
and not even waiting for an answer. Once Jesus has been crowned and mocked as
king – again, Johannine irony, for the unwitting soldiery mock him for what we
know to be true – there is a still more positive exegesis of what this means.
The Jews themselves brazenly inform Pilate of Jesus’ claim to be Son of God,
which at any rate fills Pilate with awe and fear. The picture is completed by
the movement of the dialogue to the source of Jesus’ authority. Jesus’
enigmatic answer fills Pilate with yet more dread. The final stage then comes
with Pilate bringing out Jesus and seating him on the Judgement Seat.
It is then before Jesus, crowned as king and enthroned as judge, that the Jews
abjure themselves with the dreadful cry, ‘We have no king but Caesar’. If
Judaism does not recognise Yahweh as King, the sole King, it no longer has a
reason to exist, for this is at the heart of the hopes of
Finally the universal kingship of Jesus is again stressed by the titulus on the cross (19.19-22). This is mentioned also by the other evangelists (Mark 15.26//), and indeed it was normal for the offence of the executed criminal to be thus placarded, as a deterrent to other possible offenders, but John emphasizes it. It is proclaimed to all by being written in the three world languages. Against the Jews’ expostulation that it should be phrased as a mere claim, Pilate insists that it should remain expressed as the truth.
2. The Tone of the Dialogue.
The whole tone of the dialogues is truculent and mocking. The Jews’ first reply to Pilate is cheeky, ‘If he were not a criminal, we should not have handed him over to you’ (18.30). Pilate’s reply to this is mocking, to which the Jews unhelpfully reply with the assumption that Jesus is guilty of a capital offence, ‘We are not allowed to put a man to death’ (18.31). Similarly Jesus speaks past Pilate, not answering either of his questions (‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ and ‘What have you done?’), and finally elaborating quite gratuitously on witness to the truth when he has been asked about kingship. Pilate then mocks the Jews further by offering to release to them by amnesty the very man they have asked him to execute (18.39); he rubs it in by personalizing it and by the title, ‘release for you the king of the Jews’. Similarly after the central scene, Pilate again mocks the Jews by telling them, ‘Take him yourselves and crucify him’, knowing full well that they have no right to do so. Jesus also continues to speak past Pilate, not answering his question about authority, but returning with a statement about the source of this authority (19.11). finally Pilate again mocks the Jews by implying that they accept Jesus as king, ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ (19.15). Despite dismissing the case, Pilate’s tone to Jesus is mocking too, from the sneer, ‘Am I a Jew?’, to the throw-away line ‘What is truth?’ and the final ‘Are you refusing to speak to me?’
whole interchange is uncomfortable and adversarial, but not uncharacteristic of
Johannine dialogue. One might expect sarcasm from the opponents of Jesus (4.12;
7.27; 8.53, 57; 10.33), but it is no less typical of the disciples (1.46;
11.16) and even of Jesus himself (3.10; 7.23; 13.38; 16.31). Like ambiguity and
duality, it is one of the characteristics of the Johannine style. Other such
adversarial and slightly inconsequential dialogues are not uncommon, e.g. 7.20-30;
1. Mark’s Account
is convenient to divide this final scene in the Passion Narrative into four
elements, the crucifixion itself (15.22-27), the mockeries (15.29-32), the death
of Jesus (15.33-37) and its consequences (15.38-41). Before and after, however,
the scene is locked in by witnesses, first Simon of Cyrene (15.21), the mention
of whose sons Alexander and Rufus suggests that they were known to Mark’s
audience. There would have been many Cyreneans scattered round the Roman world,
and these are common enough names. Acts 6.9
mentions Cyrenian members of a
Typical also is the pattern of three (three divisions of time, three mockeries, three reactions to Jesus’ death). Further than this, there are curious instances of Markan duality about the account, two mentions of drink offered (15.23, 36), two mentions of the actual crucifying (15.24, 25), two loud cries (15.34, 37). The duality of the first and last pairs is, however, unlike the usual instances of Markan duality, where one element immediately follows the other (‘at evening//when the sun had set’; ‘when David was in need//and was hungry’), in that each of the pairs is separated. The double mention of crucifixion corresponds more nearly to the usual, resumptive pattern. Are the other instances different traditions of the same event, used differently? The first drink offered out of pity and refused by Jesus is a mild narcotic. The second, the rough, peasant, vinegary wine may be a taunt, for in Psalm 69.21 and the Qumran Scrolls the offer of vinegar to drink is ascribed to enemies:
‘They [the teachers of lies and seers of falsehood] withhold from the thirsty the drink of knowledge and assuage their thirst with vinegar’ (1QH 4.11).
Of the two cries, the first is important as putting on Jesus’ lips the intonation of the Psalm which gives the meaning of the Passion (see page 72), while the second seems to lack any theological interpretation.
1. The Crucifixion
Remarkable about this description is as much what it does not say as
what it does. There is no dwelling on the horrors of this barbaric method of
execution. It was too familiar in the Roman world, and as long as it remained
so, realistic representations of the crucifixion were avoided in favour of a
bejewelled Cross. The accent is all on the theological meaning of the scene. A.
Vanhoye 1967 fittingly comments, ‘The death on the cross is not seen as a
failure, soon to be wiped out by the victory of the resurrection; it is not
seen as an unhappy episode to be hastily forgotten. On the contrary, it
constitutes a positive completion which, fulfilling the scriptures, reveals the
person and crowns the work of Jesus’ (p. 162). Nor does Mark precise about the
Only three features are important to Mark. In accordance with his careful principles of chronological organisation and his interest in numbers, he divides the day into periods of three hours, third, sixth, ninth hour and evening. The principal features are two. Fulfilment of scripture has been a continuous interest and at this climactic moment it is intensified: the wine mixed with myrrh is mentioned not because of its supposed narcotic qualities but because it fulfills Psalm 69.21b. The division of Jesus’ clothes is mentioned not to draw attention to the shame of nakedness but because it fulfills Psalm 22.18. The criminals crucified on either side of Jesus are mentioned partly because they fulfill Isaiah 53.12. (Secondary manuscripts and some versions draw attention to this by 15.28, but the verse is missing in the principal manuscripts, and is widely rejected.)
Markan irony gives these criminals another sense too, attached to the other principal point: the central point of the Roman trial was the claim (however derived) that Jesus was King of the Jews. It was as King of the Jews that Jesus was handed over to be crucified, and this irony now reaches its completion. There is further Markan irony in the two criminals being the sole supporters of the King of the Jews. The reader of Mark’s gospel will surely also remember that, after the third solemn prediction of the Passion, the sons of Zebedee asked for a place at his right and his left ‘in his glory’ (10.37); it is another Markan reminder of the failure of the disciples to understand and a reminder of what his glory is.
2. The Mockeries
The two chief mockeries (that of the criminals is a mere tailpiece,
to show what sort of supporters they are), focus on the two accusations of the
Jewish hearing, the charge of renewing the
3. The Death of Jesus
In Mark the actual death of Jesus is recounted neutrally, but its
sense is given beforehand by three scriptural links. First comes the darkness
at . Vain attempts are
occasionally made to interpret this historically. It is now well enough known that no eclipse in
fact took place at any time at which the event of the crucifixion can be
located, but still explanations such as the eerie occurrence of a spring
dust-storm (which in fact does block out the sun) are postulated. However, the
immediate association of darkness at
must be the foreboding threats of the Day of the Lord in Amos 5.20, ‘Will not
the Day of Yahweh be darkness not light, totally dark, without a ray of light?’
and more especially Amos 8.9, ‘On that Day, declares the Lord Yahweh, I shall
make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight’. This
darkness at the sixth hour therefore announces that the Day of the Lord is
occurring, that great and terrible day when the judgement and restoration of
Yahweh are to be manifest. From the time of Amos onwards this Day had been a
marker of increasing importance in the Bible. First it was awaited with threatening
fear as the Day when
Joel 2.10 The earth quakes, the skies tremble, the stars lose their brilliance,
Yahweh’s voice rings out at the head of his troops.
Ezekiel 32.7-8 I shall cover the skies and darken the stars,
I shall cover the sun with clouds and the moon will not give its light.
I shall dim every luminary in heaven because of you.
The other scriptural key given to the death of Jesus is the intonation of Psalm 22, which has featured so widely in the Passion Narrative. It has often been taken as a cry of despair, even (tentatively) by E.P. Sanders. On this sort of interpretation have been built theologies of Jesus suffering the pains of the damned, of total separation from God, even of God vengefully exacting from his Son the penalties which were due from all humankind. A less clumsy reading is to see it on the lips of the dying Jesus as the intonation implying the whole psalm. It is the clue which binds together all the other allusions to the psalm. The thrust of Psalm 22 is the achievement of the glory of God and the vindication of the sufferer only after the psalmist has passed through shame, humiliation and torture. It ends in triumph:
The whole wide world will remember and return to Yahweh,
All the families of nations bow down before him.
Those who are dead, their descendants will serve him,
Will proclaim his name to generations still to come. (Ps 22.27-31)
The misunderstanding of the Aramaic cry is a surprising detail, involving a double contortion of Aramaic. Firstly, it does not seem possible to find any pronounciation of the Aramaic ‘Elohi’ which could be misunderstood as ‘Eli’. Secondly, this is not in fact any short form of the name of the prophet Eliyahu. This suggests that the whole misunderstanding springs from a time when or a context where Aramaic was not understood. Nevertheless, it does serve two purposes: it provides the opportunity for one more cruel mockery of the dying man, and it strengthens the impression of the Endtime, for the coming of Elijah was associated with that moment, ‘Look, I shall send you the prophet Elijah before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes’ (Malachi 3.23).
The Veil of the
These two commentaries complete the picture of the event. It may be
doubed whether either of them is meant strictly historically. It is hard to
believe that Christians continued to go to the
The eastern gate of the inner court of the Temple, which was of brass and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by 20 men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron ,and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one single stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night… The men of learning understood that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord and the the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared that this signal foreshowed the desolation that was coming upon them.
The lesson is reinforced by the Centurion’s acknowledgement. The theme of ‘son of God’ has run through the gospel right from the beginning. It is in the heading, ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, son of God’. In Mark’s introduction the expression crucially sets the scene, showing how the gospel is to be understood. The manuscript evidence is not wholly secure for the last three words, but the same declaration of how Jesus is to be understood is provided by the Voice from heaven at the Baptism (1.11), the conclusion of the introduction. The unclean spirits cast out by Jesus have acknowledged him as ‘son of God’, but this was directed at the reader rather than the witnesses of the exorcisms, for none of the bystanders seem to react to it. The twin titles of the heading, ‘Christ’ and ‘son of God’, dominate the development of Mark’s presentation of Jesus. Eventually Peter brings the first great revelation of the gospel to its conclusion with his recognition of Jesus as the Christ (8.29), but still he does not rise to the second title. This comes onto the stage of human discussion at the Jewish hearing with the high priest’s question and Jesus’ answer, but it is still only now that any human being acknowledges Jesus as son of God.
is of the highest significance to Mark that this emphatic (‘truly’) acknowledgement
comes from a gentile. There is no doubt room for irony, since the declaration
can be understood on two levels: Mark was of course aware that on the lips of a
gentile centurion ‘son of god’ would have a lesser import than to a Christian.
‘Son of god’ in gentile discourse would signify the special patronage of and
participation with the pagan deities, whose divinity was of a distinctly lower
order than that of the God of the Bible. It was used fairly freely of great men
and heroes of the past, and by this time was a regular part of the Roman
emperor’s title. The
major significance comes, however, from the fact that during his ministry Mark
has shown Jesus in contact with one gentile only. The story of the Syro-Phoenician
(7.24-30) shows that Jesus was open to the entry of gentiles into his company,
for she wins the cure of her daughter by standing up to Jesus’ abrasive
put-down with a smart and cheeky retort. The case remains unique, however,
until this moment, when a gentile, rather than a Jew, becomes the first human
being to acknowledge Jesus as son of God. Especially in conjunction with the
splitting of the
It begins now to be clear why the disciples have been forbidden to spread the message ‘until the son of man had risen from the dead’ (9.9). The vindication of Jesus by the resurrection is yet to come, but the meaning of the relationship ‘son of God’ begins to be clear. To be son of God demanded the full obedience to the will of the Father shown in the acceptance of suffering and death. The cry of the centurion shows an appreciation both of the relationship of son to Father, and also that the Father is not wholly divorced from the suffering of the world. In everyday speech we might say, ‘He really is the son of his father’, when we see a son behaving according to well-known behaviour-patterns of his father, or especially when a son determinedly carries out his father’s plans in the face of major difficulties. Thus the death of Jesus is the climax of the Incarnation, revealing in human form something of the divine. To appreciate the exact flavour of the declaration, and the still not fully articulate nature of Mark’s Christology, it is important to be aware that the centurion says neither, ‘this man was a son of God’ (which would be ui`o,j tij tou/ qeou/) nor ‘this man was the son of God’ (which would be o` ui`o.j tou/ qeou/). Mark is not asserting that Jesus was, in Johannine terms, the incarnate Son of God, but neither is the acclamation restricted to being one son of God among many.
2. Matthew’s Account
Matthew is careful in his account, making a number of minor changes. He adjusts the mention of Simon of Cyrene, removing the reference to his two sons (who were presumably unknown to his particular audience), and interestingly also the Markan reference to his ‘coming from the fields’: did he consider that this meant that he had been breaking the Law by working in the fields on the feastday?
Arrived at the place of execution, the use of scripture is intensified. Matthew changes Mark’s narcotic ‘wine mixed with myrrh’ to ‘wine mixed with gall’. This is a more obvious fulfilment of the psalm (Ps 69.21a), but rather less likely, since gall is a positive poison; in the psalm it is given deliberately to poison an enemy. Is it out of courtesy, then, that Jesus tastes it before declining?
The chief changes that Matthew makes to the scene are two:
1. The mockery.
In his account of the mockery of Jesus on the Cross, Matthew makes clear references back to the Jewish investigation, stressing that what is now happening is the fulfilment of that scenario. The chief priests taunt Jesus with the same words as the high priest had used, ‘if you are the son of God’ (26.63 and 27.40). This is the very taunt levelled at Jesus twice by the devil in the story of the Testing in the Desert (4.2, 4). The importance of this title to Matthew is clear in that the mocking priests repeat the taunt, ‘for he said, “I am son of God”’; there is no doubt that for Matthew this claim is the reason why he is being crucified. The mockery is made more sardonic by their promise to believe in Jesus – not merely as Mark ‘let him come down so that we may see and believe’, but a full-blooded promise, ‘let him come down and we shall believe in him’. Matthew combines with Psalm 22 a second quotation. The crass enmity of the mockers is made clear by their use of the very words which the mocking godless use against the upright man in the Book of Wisdom 2.17-20:
Let us see if what he says is true, and test him to see what sort of end he will have. For if the upright man is God’s son, God will help him and rescue him from the clutches of his enemies. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, since God will rescue him - or so he claims.
irony of their own situation is increased by their direct confession. ‘He is the king of
Another malicious little touch comes in 27.49: in Mark one of the bystanders offers Jesus the spongeful of rough wine, surely a helpful gesture of sympathy. At the same time he cloaks his act of kindness with the sarcastic remark, ‘Leave him be [plural]! Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down’. In Matthew there is a contrast between the person who offers the rough wine and ‘the others’ who sadistically forbid this gesture of kindness. ‘Leave him alone [singular]! Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him’.
2. The apocalyptic signs.
Mark already highlights the significance of the moment by the apocalyptic phenomenon of darkness at . Matthew increases this dramatically. The first touch is a careful little otherwise meaningless change in 27.45 from Mark’s o[lhn to pa/san, in order to introduce an allusion to the darkness over the whole land of Egypt for three days (the same figure as the three hours) as one of the Egyptian plagues (Exodus 10.22), an apocalyptic sign reminiscent of Israel’s divine release from slavery.
the death of Jesus, however, the splitting of the veil of the
entry must be into the heavenly
In reaction to all this, the centurion and those with him (not in Mark), actually witnessing the phenomena, are struck with a divine fear. They all join in the acknowledgement of Jesus as son of God.
Luke, brilliant raconteur that he is, tidies up what obviously seems to him Mark’s somewhat sprawling and repetitive account. More important, he focusses it differently in several important respects. Particularly he takes the accent off the horror of the scene and puts it on the sovereign control of Jesus and on the salvific effects of his loving concern.
1. The Framework
First of all Luke gives a double framework to this all-important
event, a framework consisting of the disciples and of the crowds. By contrast
to Mark’s account, where the chosen disciples have fled for their lives and are
nowhere to be seen, Luke starts with the framework of Simon of Cyrene. Simon is
subtly changed. Instead of being ‘pressed into service’ according to the
authority which Roman officials had over provincials, he is simply ‘grabbed’.
But he carries the cross ‘behind Jesus’; this is the only gospel where Simon is
specifically said to carry the cross ‘behind Jesus’. Such is the function of
the true disciple, to join with Jesus and follow behind him in all things. Then
the concluding frame at the end shows ‘all those known to him’ (23.49) standing
watch, as well as the women who had followed from
this framework is another frame, again formed from a personal group, the women
will mourn for the one whom they have pierced, as though for an only child, and
weep for him as people weep for a first-born child. When that day comes, the
words are full of prophetic solemnity and doom as he tells them to mourn for
themselves, first with the threat of a Lukan beatitude (how characteristic this
form is of Luke is shown by 1.45; 7.23;
11.27-28; 14.14-15, etc), then with a prediction of the fulfilment of the
threat in Hosea 10.8, and finally with the proverb about green wood and dry,
alluding to the threat in Ezekiel 21.3. The increased significance of this
passage comes, however, from its pairing both backwards and forwards. Backwards,
at the end of Jesus’
2. Christological focus
Luke avoids what he seems to consider duplications in the narrative,
as he often does. There was only one account of the miraculous feeding
(9.10-17) while Mark and Matthew have one feeding of 5,000 and another of
4,000. There was only one scene of Jesus calming the storm (8.22-25), whereas
Mark and Matthew have both this and Jesus walking on the water, which Luke omitted
probably as a doublet of the calming of the storm. Having related the story of
the woman anointing Jesus’ feet (7.38) Luke omitted the somewhat similar
incident, given in all three other gospels, of anointing of Jesus’ head at
remarkable change in the mockery on the cross is its focus. To begin with, the
taunt about the
Stronger, however, than either of these titles, and showing the meaning which they have for Luke, is the view of Jesus as Saviour. With heavy sarcasm ‘Saviour’ is attached to each of the titles with which he is taunted: ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One’ and ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself’. Throughout the gospel Luke has stressed that Jesus is the Saviour, in a way much clearer than Mark and Matthew. This may be for either of two reasons. In the hellenistic world there were plenty of Saviour-Gods, committal to and initiation into whose cults was held to guarantee protection and salvation from the uncertainties and disasters of that unpredictable age. Luke, writing for a hellenistic audience, confronts such beliefs head-on, with the claim that Jesus is the true Saviour-God. From the Hebrew point of view also it may be that Mark’s and Matthew’s Christology was not yet sufficiently advanced explicitly to call Jesus the Saviour, for this was traditionally a title of Yahweh. Apart from a single mention in John 4.42, Luke is the only evangelist to use the words ‘Saviour’ and ‘Salvation’ of Jesus. This he does frequently, especially in the Infancy Narrative, where he is writing more freely (a horn of salvation, salvation from our enemies, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord, 1.69, 71, 77; 2.11, 30; 3.6), and in the speeches of Acts (leader and Saviour, salvation in none other, God gives them salvation through his hand, Ac 4.12; 5.31; 7.25; 13.23). The other gospels had frequently spoken of Jesus ‘saving’ through his healing miracles, but this saving takes on a quite new connotation through the stress on Jesus as Saviour. Now it is not merely physical healing that is implied but something deeper. It was a bold step in the development of Christology to apply to Jesus the divine attribute of Saviour. The ironical stress on it in each mockery, even that of the unrepentant thief, means that it cannot be said that Luke attributes no salvific value to the death of Jesus.
3. A scene of repentance and healing.
Forgiveness, healing and repentance have been features of the whole of Luke’s gospel (see p. 43), but come to their climax in the climax of the gospel. Even as Jesus is nailed to the cross he forgives his executioners. Then he welcomes the Good Thief into his kingdom. Finally the gentiles, represented by the centurion, give glory to God, and the Jews, represented by the crowd of onlookers, go home beating their breasts in repentance.
transformation from the Markan scene of horror and suffering into this scene of
salvation and triumph is completed by the transfer of two events and by Jesus’
final cry. The mention of darkness over the earth (in Luke, frankly an eclipse)
and the rending of the veil of the
In his noble adornment of the crucifixion scene John produces one of the finest pieces in his gospel, a fitting climax to his account of Jesus’ triumphant Passion. It is a scene not of degrading torture but of ennobled triumph, presided over by Jesus and fulfilling the predictions, which have dominated the earlier outlook on the Passion, that it would be the Hour of his exaltation and of his glorification (see p. 19-21). From the point of view of John’s Church, it is also the Hour of the foundation of the Christian community.
1. Jesus Reigns
The control of Jesus and his royalty are indicated in several ways. Negatively, the degrading elements are removed. There is no mockery by the Jewish authorities (as in Mark and Matthew) or by the soldiers (as in Luke), no cry of dereliction, no final shriek, no agony of thirst. Instead of Simon of Cyrene being press-ganged to carry the burden of the cross, Jesus himself hoists it voluntarily: basta,zwn e`autw|/, ‘hoisting for himself’ (19.17), suggests almost that Jesus swings the cross willingly and easily onto his shoulder, setting off unaided and unguided on his own path. The actual crucifixion, again described only in a single word, seems to be mentioned solely in order to indicate that Jesus is placed in the middle between two others, as though they were his supporters or courtiers.
Major emphasis is placed upon the titulus, authoritatively written by Pilate himself, with the insistence, in the teeth of Jewish opposition, that Jesus really is the King of the Jews, not merely the claimant to be King. The authoritative nature of this public proclamation is increased by its being written (and seemingly by Pilate himself) not only in Hebrew, but in the two major world-languages, Greek and Latin. A certain degree of respect or even reverence is shown by the care of the soldiers not to divide Jesus’ main garment, his citw.n, woven in one piece throughout. Whether John intended further symbolism, suggesting the high priestly robe (a single weave according to Josephus, Antiquities 3.161) or the unbroken unity of the Church, remains entirely unclear.
Jesus’ control continues throughout the scene. He has the freedom to see and commend to each other his mother and the Beloved Disciple (about which more later). Then, as the final climax approaches, the reader is again reminded of Jesus’ foreknowledge by that keyword eivdw.j, ‘knowing’. This is an echo of that self-possessed knowledge which has marked the Johannine Jesus at key moments of the Passion Narrative. It is noted twice in quick succession at the preparatory moment of the Supper: ‘Jesus, knowing that his Hour had come to pass from this world to the Father’, ‘Jesus, knowing that the Father had put everything into his hands’ (13.1, 2), and again, resumptively, at the beginning of the arrest – for John the beginning of the Narrative proper – ‘Jesus, knowing everything that was to happen to him’ (18.4). Now, one more time the reader is reminded of his control, ‘Jesus, knowing that everything was completed’ (19.28). Finally, only when Jesus has himself noted that all is completed, and has bowed his head in readiness and acquiescence, does he (again a positive action on his part, rather than something he undergoes) breathe forth his spirit.
2. The Foundation of the Church
There have often been hints, throughout the gospel, of the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist, particularly in the prominence of ‘living water’ or ‘the water of life’ in the dialogues with the Samaritan and with Nicodemus (especially 4.10, 11; and 7.38), and in the Bread of Life discourse (6.31-66). Equally significant, however, is the lack of a narrative of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. John is not ready for the sacraments to be founded. This, however, changes with the remarkable event which immediately precedes the note that Jesus knew that now everything had been completed. This is the scene of which the synoptics have no glimmering, the commendation of Jesus’ mother and the Beloved Disciple to each other.
Each of these two has an important representative role. Whether the Beloved Disciple was or was not originally a particular person has been endlessly debated. Much more significant is the fact that this gospel deliberately leaves him faceless. He features at four climactic moments. He is close to Jesus at the Last Supper, reclining next to Jesus (13.23) in intimacy of union. He shares with Jesus in the Passion by his presence here at the foot of the cross. He runs with Peter to the empty tomb, yields precedence of entry to Peter, but contrasts with Peter by achieving understanding and faith (20.8). Lastly, the Beloved Disciple features in the appendix, 21.20-24, as the guarantor of the gospel tradition, who is to remain until the Lord comes. This is a complete sketch of the generic disciple whom Jesus loves, the disciple who is close to Jesus at the eucharist, who shares the Passion with Jesus, who recognises and believes in the Resurrection, and who is therefore the enduring tradent and surety of the gospel tradition until the Lord comes. This being the meaning and task of every Beloved Disciple, it is necessary that the face should be left empty, to be filled by the features of every true disciple.
with the mother of Jesus, who is never named in this gospel, either here or in
the Marriage-Feast at
This formation of the first Christian community is immediately followed by two other ecclesiastically significant events. The evangelist next tells the reader that Jesus knew that everything was complete. Jesus’ own last word is the same, tete,lestai, after which he bows his head and yields up the spirit, pare,dwken to. pneu/ma, literally ‘handed over the spirit’. The verb teleio,w has frequently been used by Jesus of completing the Father’s will: he says to the Samaritan, ‘My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work’ (4.34, cf. 5.36; 17.4). In view of the frequency of Johannine double layers of meaning (‘living water’, ‘lifted up from the earth’) this handing over must be seen to conceal a deeper layer of meaning, that Jesus handed over his Spirit to give life to his community. John’s gospel is studded with paradoxes and contrasts. This would be the reverse of the same paradox as occurred in the raising of Lazarus: Jesus’ gift of life to Lazarus was the event which finally pushed the Jewish authorities to determine on Jesus’ death. So now in reverse it is the death of Jesus which gives life to his community, the coming of the Spirit of Jesus which was promised in the Last Discourses (14.16-17, 25-26; 15.26; 16.13), and is again exemplified in Jesus breathing on the disciples in the upper room on the evening of Easter Sunday (20.22).
The second significant event follows when the soldier pierces Jesus’
side. This event has double significance, biblical and ecclesiastical. Firstly,
John explains that the abstention of the soldiers from breaking Jesus’ legs
fulfills the scripture of the paschal lamb, ‘Not a bone of his shall be broken’
(Exodus 12.46; John 19.36). There have been hints that Jesus takes the place of
the paschal lamb ever since John the Baptist pointed Jesus out as the Lamb of
God (1.29, 36). There the meaning of this title remained unclear, but during
the Passion there have been clearer hints. John points out (19.14) that it was
the Day of Preparation for the Passover, and Jesus dies at the same time as the
paschal lambs were being slaughtered in the
The piercing of Jesus’ side also gives a symbolism for the life of
the Church, the life of the community flowing from the death of Jesus. This was
early focussed by Christian writers onto the sacraments of baptism and
eucharist. The actual physical or medical phenomena are of little interest to the
evangelist; it is doubtful whether he envisaged the exact medical processes
involved. The point of the blood and water is their symbolic value. The
association of water with Jesus’ gift of life is obvious enough, and clearly
envisaged by John. An important background to this is the conversation with the
Samaritan in John 4.14, and the claim of John 7.38. In these passages Jesus is
shown to be the source of living water or the water of life: ‘No one who drinks
the water that I shall give him will ever be thirsty again; the water that I
shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up for eternal
life’. This in turn has as its background the river of living water flowing
The flow of blood is more obscure. It may be one more allusion to the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, connected with the requirement of Judaism in the Mishnah (Pesahim 5.3) that the blood of the victim should flow (Brown 1971, p. 951). Alternatively, it has been suggested that it is an anti-Docetic proof that Jesus was truly human – if indeed Docetism was a danger to which John wished to reply.
Christian tradition very early extended or focussed the symbolism of
water and blood on the sacraments of baptism and eucharist. While symbolism is
difficult to exclude from the gospel of John at any level it remains
questionable whether there is anything in the scene of the crucifixion which
would constitute a direct allusion to the conversation with Nicodemus about
being born again by water and the Spirit (3.5-8). It may be fair, therefore, to
speak of an application rather than a direct allusion. Similarly with the blood
and the eucharist. Apart from one use of the term in 1.13, all the other
references in John to blood are to the blood of Jesus in the eucharistic
discourse (6.53-56). This does not, however, mean that any allusion in John to
the blood of Jesus carries this sense.
It would be foolish and frustrating to finish without pulling together some of the strands of this investigation. There can, unfortunately, be no question of a full treatment of the conclusions which might be drawn. I can attempt no more than a personal interpretation, which is not, I hope, without foundation in the texts themselves. I wish to focus on two points, the historicity of the narrative and the sense of Jesus’ death on the Cross.
It will be clear that the evangelists are constantly interpreting, each in his own way and with relation to the aspects which he sees to be important. Whence did they derive their basic, factual information? Matthew and Luke certainly base their narratives on Mark. There is no good reason to show that they had any other factual, or at least any other written, source, for the treatment by each is characteristic of the methods and serves the purposes of each of these two evangelists. For example, there is no good reason to believe that Matthew had any factual information which lay behind his description of Pilate’s wife’s dream or of Pilate washing his hands. There is no good reason to believe that Luke had any factual information which lay behind the repentance of the Good Thief or Jesus’ last words. Similarly, behind these two, Mark, and independently of all three, John, construct each his own narrative in accordance with the methods, style and interests which are evident from the rest of these two gospels. Mark’s account of the Agony in the Garden makes sense in terms of his own interests and style, probably drawing on reflections of the early Christian community such as we see also in the Letter to the Hebrews. Similarly there is no good reason to believe that John had any factual information which lay behind his version of the scene in Pilate’s praetorium, or behind the scene with Mary and the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the Cross.
At the other extreme we have the sound, traditional information
given in 1 Corinthians 15.3, that ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with
the scriptures’, backed up by the non-biblical sources which consistently hold
Pilate to be responsible for his execution. In many cases we can see how this
fulfilment of the scriptures has been knitted into the narrative and prescribed
some of the quasi-factual details, such as Matthew’s addition of ‘bile’ to the
drink offered to Jesus on the Cross, or John’s ‘Not one bone of his shall be
broken’. In other cases we have no means now of knowing whether the allusion
gave rise to the fact or the fact gave rise to the allusion. Did Mark have
information that Jesus was silent to his questioners and that two malefactors
were crucified with him, or did he deduce that Jesus must have been silent because he was the Servant of the Lord, and
that he must have been ‘numbered
among evil-doers’ in fulfilment of the scriptures? Such details have value even
today as powerful reminders respectively that Jesus – as we know from earlier
passages of the gospel - saw himself as the Servant of the Lord, and providing
the basis for Luke’s sublime presentation of Jesus’ act of forgiveness. More
powerful still, they form together the expression, in the manner of
first-century exegesis, of the fact that the crucifixion brings to a climax the
long process of the revelation of God’s love in the scriptures of
Between these two extremes there is a host of details which must have developed in the course of the oral transmission of the material in the Christian communities. How much was this development affected by their needs, crises and experiences? Throughout the gospels of Matthew and John the undertone of conflict with contemporary Judaism indicates that they express and emerge from a situation of conflict between Jewish groups who accepted Jesus as Messiah and Jewish groups who did not. It is no coincidence that these two gospels expecially stress that Pilate was egged on by Jewish pressure to authorizing the execution. The part of the Jewish authorities in achieving the execution does not feature in Paul’s traditional summary nor in the skeletal non-biblical reports, though it is touched upon by Josephus’ phrase ‘at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us’. Matthew underlines this aspect by the notorious cry, ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children’. John shows the full horror of the betrayal of Judaism in the trial-scene before Pilate, when the Jewish leaders abjure the central tenet of Judaism before Jesus the king and judge. This emphasis is not absent from Mark, although he is writing for a gentile audience; but, beset by the problems of failure under persecution, Mark pays far more attention to the failure of the disciples to stick with their Master. Luke, again, concerned that his sophisticated gentile audience should change their way of life, underlines repentance and the welcome given to the repentant sinner by the dying Saviour. Thus each of the gospels has its own undercurrents. How much of this flows from the evangelist’s personal understanding of Christ, how much from the gradual polishing of stories re-told in the Christian communities, and how much from factual reportage of the actual events?
The other point to be touched is the sense of Jesus’ death on the
Cross. Here I take my clue from the final union of Father and Son expressed in
each of the gospels. Mark and Matthew show Jesus intoning Psalm 22, ‘My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me’. The meaning of this intonation comes from the
psalm as a whole. Far from expressing any sense of Jesus’ abandonment by God
(as ignorance of the scriptures might suggest), the psalm concludes with the
triumph of God and the vindication of the sufferer. With Jesus’ dying
commendation of himself to God, ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’, Luke
again expresses the union of Jesus with God. The same is the meaning of the
final proclamation in John, tete,lestai, ‘It is fulfilled’. The whole impetus of Jesus’ life and ministry
had been the renewal of God’s kingship by his teaching and the evidence of
God’s work wrought by his healing hands. Despite rejection by his people as a
whole, despite incomprehension by his chosen Twelve, Jesus continued to
proclaim this renewal of God’s rule even in the
Paul sees this obedience of the Second Adam as undoing the disobedience of Adam.
One man’s offence brought condemnaion on all humanity. Just as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience are many to be made upright (Rm 5.18).
The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden is the myth, the analysis in pictorial form, of human disobedience, cause of disharmony and mistrust, fear and failure, plainly visible in every age of human history and literature, perhaps intensified as the social and scientific means of oppression have become refined. Unaided human beings had no power to escape from this deathly spiral. To break out of the nightmare an obedience greater than that achievable by human beings was required.
More than this, Jesus achieved this greater obedience as the ikon of God, the expression of the divinity in human form. Only this could complete the communion of human nature with divine, expressed most fully on the Cross. It also shows in human form the love of God for creatures, accepting the ultimate self-sacrifice to restore human nature to its intended purpose and freedom, justifying the many-layered meaning of the centurion’s cry, ‘In truth this man was son of God’.
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‘And so we came to
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A succinct history of the investigation is given by Porter 2000, p. 1-123.
 A selection of the diverse viewpoints of respected modern scholars is given by Brown 1996 at the end of his survey of the problem, p. 824-9.
 A personal
reminiscence may help: On my first trip to the
 Is Jn 6.17 correct in showing Jesus crossing in the boat to
 The course of the discussion is delineated with clarity and wit in Neill and Wright 1988. A more succinct, and therefore more schematic, account is given by Tom Wright in Wright 1992, p. 1-18.
 A preliminary publication of the Ethiopic text of the Book of Enoch was made in 1838, but the first critical edition appeared only in 1906. The first translation of the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch into a modern language was published in 1896.
 Bultmann 1948, p. 27.
 Bultmann 1954, p. 208.
 With rare exceptions, such as C.H. Dodd in
 An important statement of the Pontifical Biblical Commission on historicity of the gospels, already in 1964, distinguishes three stages of development, that of Jesus, that of the apostolic community and that of the writers of the gospels.
 This criterion was already developed as long ago as 1906 in Burkitt 1906, p. 147-168.
 The methods and process of The Jesus Seminar are described and excoriated by Luke Timothy Johnson in Johnson 1996, p. 1-27.
 Porter is not alone in insisting (Porter 2000, p. 52-55) that recent research and methods are not sufficiently distinct to merit classification of a third quest, distinguished from the New Quest.
 Sanders 1993, p. 10-11.
 Sanders 1993, p. 274-5.
 Downing 1998
 See discussion of how widespread Greek-speaking was in
 In Crossan 1991.
 E.P. Sanders in Donnelly 2001, p. 9-22.
 A film could poignantly and effectively use Tchaikowsky’s 1812 Overture as background music to
Hitler’s disastrous invasion of
 The first member balances the last, the second balances the penultimate, the third balances the propenultimate, focussing the accent on the central core:
a. Cure of a Paralytic – controversy within a healing-story
b. Food controversy, ending with a proverb
c. Double-saying about fasting
*The Bridegroom taken away
c’ Double-saying about novelty
b’ Food controversy, ending with proverb
a’ Cure of the Withered Hand – controversy within a healing-story
 This must surely be an allegorisation due to Mark. It would hardly be intelligible to the by-standers at the time, certainly so early in Jesus’ ministry, before they have had any hint of violence. Some sort of explanation in the parable is required for the extraordinary happening of the bridegroom being ‘taken away’, hardly an everyday occurrence. The style with its oral duality ‘then, on that day’ is typically Markan (see Neirynck 1988).
 Mark frequently ‘intercalates’ or ‘sandwiches’ an incident between two others in such a way that the extremes and the centre illustrate each other,.e.g. healing/forgiveness/healing (2.1-12), where the visible power of Jesus to heal illustrates his invisible power to forgive; fig-tree/temple-cleansing/fig-tree (11.13-30), where the barrenness of the fig-tree is a symbol of the barrenness of the temple-cult.
 Ptw/ma rather than the gentler sw/ma
 Three accusations before the High Priest, Peter’s three denials, Pilate’s three assertions of Jesus’ innocence, the threefold division of the day.
 Should this be written ‘Son of God’ or ‘son of God’? There are no special capital letters in Greek, or rather all the letters in the early manuscripts are capitals, so that it is impossible to make the distinction. Capitalization therefore depends on the level of discourse. The centurion’s acknowledgement is a typical piece of Markan irony. The Roman centurion surely meant his statement in terms of his own, presumably polytheistic, religious experience and language. But he is saying more than he realises, and the Christian reader understands his words on a quite different level.
 See Puéch, 1991, p. 80-106, and Green 2001.
Beginning with the proud drum-roll of the great ancestors of Judaism, chapter one reaches its climax with the adoption of Jesus by divine command into the house of David when Joseph names the child – a way of accepting the child as his own son.
 King Herod’s unsuccessful attempt to eliminate the child parallels Pharoah’s attempt to eliminate Moses. The flight of the holy family into a foreign land and their return at a divine message parallel the flight of Moses and his family into Midian, and their return at an angelic message.
 His community are to pray (24.9) that their flight on the Day of the Lord be not hampered by Sabbath restrictions. He also deliberately omits (15.17) Mark’s liberating ‘thus he made all foods clean’ (Mark 7.19).
 And Origen, who quotes this book of Josephus’ work five times, twice states that Josephus did not accept Jesus as Messiah (Comm in Mt 10.17; Cels 1.47). Louis Feldman (Anchor Bible Dictionary, 3.991) points out that there are 16 Christian writers in the first four centuries who knew Josephus’ works and yet did not mention this passage, which would have been a strong weapon in controversy, especially against the Jews.
 Alternatively, the reason for Archelaus’ removal could have been dynastic intrigue between the sons of King Herod. This, together with a desire for the financial gain of taxation going direct to Rome, may be the reason why Augustus imposed direct rule rather than giving the territory to one of Herod’s other sons. See Bond 1998, p.4.
 See discussion in chapter one of Sherwin-White 1963.
 Ehrenberg and Jones 1955, no 311 ,
Goodman 1987, p. 40-44). It is an important thesis of the author’s book that the reason for the chaos which eventually led to the Jewish Revolt in 66 was the lack of competent and respected leadership, and the consequent factional bickering.
 Sanders 1984, p. 312).
 Sanders 1984, p. 314-5).
 McLaren 1991, p. 223; Nodet, 2002, p. 41: ‘On peut conclure fermement non seulement que la séance du Sanhédrin est intrusive, mais surtout que l’institution elle-me^me l’est’.
 Whether I can claim any paternity for Professor McGing’s views can no longer be established. I gave him a lecture on the subject about the time of the publication of my article, when he was my secondary-school pupil at Ampleforth.
 And the importance of strict adherence to army rules is obvious to
anyone who has seen the identical design of Roman camp (even to the positioning
of the latrines) at Housesteads on
 There is a plethora of
aqueducts leading to
 Goodman 1987, p. 7-8.
 See Schürer 1973, Vol 1, p. 460-4.
 Bond 1998 prints this as ‘TIBERIÉM’ (p. 12, 48, 249), but such accents do not exist in Latin. On the original inscription the supposed acute accent looks to me more like a chance cut in the stone than part of a letter. Presumably this stroke occurred when the stone was re-used in a later building project.
 Hill 1914, p. 227
 Holleran 1973
 Almost every sentence begins with kai. and is couched in the historic present; nine uses of e;rcomai in ten verses; impersonal plural, 14.32; h;rxato with infinitive, 14.33; pleonastic synonyms 14.33d; double imperatives 14.34, 38, 41, 42; indirect speech repeated in direct speech, 14.35-36; i[na without sense of purpose, 14.35; parenthetic translation of Aramaic, 14.36; kai. pa,lin, 14.39, 40; pleonastic 14.35b+36, 39b, 41b, 41b+42b (ivdou. paradi,dotai + ivdou, o` paradou,j); delayed explanation with ga.r, 14.40; periphrastic t ense 14.40, cf. Cf. Bird 1973; Elliott 1993; Neirynck 1988.
 J. Fitzmyer 1985. He rejects (p. 27) as valid evidence for the first century the charming fifth century version of the story about the first century Rabbi Honi: During a drought school children were sent to him to say, ‘Father, Father, give us rain’, whereupon Honi prayed, ‘Master of the Universe, do it for the sake of these who are unable to distinguish between the father who gives rain and the father who does not.’ However, the novelty of this address by Jesus in prayer to his Father still remains. Fitzmyer concludes, ‘There is no evidence in the literature of pre-Christian or first-century Palestinian Judaism that ’abba’ was used in any sense as a personal address for God by an individual – and for Jesus to address God as ’abba’ is therefore something new’ (p. 28).
 Viviano 1989
 But there are other touches too: in 14.55 he addresses ‘the crowds’ in the plural, and reminds them that he was teaching ‘seated’ or ‘enthroned’ in the Temple, just as Moses was in giving the Law, or he himself for the Sermon on the Mount (5.1).
 Goulder 1974, p. 74 – a machaeric is Goulder’s nickname for a four-point antithetical paradox, where two of the four terms are the same, as also Matthew 8.22; 10.40; 12.37, etc
 This detail is
also in John, raising the question whether there is a special link between Luke
and John in the Passion Narrative, not shared by Mark and Matthew. In the
course of the gospel there have been certain special similarities between Luke
and John, e.g. the Call of the Disciples in Luke 5.1-11 and the Appearance on
 The Greek word means ‘stream which flows in winter’, which is
exactly the meaning of ‘Wadi’. Many of the stream-beds east of
 E.g. Genesis 29.32-35; 1 Sm 4.21-22.
E.g. double negative (14.60, 61); double statement (14.61 and 68 and 71); double location (‘inside…into the hall’, 14.54; evxh/lqen e;xw 14.68); double question (14.63 and 64, cf. Neirynck, 1988); impersonal plural (14.53); periphrastic imperfect (14.54); o[ti-recitative (14.58, 69, 72); the ubiquitous pa,lin (14.61 and 70 twice); asyndeton (14.64); h;rxanto with infinitives (14.65 and 69 and 71); numerals (14.58 and 72, cf. Elliott 1993, p. 61); kai. euvqu.j (14.72). How typical these are of Mark may be seen by the frequency with which Matthew and Luke avoid them: of these 24 little instances of Markan style in this passage Matthew retains only 7 and Luke (though of course his text is fairly different) none.
 See Is 14.5; 54.1; Tob 13.16-18; Jub 1.15-17; Ps-Sal 17.32; 1 QM 7.4-10; 4Q Flor 1.6-7; 4 QpPs 37 3.11; 11 QTemple 29.8-10; Rv 21.22.
 Cathcart 1989
 The stories of the miracles of Rabbi Honi the Circle-Drawer and Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa may be found in G. Vermes 1973, p. 69-77..
 This text is uncertain, the words ‘son of God’ being omitted in some important manuscripts.
 This is fully argued and explained by Perrin 1967, p. 173-185.
 Similarly Brown 1994, p. 482, wisely insists (with italics): ‘the high priest’s question was not the formulation in a Jewish investigation of Jesus in AD 30/33’, on the grounds that the title ‘son of God’ was not applied to Jesus during his lifetime.
 ‘A formal condemnation by the presbyterion
would destroy the dramatic effect of Luke’s composition’, says
 This is still normal practice in
 Cf. John 10.24-25. On possible links between John and Luke, see ???
 von Wahlde 1989, p. 35
 Until recently it was current to associate this virulent anti-Judaism with the split occurring after the Synod of Jamnia (or Yavneh), and the introduction there of the Twelfth of the Eighteen Benedictions, which contained the Curse on the Heretics and the Christians (minim and nozrim). Although it seems accepted that Vespasian gave the rabbis leave to gather at Jamnia and so begin the constitution of Judaism after the Fall of Jerusalem, it is now much more doubtful that any single, datable Synod took place. It is also doubtful whether the Twelfth ‘Benediction’ existed in anything like its present form until the end of the second century cf. van der Horst 1994. There is therefore no clear date for the beginning of virulent hostility between Synagogue and Church. It is best dated imprecisely ‘in the closing years of the first century’.
Cf. ‘The Evangelist did not find it necessary to narrate the trial before the Sanhedrin during the Passion because in the Fourth Gospel the major elements of the Sanhedrin trial occur during Jesus’ public ministry’, Matera 1990, p. 54.
 A characteristically Markan feature of usage, see C.H. Turner in Elliott, 1993, p. 134-5.
 How did he get hold of it? Senior 1975 points out (p. 225) that in Mark the title is used only by Pilate and his soldiers (15.2, 9, 12, 18, 26).
 Longenecker 1975, p. 133.
 The introductory genitive absolute (and exactly as Mt 24.3), the speech-introducing le,gousa, the individual words di,kaioj, sh,meron, kat vo;nar.
 The similarity leaps to mind also because the gentile Pilate (and, in imitation, his soldiers) and the gentile magi are the only people who call Jesus ‘king of the Jews’ in Matthew.
 The parallel between the two figures is emphasized if the text for 27.16 is accepted as ‘Jesus Barabbas’, as in some MSS. Origen attests this reading as present in several MSS known to him, and many modern scholars accept it. If it were not original, it is unlikely that Christian copyists would have added the word ‘Jesus’, especially as ‘Barabbas’ is the Aramaic for ‘son of the father’. See the full discussion in Senior 1975, p. 238, footnote 3.
 There is not even the excuse that the crowd was acting irresponsibly. This will do for Mark’s account, when ‘the chief priests stirred up (avne,seisan) the crowd’, but Matthew removes any suggestion of pardonable excitement. ‘Persuaded’ suggests deliberate and thoughtful acquiescence.
 This is the thesis of Walaskay 1983
Bond 1998, p. 142.
 See Sherwin-White 1963, p. 28-31. A criminal could be tried either in his forum delicti (the court where the crime had been committed) or in his forum domicilii (where his domicile was).
 Such dualism occurs throughout the gospel: 1.11-12 acceptance >< non-acceptance; 3.6 flesh >< spirit; 3.19 light >< darkness; 8.23 above>< below; 8.44 truth >< lies; 9.39 sight >< blindness. 'John had dualism in his bones', says Ashton 1991, p. 237.
 The Greek verb kaqi,zw can be either transitive or intransitive, so that 18.13 can be translated either 'Pilate led out Jesus and sat down on the judgement seat' or 'Pilate led out Jesus and sat him down on the judgement seat'. The expression is used twice in the New Testament in this form, of God seating Jesus at his right hand (Ac 2.20; Eph 1.20), so both times transitively. It is standard Greek grammar that the object of two verbs, if given after the first, need not be repeated after the second, and it is certainly in accordance with John's style to omit the repeated object ('him') in a second limb of a sentence. The historical improbability of Pilate seating Jesus on the judgement-seat is lessened if it is not a throne but e.g. a mere stone bench. In any case, the author is a theologian, giving an impression of Jesus, rather than a chronicler recording facts. It is typical of John to make use of ambiguity in this way, stating one thing and suggesting another (cf. born anew or from above, 3.3; living water or the water of life, 4.10-15).
Brown 1994, however, prefers the explanation that Mark inserts this first offering of wine ‘to signal to the reader Jesus’ refusal of what would spare him from suffering and thus to show at the final stage of the drama Jesus’ willingness to drink the cup of suffering the Father had given him’ (p. 944).
‘My guess is that Jesus’ cry was his own reminiscence of the psalm, not just a motif inserted by the early Christians. It is possible that, when Jesus drank his last cup of wine and predicted that he would drink it again in the kingdom, he thought that the kingdom would arrive immediately. After he had been on the cross a few hours, he despaired, and cried out that he had been forsaken’, Sanders 1993, p. 274-5.
 It might be useful to recall that in 1964 the King of Nepal was declared a god on reaching his 18th birthday. Being at that time a schoolboy at a British public school, the King was then excused from attending chapel, on the grounds that it was inappropriate for one deity to worship another.
 Characteristically Luke omits the Aramaic version of the name,
 This assertion often seems to rest on Luke’s omission of the Markan saying, ‘The son of man came … to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10.45).
 The manuscript evidence for the inclusion or exclusion of this
verse is very evenly balanced. Was it omitted by anti-Jewish copyists in a
period of controversy, as too favourable to the Jews? Or because the
 This little scene is typical of Luke, and typical of the way he builds up a rich scene from a slight hint (Luke 12.17-19 from Sira 11.18-20; Luke 14.1-6 from Proverbs 25.6-7; Luke 18.1-8 from Sira 35.14-15). He takes the two criminals of Mark’s account and makes them one of the contrasting pairs he so likes (Zechariah >< Mary, John the Baptist >< Jesus, the prodigal son >< his elder brother, Dives >< Lazarus, Martha >< Mary, the Pharisee >< the tax-collector). They break into dialogue, as so often in Luke’s proper parables. The unadorned vocative, `Ihsou/, unique in the gospels, is a typical Lukan touch of warmth. The first pre-requisite for becoming a disciple is always admission of sinfulness (Peter in 5.8; the woman in 7.38; the tax-collector in 18.13). The vocabulary is also thoroughly Lukan, though Raymond Brown suggests, on the grounds of the ‘Amen’ and the un-Lukan ‘paradise’, that Luke has taken and re-positioned a traditional saying of Jesus by which he promised salvation to a repentant sinner (Brown 1994, p. 1001).
 The traditional identification with John, son of Zebedee, is no better founded than the more modern identification with Lazarus.
The symbolism of the simultaneity of the death of Jesus and of the paschal lambs makes a major dislocation of dating: if Jesus died on the Day of Preparation, the Last Supper must have occurred on the previous day, rather than at the time normal for the paschal meal. Three solutions have been proposed to this problem: (1) The Last Supper was not in fact a paschal meal, (2) Either John or the synoptic gospels allowed theology to overrule chronology and adjusted the dating to suit their theological purpose, (3) Jesus used a different calendar, that in use at Qumran, by which the Passover supper was celebrated on a Wednesday evening. This original solution was strongly advocated by Jaubert 1957.
 1 Kings 4.33 expresses the breadth of Solomon’s knowledge by
saying, ‘He could discourse on plants from the cedar in
 This marvellous passage can be fully appreciated only by those who
can envisage standing on the eastern parapet of the