Jesus: A Biography From a Believer. (16 page)

The Last Supper concluded with Jesus leading the eleven apostles in singing a hymn. Not enough attention has been paid to the hymns given in the Gospels. The Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, the Benedictus of Zacharias, the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon, and Gloria in Excelsis sung by the angels (all recorded in Luke) had been complemented by the hosanna hymn, or cry of praise, on Palm Sunday. And it may be that the opening verses of John are a hymn to the Logos originally arranged in three verses. It is a pity we do not have the text of the Last Supper hymn, but it was no doubt one of thanks for the institution of the Holy Communion, for the Acts of the Apostles records the early Christians reflecting the Last Supper tradition, taking communion “with gladness and singleness of heart” and “[p]raising God”—in a way that sounds like hymn singing (2:46-47). And it is fitting that the last hymn recorded in the Gospels shall be a joyful thanksgiving before the horrors to come.

Although the chamber now shown in Jerusalem as the upper room where the Last Supper took place may not be the actual building, the spot is plausible. By contrast, the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane are most certainly the places recorded in the Gospels. According to Luke, he warned them yet again of the trouble coming, and when Peter said, “Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death,” Jesus replied sorrowfully, “I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.” He also warned them that they would need money in the future, and they should sell their goods to buy swords. They replied, “Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.” Then they went into the garden, probably a private one belonging to a wealthy follower, which they were permitted to use. Jesus told them to pray, “And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed” (22:31-41).

This long prayer is traditionally called the Agony in the Garden, for in it Jesus both asked for “the cup” to be taken away and submitted to his Father’s will—“not my will, but thine, be done.” Luke says that “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” An angel appeared, “strengthening him,” but how he knew this is not clear, for when Jesus had finished his prayer, “and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow” (22:42-45). Jesus’s prayer lasted a long time (Matthew’s account says he came back three times to find his apostles asleep). It illustrates the intensity of his communion in prayer with the Father, the enormity of his fear, his horror and revulsion at the prospect of the Crucifixion, and at the same time the courage and resolution with which he put aside his terror and prepared himself for death. Jesus’s subsequent calmness during the insults and sufferings he endured is due to the thoroughness with which he prepared himself by prayer—one of the great lessons of his Passion.

Matthew records Jesus coming to his disciples three times (26:40-49). On the third occasion, he said resignedly, “Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand.” Then the Temple soldiers and the high priest’s bodyguards arrived—“a great multitude”—“with swords and staves.” Judas, with them, said, “Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.” He kissed Jesus, saying, “Hail, master.” According to Luke, Jesus replied, “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” (22:48). The apostles then became aware of what was happening, and said to Jesus, “Lord, shall we smite with the sword?” (22:49). Luke adds: “And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.” Jesus denied them this right to resist: “Suffer ye thus far.” He touched the man’s ear “and healed him.” Then he turned to the priests “and captains of the temple,” and said: “Be ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and staves? When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me: but this is your hour, and the power of darkness” (22:50-53).

Then they took him to the high priest’s house. In Matthew’s account, “all the disciples forsook him, and fled” (26:56). After all their boasting, this was contemptible. One wonders what would have happened if the women had been with them. We cannot see the Virgin Mary abandoning her son, or Mary Magdalene, or the energetic Martha. There would have been a scene of fierce resistance, and blood would have flowed. In justice to the men, Jesus did not call on them to fight, just the contrary. They did not understand his resolve to be meek in suffering, though he had explained it often enough. They were confused. They lacked leadership. Peter did not give it to them. He fled, too. But later he crept back and sat in the outer court of the high priest’s palace while Jesus was held within. Three times he was asked, twice by serving maids, once by the mob: “Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee”—a reference to his Galilean accent. He denied it each time (“I know not what thou sayest. . . . I do not know the man”), the third time with curses and swearing. Then the cock crowed, and Peter remembered Jesus’s prediction of his betrayal: “And he went out, and wept bitterly” (26:69-75). And what of the real betrayer, the wretched Judas? Matthew says that when he recognized the enormity of what he had done, he “repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.” Judas and his crime, as well as his dismal fate, gave rise to many stories in the early church. All we know is that “the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called The field of blood, unto this day” (27:3-8). It was situated on the southern slope of the Valley of Hinnom, near the Kidron Valley, and is known by the Aramaic word Akeldama. Its supposed location, like those of many other places mentioned in the Gospels, is shown to visitors, and those who come to pray for Judas’s soul—lost or not, we cannot say—can believe it is the exact spot, if they wish.

Then came the long procedure of Jesus’s trials and condemnation, which lasted through the rest of Thursday night, till the cock crowed at dawn, and for most of Friday morning. There were in effect three trials: before the high priest, before Herod Antipas, and before Pilate. All four evangelists contribute something in substance and in detail. What the narratives amount to, in effect and perhaps in intention, is a bitterly ironic condemnation of human justice. Lying and perjury, prejudice and false witness, an eagerness to take innocent life but a determination to avoid any responsibility by passing the decision to others, cowardice on all sides, and not without a vile touch of frivolity—these were the salient characteristics of the trials of Jesus.

The high priest Caiaphas was only too anxious to hustle Jesus off to death, but he was too cowardly to pronounce sentence himself. So he passed the responsibility to Pilate. Pilate was another cowardly and indecisive man. Hearing Jesus was a Galilean, he instantly sent the prisoner off to Herod Antipas: as he said, Herod was the ruler of Galilee and thus had jurisdiction. But Herod, finding Jesus unwilling to plead—he would not recognize the court of the man who had, in his frivolous depravity, decapitated his cousin John the Baptist at the whim of a fan dancer—sent him straight back to Pilate. And Pilate, finally, handed over the responsibility to a mob outside his windows: not a genuine mob of the Jerusalem rabble, either, but a rehearsed and orchestrated one trained in slogan shouting by the priests, their masters. Pilate condemned Jesus not because he was guilty—he, and more important, his wife, believed him innocent—but because he was afraid the Jewish religious leaders would report him to Rome, where his position was shaky. And while these travesties of justice were being enacted, a cluster of servants and soldiers always waited outside for Jesus to be left with them a while, so they could enact a brutal counterpoint to the irresponsible wickedness of their betters by spitting in his face, dressing him up in dirty finery, crowning him with thorns, and sneering at him with obscene slogans. It’s hard to say who behaved more badly: those in high places or the underlings who sucked up to them from below. Jesus, as always, was charitable: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Matthew tells us that Jesus was taken to Caiaphas’s house, “where the scribes and the elders were assembled” (26:57ff.). John says that Jesus was first brought to the house of Annas, the high priest’s father-in-law and predecessor. There, witnesses had been assembled, and Annas asked him about his doctrine. Jesus said, “I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. Why asketh thou me? ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said.” At this, one of Annas’s officers struck Jesus with the palm of his hand and said, “Answerest thou the high priest so?” Jesus said, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?” (18:20-23). Annas decided to have him bound and sent him, escorted, on to Caiaphas, with such witness as he had been able to scrape together. What he, and Caiaphas, wanted was reputable Jews who would swear an oath that Jesus had proclaimed himself the Christ, the King of Israel, and the Son of God, so that, as Matthew says, they could put him to death (26 : 59). They found “many” to give evidence, but none of the kind they wished. Jesus made no comment, which provoked Caiaphas into saying, “Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witness against thee?” But as Jesus contrived to “h[o]ld his peace,” Caiaphas shouted, “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God!” Jesus replied, “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (26:62-64).

This reply was enigmatic, and not what Caiaphas wanted to hear. It was not an admission to shock orthodox Jews, or to persuade the Romans that here was a dangerous rebel. But he decided it would have to do. He declared Jesus had uttered blasphemy and went through the ceremony of rending his garments in disgust. Jewish law listed only a few occasions when garments should be rent, such as death and blasphemy. In the latter case, both the inner and outer garments were torn. But the high priest wore a special double bib which was easy to tear and was expendable, for the law, which had thirty-nine rules, said that in the case of blasphemy the rent had to be the size of a fist and expose the breast, and must never be repaired. So Caiaphas rent both sides of his bib, briefly exposing his skin. Even his rending ceremony had an element of humbug and falseness about it (Mt 26:65; Mk 14:63). But he rent with a will and said: “[W]hat further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy.”

Those present said: “He is guilty of death.” Then, says Matthew, “did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands, Saying Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote thee?” When the morning came they led Jesus, bound, to the prefectural palace of Pontius Pilate, the governor. According to Luke’s account (23 : 1ff.), “the whole multitude of them” got into the palace, shouting that Jesus had been “perverting the nation,” “forbidding [the giving of] tribute to Caesar,” “saying that he himself is Christ a King,” and “[stirring] up the people.” Pilate surveyed the scene with disgust. He had his own information about Jesus’s activities and knew the accusations were false. He had been in office for several years and much disliked Jewish religious extremism, having clashed with it twice before. When, to curry favor with his superiors in Rome, he had brought to Jerusalem ensigns bearing Caesar’s image, the priests had protested. The Jewish historian Josephus says a large crowd of fanatics held a public fast, which he had broken up by using troops. He had again used troops when the priests and their mob had rioted against his decision to seize Temple funds to pay for a thirty-five-mile aqueduct bringing water to Jerusalem. Many Jews had been killed. There were well-placed Jews living in Rome, and it was not difficult for the priests to make damaging protests to the authorities there. Indeed, six years after the Crucifixion, a similar clash between Pilate’s troops and a religious procession, this time a Samaritan one, followed by protest to Rome, led to his dismissal (Josephus,
Jewish Antiquities:
18.4:1-2).

Pilate was displeased with Caiaphas for bringing a large collection of clamorous militants shouting slogans to his palace. He was also impressed by Jesus’s dignified silence. When the hubbub had died down, Pilate asked Jesus, “Art thou the King of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “Thou sayest it” (Lk 23 : 3). When he spoke at all, that was the line he took throughout: I am accused of all kinds of things but have made no such claims myself—which was the truth. Pilate turned to Caiaphas and said, “I find no fault in this man” (Lk 23:4). He meant: he has done nothing to which the Roman authorities can object. At this the tumult broke out again. “When Pilate heard of Galilee,” he seized the opportunity to pass the responsibility to the man who ruled Galilee, Herod Antipas. So he ordered Jesus to be taken to Herod’s court, which was in another part of the vast palace originally built by Herod the Great.

Luke says that Herod was “exceeding glad” to see Jesus. He had long wished to do so: he had “heard many things of him” and “hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.” He “questioned with him in many words.” But Jesus said nothing. He would not speak to the depraved man who had murdered his cousin John at the request of his wife and stepdaughter. While Jesus stood in silence, Caiaphas and his priests kept up their chorus of abuse and accusations. Finally, Herod tired of the game and sent Jesus back to Pilate, but not before his “men of war,” as Luke calls them, “mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe.” Luke, recounting this, says that Pilate’s gesture in deferring to Herod’s jurisdiction was nonetheless appreciated: “the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves” (23:8-12).