Not to all the People, but unto Chosen Witnesses

 

to Dawn

In 4 BC, after ten marriages and thirty-four years of rule, Herod the Great finally breathed his last – one of the great benefactors of Hellenic culture and hated for it in his own dominions. From the ruins of the old Samaria had risen a new town and was called Sebaste, from the Greek name for Augustus. Everywhere, Herod had been building theatres and hippodromes for games, even at Jerusalem (Josephus, Antiquities XV, 8: 1, XVI, 5: 1; Wars I, 21: 1, 5). The religious establishment looked on with a frown and Herod’s body was not yet cold when “the Jews, being delivered from Herod’s tyrannical rule, petitioned Augustus to put them under the jurisdiction of the legate of Syria. He, however, not willing to set aside Herod's will, gave to Archelaus the half of his father's kingdom, with the title of ethnarch, the royal title” (Josephus, Antiquities XVII, 8: 2, 9: 2). The new ruler’s territory included Judea, Samaria, and Idumea with the cities of Jerusalem, Caesarea, Sebaste, and Joppa (Josephus, Antiquities XVII, 11: 2, 4-5). Ten years later Archelaus first arranged the death of his brother and then married the widow. "Not able to bear his barbarous tyranny," the deputies of the Sanhedrin persuaded Emperor Augustus to banish Archelaus to Vienne, in France (Josephus, Antiquities XVII, 9, 13: 1-2).

Running out of suitable replacements, Augustus had no other option but place the administration of Archelaus’ territories under the jurisdiction of the legate of Syria, with a deputy for Judea residing in Caesarea (Josephus, Antiquities XVII, XVIII, 1: 1). The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem welcomed the move – this body was traditionally geared against any kind of monarchy and clamored for a “theocracy” even if that would mean to live under the Aegis of a foreign power – but a certain Judah of Galilee (sic!) begged to differ and became the vociferous leader of a rebellion. Josephus (37 – 96/100 AD) describes him as a scholar and assassin.

Israel, Judah said, should have no king but God and renounced paying tribute to Rome as a violation of Jewish religious law. He was apprehended and killed, but many of his followers survived and formed a new terrorist organization, the Sicarii (Acts 5: 37; Josephus, Wars 2: 117-8, Antiquities 18: 1-8). They were to make certain, that Judah would not be forgotten.

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Jesus apparently came from a rough neighborhood. He knew first hand what it means to live in poverty. Our man’s hometown was Capernaum; a four-hour’s jog away from the seat of the Roman administration. As a token of gratitude for his Roman benefactors, Herod the Great had constructed the new harbor and city of Caesarea as a personal gift to Emperor Augustus. In Caesarea the houses had glass windows. The people did their shopping at well-stocked markets, after a day’s work they washed off the dust in the public bath and for recreation went to the playhouse or the arena. Capernaum, on the other hand, was a place in the extremes of destitution. The wind whistled in empty windows, people bought their produce at the market next town, and what went into the garbage was mended and reused many times over.

In 26 AD a new governor arrived in Judea, the “praefectus iudeae” Pilate(Jn. 18: 12). It came to repeated standoffs with the natives: "Pilate provoked a fresh uproar by expending the temple treasure upon the construction of an aqueduct. The populace formed a ring round the tribunal of Pilate, and besieged him with angry clamor. He foresaw the tumult and a troop of his soldiers in plain clothes and armed with batons mixed with the crowds. From his tribunal he gave the signal and in the stampede many Jews perished from the blows or trodden to death by the fleeing crowd" (Josephus, Wars II: 175-177, Antiquities XVIII: 60-62). In 29 AD, Pilate charged a native from Galilee with sedition.

Among the locals, our man enjoyed some notoriety. Of the two hours worth of “sayings” put in his mouth, one hour was devoted to telling the rich that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Mk. 10: 25), and Jesus really meant the eye of a needle. He asked to consider the ravens, “they neither sow nor reap, and neither have a storehouse nor a barn, but God feeds them anyway,” he said, but poetic as the “lilies in the field” may seem, in the end, blessing the poor is just another backhanded way of telling off the rich.

Yet Jesus’ big thing was the imminent end of the world.

"We are justified," says Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694 – 1768), "in drawing an absolute distinction between the teaching of the Apostles in their writings and what Jesus Himself in His own lifetime proclaimed and taught” (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer). In Jesus’ own words: “Verily I say unto you, there be some of you standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power” (Mk. 9: 1; Mt. 16: 28). Family-life and common courtesies were dismissed as obstacles to “salvation,” whatever this means.

Jesus enjoyed weddings like the next, but on several occasions he was making it very clear that even the mere concern for wellbeing and a good life before death was detrimental to his objective. Not something I would want my kid to grow up with.

The authorities saw no reason to think of him as a gentleman and scholar; in the verbal exchanges they used “rabbi” as an ironic taunt. The real rabbis would catch him fibbing when he pronounced: “Have ye not read in the law, how on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless” (Mt. 12: 5). Indeed they hadn’t, there was no such law; but Jesus was too smart to pause and leave the listener time for reflection. Instead he lunged into a fit of calculated fury: “You hypocrites, you discern the face of the sky, but how is it that you do not read the signs of this time? I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled” (Lk. 12: 49).

He had no intention to impress the people of learning. His target audience was the untutored and illiterate. The Neighbors, who had seen him growing up in the streets of their hometown, marveled “how this man knows letters, having never learned” (Jn. 7: 15), an indicator for the low level of expectations about Jesus in his own neighborhood, even among his family (Mk. 6: 4).

He was not well received and his dedicated propagandist admits, “he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Mt. 13: 55-58). Word in the streets had it that his biological father was not Mary’s husband but a Roman soldier. The Syrian Archer Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera was stationed in Caesarea before the Romans lost three of their legions in Germany and in 9 AD frantically scraped together reinforcements from all over their dominions. Pantera’s platoon was transferred to Bingerbrück on the Rhine where Pantera died a natural death. The inscription on his headstone reads: "Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera of Sidon, aged 62, a soldier of 40 years' service, of the 1st cohort of archers, lies here" (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, XIII, 7514 and Dessau, Inscriptiones selectae, 2571). The stone is now in the museum at Kreuznach. The data tally well with the alleged birthdates of the son, some twelve years before Pantera’s transfer, and for a mere rumor it would be quite a coincidence to actually find a grave that is not only fitting time and location but belongs to an individual that listens to the same name as given in the Talmud. In fact the evangelists, too, may have heard the rumor: there is this episode of a tacit understanding between our man and a Roman centurion who displays a remarkable sensitivity for the Jewish fears to defile themselves when entering the home of a Gentile (Mt. 8: 5; Lk. 7: 2). The fact has been received with frantic denials: before the discovery of the headstone the theologians were adamant that the name “Pantera” was too unusual as not to be a rabbinical fib; after the discovery the same people dismissed Pantera’s name “as too common and generic.” Theology and truth have only one thing in common: the first letter.

So, not surprisingly, Jesus preferred to stay out of sight from his hometown and instead went preaching, "through every city and village," with his companions and a sizeable entourage of women, "Mary called Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, Susanna, and many others," who ministered “unto him” – what is the expression – “from their substance" (Lk. 8: 1). It gives a whole new meaning to the pronouncement that “whosoever of you has not forsaken all his possessions, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14: 33). These women were now his surrogate family (Mk. 3: 31-35). There also seemed to have been a wife; our sources have Jesus read the Torah in the synagogue (Lk. 4: 19), which in those days was permitted only to a married man. 

It is easy to overlook what is written here between the lines: most of these women were married and had left their husbands, yet our man had no compunctions of visiting them in their own homes; Maria couldn’t turn her glazed look away from his person, leaving it to Martha to potter around (Lk. 10: 38-42). I have seen these glazed-over dog-eyes on a video.

The eyes belonged to a woman living with the prophet Michael in New Mexico. She was not his only companion. In 1989 Michael Travesser had left the Seven Day Adventists and started his own cult. He announced that the world would end on October 31, 2007. In the meantime he told every woman in the compound, even if she was married to his own brother, that having sex with him was a union with God himself. Apparently the women believed him. (As I speak, the prophet is convicted to ten years for statutory rape. Needless to say his underage victims don’t feel raped at all.)

Personally Jesus was living what he preached; on more than one occasion he was seen to be rude to his own family, especially to his mother (Mk. 3: 31-35; Jn. 2: 4). We are given the names of four brothers (Mk. 6: 3); the sisters receive only a cursory nod. Somewhere an aunt, his mother’s sister, is mentioned. Since antiquity, theologians like to speculate whether this “James the Just” Josephus is mentioning, was one of Jesus’ brothers; clearly a red herring. In Josephus’ account, the supporters of James the Just had been the very same law-abiding Jews and Pharisees from Jerusalem’s establishment, which the evangelists vilify as our man’s personal enemies. “Take heed,” Jesus said, “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod” (Mk. 8: 15). This was an era where everybody, Gentile and Jew alike, lived in fear of “demons.” Jesus’ reputation was that of a wandering exorcist, his acts of “healing” were based on driving out “evil spirits.” He held it up as his chief credential: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven, and if I with the finger of God cast out devils, how can you doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you" (Mk. 1: 15, 1: 39, 6: 7, 6: 11, 9: 1(!), 13: 26; Mt. 10: 5; Lk. 9: 62, 10: 1, 11: 20). Then “he forbade these miracles to be made known, even in cases where they could not possibly be kept hidden, with the sole purpose of making people more eager to talk of them" (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer).

We look at a typical cult leader, a man of charisma. Followers, bereft of his presence, used to feel an intense self-loathing: "we are made as the filth of the world, and are the off-scouring of all things" (I Cor. 4: 13). To lower even further all possible resistance against inculcation with his message, Jesus demanded to sever all family ties: "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, yea, and his own life, he cannot be my companion.” A statement worthy of a Mujahid with Semtex strapped to his chest!

Yet not everybody fell under Jesus’ spell. A cousin of him, John the Baptist, sent him an ironic note from prison: whether it was "he that should come, or do we look for another" (Mt. 11: 2-30).

Jesus’ reply – “blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me” – testifies to frictions between the two sectarian leaders. The word of John the Baptist carried weight in Galilee. He was known to be “a good man, who commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so receive baptism; not only for washing away their sins, but for the purification of the body; since the soul is already purified by righteousness. Herod Antipas feared the great influence John had over the people, even that he might raise a rebellion, for the crowds seemed ready to do anything he should advise. So Herod thought to prevent any mischief John might cause before it would be too late. John was imprisoned in the fortress of Macherus and put to death” (Josephus, Antiquities VIII, 5: 2). According to the evangelist, the formula spoken on such a baptism was the announcement: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you” (Lk. 3: 22), possibly the exact words when the Baptist held somebody’s head under water.

Jesus was well aware that John the Baptist was putting his leadership in question. Since their meeting on the Jordan, Jesus had made big promises to his companions: “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father has appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Lk. 22: 28-30; Jn. 14: 1-3). Yet he seemed in no hurry with the fulfillment of these promises, and “there were some” who felt “indignation among them,” that their leader was so slow on delivering. Even the inner circle began wondering whether this man really was “the living bread which came down from heaven” (Jn. 6: 32). Jesus used to evade these objections with the remark that the "very hairs of your head are all numbered" and "many are called but few are chosen," not exactly a confidence booster. Peter, his own right-hand-man and enforcer, “took him, and began to rebuke him” (Mk. 8: 32). For the moment a sharp reprimand cleared the air, but he ran out of options. The criticism from inside and the needling by John the Baptist forced his hand. Jesus gathered his following at Caesarea, right under the noses of the Roman administration. Sending “them forth by two and two,” he ordered them to announce “the kingdom of heaven at hand” (Mk. 6: 7-8). Yet the good people of Galilee refused to stir and didn’t leave their homes. All he was left with was throwing tantrums: “Woe unto you, Chorazin! Woe unto you, Bethsaida! I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the Day of Judgment, than for you. And you, Capernaum, shall be brought down to hell” (Mk. 11: 21; Lk. 10: 13).

The little relief didn’t make him feel any better; his revolution had stopped dead in the tracks before it even began. His companions may not have believed it, but he knew it was all over. He could no longer risk to show his face in public. Gone were the carefree days of water turned to wine. In a cat and mouse game with the authorities he kept away from Jerusalem with a lame excuse – “you go up: I will not, for my time is not yet come” – or when he dared to join, it was not “openly, but as it were in secret” (Jn. 7: 8-10). Yet how important was the whole affair for the other team?

The flippant “did there ever arise a prophet out of Galilee” does not have the ring of a profound concern; although this may have changed when Jesus began issuing instructions to his followers to sell their garments in exchange for arms (Lk. 22: 38). One senses a desperate shortage of means to further pursue his objective.

With Rome taking charge, the Temple had fallen under the jurisdiction of the Gentile “pontifex maximus,” the chairman of the board for all legally acknowledged cults in the empire, an office often held by the emperors themselves. An imperial stipend provided funds for a daily sacrifice on the emperor’s behalf. Feeling pressured into action by his own following, Jesus started a riot on the temple precinct. For the people living in that period, his allegation “is it not written, 'my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mk. 11: 15-19), didn’t make any sense at all. Most of the incriminated transactions were for the purchase of sacrificial animals; the trade was a feature of the religious observances. Apart from this, it was a fact of life that every of the larger temples in the Roman domain acted as the equivalent to our high-street banks, offering loans, keeping individual safe deposits and facilitating the transfer of large sums on letters of credit, backed by the bullion hoarded in the temple’s vaults. None of this of course was of any concern to the man who is asking us to behold the lilies in the field. (Or was it? Perhaps we are looking here at a good old-fashioned bank robbery.) Yet “the people in Jerusalem refused to rise, as the Galileans had refused at the time when the disciples were sent out to rouse them. The Council prepared for vigorous action" (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer).

Jesus was apprehended, put under arrest and we are asked to believe that an act of armed resistance at the arrest did not lead to further arrests (Mk. 14: 47; Jn. 18: 10). The prisoner was first brought before the High Priest and the Council of Jerusalem.

Contrary to the anachronistic protestations in our sources (Jn. 18: 31), before the year 70 AD the Sanhedrin did have the authority to pass capital punishment by means of stoning, burning, or slaying and even extended jurisdiction outside of Jerusalem (see Acts 6: 12; 7: 59 and 9: 2). A session at night, especially on the night to Passover, was of course strictly against the law, but the account is explicitly designed to besmirch the Jews in every possible way. Jewish law (Deut. 17: 6 and 19: 15) prohibited the conviction of any person on one testimony alone. This has been interpreted to exclude even a verdict on the strength of one’s own confession, which would be the first habeas corpus known to history, since it deters from interrogations under torture. So what are we supposed to think, when the narrator accuses the Sanhedrin of dismissing witnesses as untrustworthy (Mk. 14: 59; Mt. 26: 59-60) and yet has the council pass judgment based entirely on the defendant’s own confession (Mk. 14: 62-64; Mt. 26: 65-66)? And anyway, would it not have been as simple as it was expedient to keep the prisoner in custody until after the festival (Mk. 14: 2)? So, why the rush?

There is only one possible explanation: Pilate was already waiting because he himself had issued the warrant for Jesus’ arrest. Apparently the arrest was carried out under the supervision of a Roman centurion (Jn. 18: 12). “The presence of this officer would be inexplicable without orders by his superior” (Julius Wellhausen, Pharisees and Sadducees). But the course of events is far from clear.

There were no witnesses who could possibly corroborate the events of either of the two trials; the proceedings happened behind closed doors. On the night of his arrest all of Jesus’ companions hurtled to Galilee into hiding, fifty kilometers on the trot (Mt. 26: 56). The one man, who allegedly stayed behind, was shooed away from the court of the High Priest when a maidservant blew his cover (Mk. 14: 66-72; Mt. 26: 69-75; Lk. 22: 55-62; Jn. 18: 16-17). Later, in his Galilean hideout, Peter would speak of the one “whom they slew and hanged on a tree.” Apparently the news of the “Christ crucified” had not yet arrived in Galilee. Nobody we know of is giving a direct account, the tales come to light two generations after the fact. And strange tales they are, treating us to the grotesque caricature of a Roman judge hopping up and down from his high seat like a yo-yo and, against all etiquette and dignity, soliciting in plain view his verdict with a lynch-mob (Mk. 15: 3; Lk. 23: 2; Jn. 18: 30-31, 19: 12 etc.). The whole cast is made to rush about in the jerky quickstep of a silent motion picture and the defendant is dragged twice across town, from Pilate’s chambers to the tetrarch’s palace and back, with interrogations on both ends, all within thirty minutes. It would have taken more time to buy a sheep on the market (Lk. 23: 11-12).

Roman law explicitly prohibited collective accusations: “Vanae voces populi non sunt autiendae” – the vain voice of the people is not to be listened to (Codex Justinianus IX: 47, 12). At least on paper, Roman law imposed severe penalties for false accusations or insufficient preparation (Digesta 47: 23, 2; 15, 1-2; Codex Theodosianus IX: 36,1; IX: 1, 9-14; Codex Iustinianus IX: 12, 7 and 46, 7); the admission of evidence known to be false could lead to a murder charge against the judge, if this had given cause for the execution of an innocent (Marcianus, Digesta 48, 81 and Mommsen). Unlike the modern district attorney, who is speaking for the people against the accused, there was no public prosecutor at a Roman trial. Instead each party had to hire their own attorney and bring their case “before the people,” of whom the judge was the representative. The Jewish council that hired an attorney to press charges against Paul was aware of the proper procedure (Acts 24: 1). Besides, what business was it of his Jewish accusers to charge Jesus with lèse-majesté and sedition (Mt. 8: 21-22, 10: 35, 19: 29, 12: 48-49, 27: 11, 27: 37; Mk. 15: 2, 15: 26; Lk. 8: 19-21, 9: 59-60, 12: 53, 14: 26, 23: 3, 23: 38; Jn. 2: 14, 6: 15, 18: 33, 19: 7-8, 19: 19)? In his defense Jesus claimed divine status as a king "not of this world" (Jn. 18: 36), which was ill advised in a Roman court of law: before the law only one person, the emperor, had a claim to divine status. So when the defendant was pleading guilty on his own accord (Mk. 15: 2; Mt. 27: 11; Lk. 23: 3; Jn. 18: 37), Pilate’s pretention to find "no guilt" was just sarcasm – this was going to be good.

In the end, the defendant’s own plea sealed the case (Jn. 19: 13-16).

One could of course argue that an itinerant preacher with no status was simply not important enough to raise any scruple. Miscarriages of justice did happen; according to Philo of Alexandria (BC 20 – 50 AD), Pilate himself was going to face charges for "briberies, insults, robberies, outrages and indecent assaults, constantly repeated executions without trial (sic!), ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty" (Philo, De Legatione 301-3). The release of the convicted Barnabas was a blatant disregard of the law, since only the emperor could pardon a convict. Any infraction of the imperial prerogative was treason and an assumption of excessive powers, punishable under the Lex Julia (Digesta 48, 81 48, 8, 4 and Mommsen; also reflected in the right of appeal – see Acts 26: 32). Why should Pilate have exposed himself to legal recriminations by his political enemies (Lk. 23: 12)? The sources make it look, as if he was trying to move on the buck to Herod the Tetrarch (Lk. 23: 4). But even if Jesus fell under the jurisdiction of Herod, there was no legal provision for Pilate to delegate the governor's powers inherent in the “Ius Gladii” to any other individual (Digesta 1, 6, 6; 1, 21, 1; 50, 17, 70). Had Pilate handed over a case of lèse-majesté to the tetrarch without acquittal, he would have made himself answerable to charges and thus have invited political blackmail (Lk. 23: 7-12). He didn’t. He executed Jesus.

Before his arrest Jesus “was overwhelmed with dread, and on the cross he closed his life with the words "my God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?" This avowal cannot, without violence, be interpreted otherwise than as meaning that God had not aided him in his aim and purpose as he had hoped. That shows that it had not been his purpose to suffer and die, but to establish an earthly kingdom and deliver the Jews from political oppression – and in that God's help had failed him" (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer).

Crucifixion was the ultimate ignominy, since everybody was "cursed who hangs on a post" (Gal. 3: 13; Deut. 21: 22-23; Joshua 8: 29, 10: 26-27). It didn't make any difference whether the convicted had been executed by the Roman Governor or under the Jewish law. In either case, "even if he were a king of kings" (Sanhedrin 9: 8d), "those slain by a court of law are not to be buried in their fathers' sepulchers, but in a grave by themselves" (Numbers 23: 13). Only after a suitable period of penance in the penal bone-yard, "when the flesh has rotted," the family was permitted to "collect the bones and bury them at home in their appropriate place" (Sanhedrin 6: 6a; 9: 8c, etc.), and that’s where we should look for Jesus’ remains. The companions of course “did not take kindly to the idea of returning to their old haunts; on their journeys the companions of the Messiah had forgotten how to work. They had seen that the preaching of the Kingdom of God could keep a man. Even when they had been sent out without wallet or money they had not lacked. The women mentioned in Luke (Lk. 8: 2-3) had made it their business to make good provision for the Messiah and his future ministers. Why not, then, continue this mode of life? They would surely find a sufficient number of faithful souls who would join them in directing their hopes towards a second coming of the Messiah, and while awaiting the future glory, would share their possessions with them” (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer).

A new leader took up the reins. He was Jesus’s former enforcer, a man better treated with caution! Peter ruled his little flock with an iron fist. When an elderly couple was holding back their contributions he gave each of them the third degree. As it so happened, they both died during this nocturnal interrogation, only hours apart. The new cult leader’s “young thugs” carried them “out into the night” for a clandestine burial (Acts 5: 1-11). Our source doesn’t disguise the “great fear” that “came upon all the church and as many as heard these things.” Yet the new cult “was not even subjected to any annoyance in consequence of the remarkable death of the married couple, and the brotherhood was even allowed to confiscate their property to its own uses” (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer).

So, this was the man who‘s telling us that “God raised up Jesus of Nazareth on the third day, and showed him openly,” and now listens to this, “not to all the people, but unto chosen witnesses” (Acts 10: 41). Here it is, either the oldest con in the book or one of those quick fibs by a man not exactly remembered for his overwhelming brainpower. Our source doesn’t make any bones of the fact that there were people standing right next to the “event,” who saw nothing out of the ordinary: no sudden darkness, no corpses walking out of their graves, no earthquake, no eclipse, no Jesus, only the hysterics of this group – the squealing and whooping seemed real enough – and then this guy with hands like coal shovels, saying with a straight face: “These are not drunk, as ye suppose” (Acts 2: 15).

© – 5/25/2009 – by michael sympson, 4,900 words, all rights reserved