Sam, sorry, there was too much from the PBS Frontline series to put in one post. So here is the rest of it:
John Dominic Crossan
Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies DePaul University
Passover in the occupied Jewish homeland was a tinderbox situation
because they were celebrating freedom from imperial oppression in Egypt,
while they were under imperial oppression from Rome. So, a large number
of Jews in a concentrated area would be a very dangerous situation. And we
would have to presume at Passover, that there would have to be certain
standing orders, let's say, between the Roman Prefect who was in charge
and probably came down to Jerusalem for the feasts and the High Priest,
who had to collaborate with the Roman Governor, for what to do if anyone
causes a riot or incites a riot, or does anything out of order during Passover,
especially Passover....
I would consider the incident in the Temple historical. But this is also very
delicate because we're inclined to talk about the cleansing of the Temple and
we often see it as Christianity judging Judaism. Try and imagine the Temple
for what it was. It was both the House of God and the seat of collaboration.
It was the High Priest, Caiaphas, who had to collaborate... with the Roman
occupation. Now how would Jesus as a Galilean peasant, see the Temple? I
think with ferocious ambiguity. On the one had, it was the seat of God and
you would die to defend it from, say, a Roman Emperor like Caligula putting
a statue in there. But what would you do if it was also the place where
Caiaphas collaborated with the Romans? Was the Temple really the house
of God anymore? What Jesus does is not cleanse the Temple. He
symbolically destroys it....
And what happens following the incident in the Temple?
The most difficult thing for us after 2000 years is to bring our imagination
down when we're looking at the passion of Jesus. Because we want to think
the whole world was watching, or all of the Roman Empire was watching, or
all of Jerusalem was watching. I take it for granted there were standing
orders between Pilate and Caiaphas about how to handle, lower class
especially, dissidents who cause problems at Passover. If it was an upper
class person, a very important aristocrat, of course, they would be shipped
off to Rome for judgment. That would be handled completely differently.
What would happen to a peasant who caused trouble in the Temple and
maybe endangered a riot at Passover? Standing orders, I would take it,
crucifixion, as fast as possible. Hang him out as a warning. We're not going
to have any riots at Passover. That's, I think, what happened to Jesus. What
happened in the Temple caused his death. And I don't imagine any, for
example as we find in John's gospel, dialogues between Jesus and Pilate.
Now, as Jesus hangs on the cross, can we say what was in his mind?
Is there any significance in what he said while was hanging on the
cross? What scraps of evidence are there that can tell us something
about him and how he died?
When you say crucifixion, you say immediately two things. Lower class,
because the Romans were not in the custom of crucifying upper class. That
was too dangerous. People might get ideas when they saw that aristocrats
died just like everyone else. So, lower class and subversion. It tells us that
Jesus was perceived, at least by his executioners, as a lower class
subversive. And that's very important. The details of the last words of Jesus,
for example, we're totally in the realm of gospel, and not of history. Mark
tells us that Jesus died being mocked and in agony and I think Mark is
writing for the experience of people in the 70's who are dying like that and
who need the consolation that Jesus had died that way before, feeling
abandoned by God. When you come to John, you have a totally different
scenario. Jesus dies when he's good and ready. His last words are to fulfill
the scriptures. When that is done he gives up his spirit. There is no mockery,
of course. There really is no agony. There almost is no pain. These are
different gospel visions of the brute historical fact that Jesus would have died
in agony on the cross....
Do we have any evidence or any indication of what the disciples must
have thought, or what the Jesus movement made of the death of their
leader? Did they think they had been following the wrong person?
If I could dare to put myself in the mind of those disciples on the day after
[the crucifixion], I would think the primary thing in their mind is not, "Are the
Romans going to come after us?" but, "Is God going to come after us? Does
this mean a divine judgment on Jesus? That he has not spoken for God?
That all of this about the Kingdom of God is all wrong... We're lost." I think
what they have to do, first of all, is not try and find out information about
what happened. That's not the first thing on their mind. Survival, not
information, is what's on their mind.
The only place they can go, eventually, is into the Hebrew Scriptures, into
their tradition, and find out, "Is it possible that the elect one, the Messiah, the
righteous one, the Holy One,... is it possible that such a one could be
oppressed, persecuted and executed?" They go into the Hebrew Scriptures,
and of course, what they find is that it's almost like a job description of being
God's righteous one, to be persecuted and even executed. And slowly then,
the searching of the Scriptures convinces them that Jesus is still held, as he
has always been, in the hands of God....
Paula Fredriksen:
William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture, Boston
University
It's unclear how he actually gets into trouble. He wouldn't have wandered
into the crosshairs of the Priests, because compared to how the Pharisees
are criticizing the Priests, what Jesus is doing is fairy minimal.... If he had
been complaining about the Priests, or criticizing them, or criticizing the way
the Temple was being run, this would just [be] business as usual; this is one
of the aspects of being a Jew in second Temple Judaism. So it's really quite
unclear how he would have gotten into trouble for religious reasons, which
are the reasons the gospels are concerned to construct.
I think we have to settle firmly on the historical fact that he was crucified and
therefore, killed by Rome.... I would prefer, rather than try to invent or
import some kind of improbable religious reason for him getting into trouble
and then trying to explain how a religious authority could somehow seduce
or cajole Pilate into obliging them and executing Jesus, I prefer a simpler
hypothesis. To think that he was turned over to Rome because there was a
perceived danger, that Pilate, who has a terrible reputation for the way he
behaved when he went up to Jerusalem for these pilgrimage holidays, was
on the verge of some kind of muscular crowd control. People would get hurt
or killed when Pilate felt so moved. And perhaps for this reason Jesus was
turned over to Rome, and sure enough, Pilate, consistent with the record we
know of him elsewhere, kills Jesus. But Pilate killed lots of people.
But, apparently not Jesus' followers. This was different.
That's right. Jesus' followers are not rounded up and killed. Only Jesus is
killed. That's one of the few firm facts we have about it. What this means, at
the very least, is that nobody perceived Jesus as the dangerous political
leader of a revolutionary movement. If anybody had thought he was a leader
of a revolutionary movement, then more than Jesus, probably, would have
been killed....
I think there's some kind of cooperation between the chief priests and Pilate.
The chief priests always had to cooperate with Rome because it's their job.
They're mediating between the imperial government and the people.
Particularly at Passover, which is a holiday that vibrates with this incredible
historical memory of national creation and freedom. And there's Rome and
the Roman soldiers standing among the colonnade of the Temple looking
down at Jews celebrating this. So it's a politically and religiously electric
holiday. And it's in this context that Jesus is turned over to Rome, lest there
be, I think, some kind of popular activity. The gospels depict him as
preaching about the Kingdom of God in the Temple courtyard in the days
before Passover. That could be enough. That could be enough right there.
What was he saying?
I don't know what he was actually saying about the Kingdom of God, but if
we can infer from the bits and pieces we have from the gospel stories, and
also what we have in Josephus and other Jewish contemporary records of
what other Jews are saying about the Kingdom of God, he might have been
saying that it was on its way. That it was coming. That perhaps it was even
coming that Passover. And we're seeing this now in American culture with
certain kinds of fundamentalist forms of Christianity. If you really think the
end of the world is at hand, that has a kind of liberating and frantic energy
that goes along with it. It's not good for quiet crowds and social stability.
And given the emotional and religious tenor of this holiday, anyway, to have
somebody preaching that the Kingdom of God was really on its way,
perhaps ... within that very holiday... [is]the equivalent of shouting, "Fire!" in
a crowded theater. It would be enough to get somebody in trouble. Even if
everybody knew perfectly well that he was not a revolutionary leader.
Let's go back to Pilate for a moment. Would Jesus have stood out as
being special and unique in the eyes of Pilate?
Pilate was not a happy choice as Prefect of Judea. He had a reputation as a
man who had sticky fingers. In a period where graft and corruption was the
prerogative of a provincial official, he still had a high profile as somebody
who was corrupt. He had a reputation for executing untried prisoners, for
venality and theft.... He's not somebody you'd want to get on the wrong side
of. Pilate occasioned riots in Jerusalem. He would get nervous when there
were crowds of Jews. And of course he was legally responsible to be up in
Jerusalem when it was the most crowded of all. He would leave this very
nice, plush, seaside town in Caesarea, which was, you know, a nice pagan
city. Plenty of pagan altars. All the stuff he wanted. And had to go up to
Jerusalem where all these Jews were congregating and stay there for crowd
control until the holiday was over. He was in a bad mood already by the
time he got to town. And Passover would fray anybody's nerves.
[And] remember in this period, government depends on spies. It's
particularly [important] if you're an occupying power. You need to have
spies to know what's going on. People reporting came back, "Lookit, there's
somebody who's really getting people excited and agitated talking about a
Kingdom of God." Pilate doesn't care about theological niceties. Pilate
doesn't even care about legal niceties. This is why ... ultimately, he's fired for
his corruption and incompetence. Hearing that somebody is a trouble maker
would be enough. Boom. He's dead. I think that's probably what happened
with Jesus....
pbs.org
|
