by ALASTAIR MacDONALD
This is not so much a sermon as it is an historical investigation. Like any good historian, I must begin by setting the context of the story. You have all heard it said that the Bible must be read "in context", that you can't read or interpret a verse in isolation. Many would say that you must take into account the verses immediately before and after the verse in question. I would go even further by saying that you must at least try to look at the entire context and by this I mean the whole economic, social, political, religious and historical background. This can be a very tall order.
The most important fact of life in Judea and Galilee at the time of Jesus was the fact that they were Roman provinces under occupation by detachments of the Roman army. This was not a relatively benign occupation such as occurred in West Germany following World War II. It was much more like the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe... a brutal military repression. At the same time, the Roman authorities exacted an outrageous level of taxation through the notorious system of "tax farming". In this system the rights to collect taxes were sold to the highest bidders. These "publicans" then proceeded to enrich themselves by setting exorbitant tax rates and by brutally enforcing their collection. People were known to be driven to suicide or even to selling their children into slavery as a result of the demands of the publicans.
Combine this oppression with the two thousand year struggle of the Jewish people for independence and freedom and you have an extremely volatile political climate. It was so volatile in fact that in the time period from one hundred years before Jesus, to one hundred years after him, the Jews rose in revolt an amazing sixty-two times. Interestingly enough all but one of these revolts originated in Galilee. Is it any wonder that the Roman authorities viewed any gathering of Galileans or any Galilean leader with great suspicion? Although quite a few of these revolts were small and localized, two of them evolved into full scale wars. The end result of all of this was the complete destruction of the Jewish nation and the great "Diaspora" of the Jewish people.
One of these many revolts occurred in the year 6 C.E. in Galilee. At this time Jesus was probably about ten years old. The revolt was triggered by the calling of a Roman census. The sole reason for such an numeration was to consolidate and expand the already exorbitant tax base. The revolt was led by the Pharisee Rabbi Judas BarEzekias whose followers regarded him as the long awaited "messiah". After some initial success including the capture of Sephoris, the capital city of Galilee, the revolt was suppressed by the arrival of a Roman army dispatched from Syria. Rabbi Judas and about two thousand of his rebels were captured and crucified en mass. Judas was not to be the only messiah to die in this fashion. To this day Judas is regarded as a national hero of the state of Israel. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that the young Jesus may have witnessed some of the events surrounding this revolt since the city of Sephoris was located only an easy walk from Jesus's home town of Nazareth.
In view of what I have just outlined, the truly surprising fact is that the Romans are seldom mentioned in the gospels. The actual word "Roman" is used just once in the four gospels and the Romans are mentioned in just three contexts: first in the nativity story with the reference to the census, second in Jesus's cure of the centurion's child and finally in the events surrounding the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus. There is an excellent reason for this lack of reference that we will examine a little later.
Let us now look ahead in time to Palm Sunday. Jesus, together with his Galilean disciples, enters Jerusalem in precisely the manner foretold in the ancient scriptures. Some scholars are convinced that this entry was timed deliberately to coincide with the entry of Pontius Pilate and a cohort of troops moving up from Caesarea as they did each year at this time. There Jesus is greeted by the joyous population who acclaim him as the messiah. I am not completely convinced that Jesus ever claimed the title of messiah for himself, but his disciples and the gospel writers certainly did. Before we can proceed further, I must pause to examine the meaning of the word "messiah" itself.
Messiah means literally "anointed one" and was the common way in which the Jews referred to kings of the dynasty of David. "Anointed" refers of course to the method of investiture of the Jewish kings. It translated into the Greek as "Christos". The Jews regarded themselves as a "theocracy"... a kingdom ruled by God. The Jews also envisaged a (metaphorical) throne room in which there were three thrones. God occupied the central throne. At "the right hand of God" was the throne of the "king messiah" who was the reigning king of the house and family of David. At "the left hand of God" was the throne of the "priest messiah" who was the high priest of the house and family of Zadok. Ideally there were always two messiahs who were known collectively as the "sons of God". All these terms, "messiah", "kingdom of God", "at the right hand of God" and "son of God" were political rather than religious statements. It was a later generation of gentile Christians who re-interpreted these phrases in a very different religious sense. Both before and after the death of Jesus the early Christians, who were, after all, practicing Jews, understood these terms in their traditional sense. Jesus in claiming to be the messiah had not committed any blasphemy... there was no religious crime that the high priest could legitimately charge him with. That is why he went to the Romans to do the job.
Keep in mind as well that our gospels were written by practicing Jews for a primarily Jewish audience. The early Christians were not expelled from the synagogues until about the year AD 90. They were familiar with the terminology just mentioned. Unlike the average reader today they knew that a term like "son of God" carried the meaning mentioned above and did not infer in any way that the person so described was in any way divine. As a matter of fact the inference of divinity would have been profoundly shocking to them, indeed they would have called it blasphemy. Thousands of Jews and later Christians went to their deaths for refusing to admit that the emperor was divine. It was only later, when the Jewish influence on the early church had diminished to the point of non-existence, that Christian believers in their ignorance of these terms began to take them at face value. Whenever we read a document we should always ask ourselves "How were these words intended by the author and how were they understood by the reader?" We must never try to impose a modern understanding on words that are almost 2,000 years old.
He was, however posing a direct challenge to Roman political authority. As we have already seen, the Romans responded very vigorously to any such challenge. The fact that they did not respond immediately on his entry into Jerusalem can be attributed in the first place to surprise, but more importantly to the fact that the high holy season was at hand. Jerusalem was crowded with perhaps a many as a million pilgrims and any military intervention at the time could trigger a full scale riot or possibly a major insurrection. The Romans chose to bide their time, but from Palm Sunday onward the fate of Jesus was sealed.
Two days later Jesus and his disciples enter the temple and forcefully eject the merchants and money changers. Now he has the full attention of the high priest Joseph Caiaphas. Notice that Jesus still has not committed a religious crime (blasphemy). The notoriously brutal temple guards did not act against Jesus at this time probably for the same reason that the Romans did not act on Palm Sunday.
Two days later Jesus is caught away from the crowds in the garden of Gethsemane. One gospel informs us that the arrest was carried out by a Roman cohort plus a detachment of temple guards. A Roman cohort at full strength consists of six hundred heavily armed legionnaires. Even if it were only part of a cohort, say, a century of one hundred soldiers, it seems obvious that they were not taking any chances with Jesus fighting his way out of the trap that they had sprung on him.
He is now dragged before the high priest and the “elders’. It is quite unlikely that there was any kind of formal trial at this time. To begin with there was no substantive religious charge that could be brought against him. It was not blasphemy to claim to be the "messiah" or a "son of God". If there was a blasphemy, a trial before the Sanhedrin would have brought that out and a sentence of death by stoning could have been brought down. The Sanhedrin did not lose the right to impose the death penalty until the year AD 39. The execution would have to be ratified by the Roman governor. This was just a rubber stamp procedure, after all what did the Romans care about Jews stoning one of their own to death for some obscure religious crime?
We also must take into account the nature of the Sanhedrin itself. It was a very dignified body of seventy elders somewhat in the nature of a supreme court. The high priest chaired but did not control the Sanhedrin, the majority of whose members were Pharisees. The Pharisees opposed the high priest at just about every turn. The high priest was in fact perhaps the most hated man in Judea. Under Roman administration, the high priest was personally appointed by the Roman governor. Caiaphas was the personal choice of Roman procurator Valerius Gratus. The Pharisees regarded Caiaphas as a collaborator and a traitor. The Sanhedrin was not likely to respond to a sudden midnight summons from the high priest. As a matter of fact, it was explicitly forbidden for the Sanhedrin to meet at night or on a religious holiday. They were also not to meet in any place but the Chamber of Hewn Stone on Temple Mount.
You might recall from the Acts of the Apostles that Peter and some of the disciples were actually charged with blasphemy and brought to trial before the Sanhedrin. They were dismissed after being defended by Rabbi Gamaliel who was himself a member of the Sanhedrin and a prominent Pharisee. If Jesus appeared before the high priest at all it was simply to be remanded over to Pontius Pilate. The Romans wanted him for a lot more than disturbing the peace in the temple. They wanted him for sedition and treason.
I am also convinced that the trial before Pilate was a foregone conclusion... a trial in name only. The Bible, however, portrays Pontius Pilate as a reasonable person, a gentleman who thought Jesus was innocent, albeit a little deluded. We also get the impression that Pilate is somewhat of a wimp in that he allows himself to be manipulated by the high priest and elders into executing Jesus.
In truth this portrayal of Pilate is far from factual. He was an ambitious, greedy and brutal man. He once ordered his troops into the temple to loot the treasury. It must be noted that he was not the first nor the last Roman governor to do this. This serves to indicate just how much he was swayed by the opinions or threats of the elders or the high priest who was after all his personal appointee. He was also responsible for the suppression of a number of rebellions at great loss of life. His main objective during his tenure of office seems to have been to be to see just how much he could get away with in offending Jewish religious sensibilities. He was eventually dismissed from office by the emperor for "causing an unnecessary massacre". I suppose that this by way of contrast to all the necessary massacres he was responsible for. Are these the marks of a wimp? of a reasonable man? Certainly not! The trial of Jesus, if there was one, was in name only. Jesus had challenged Roman political authority...Jesus must die.
We come at last to the story of Barabbas. The key element here is the so called "Passover Privilege" whereby the Roman governor of Judea would grant the release of any prisoner of the peoples' choice at the time of the Passover Festival. To begin with there is absolutely no record of this practice in any surviving Roman or Jewish source. In addition it was never a practice in any other Roman colony or province. It is difficult to understand why they would do this with a people as difficult to govern as the Jews were. The Romans also had a great respect for "the rule of law". They would never release a prisoner such as Barabbas accused of inciting a riot and murder. These crimes suggest a defiance of Roman authority with the consequent death of Roman soldiers or citizens. I am forced to conclude that the Barabbas story as recounted in the gospels we have just read is not historical.
What are we to do then? Do we throw out the Barabbas story completely? Did Barabbas even exist? Did the crowds shout for his release? Surprising as it may seem, I am going to answer "yes" to both of these last two questions.
To understand my rational let us examine the name itself. Jesus Barabbas is our version of the Aramaic name "Yeshua BarAbba". Aramaic, a language related to Hebrew, was the language spoken by ordinary people at the time. It was the native tongue of Jesus who himself would have been known as "Yeshua BarYoseph" or possibly BarMiriam. However BarAbba does not appear to be a recognized Jewish family name. We have on record from Jewish sources several hundred names in use at the time...BarAbba is not among them. It would be at best quite rare or at worst completely fictional.
Let us look closer at the name itself. "Bar" means "son of" just as the "Mac" in MacDonald also means "son of". "Abba" means "father" in the familiar sense of the word. We could even translate it as "dad" or "daddy". We also know that when Jesus prayed he frequently addressed God as "Abba". With this in mind, BarAbba translates as "son of the father" or even as "son of daddy". The very frivolous nature of the name suggests that it may be a nickname rather than a proper family name. Could it be that BarAbba is the nickname of Yeshua BarYoseph known to us as Jesus Christ? I am convinced that this is the case. The crowds that acclaimed Jesus as messiah on Sunday were the same crowds that were calling desperately for his release on Friday. He was not rejected by the Jewish people... they remained true to the bitter end.
You might at this point be a little disturbed that I have cast so much historical doubt on this Bible story. A Biblical literalist no doubt would be very upset. If these doubts are indeed well founded, we must then ask the question "why?" Were the evangelists ignorant or poorly informed? I really don't think so. The other possibility is that the story was written in this way deliberately or was perhaps rewritten by a later generation of copyists. To see why we must return again to history.
Biblical scholars are in general agreement that the earliest gospel was Mark and that it was written in Rome about 70 C.E. or possibly a little later. Just before, in 67 C.E. the Jews had risen up in a major revolt. The local Roman garrisons were quickly overrun. A Roman army dispatched from Syria was disastrously defeated in Galilee. A second, larger army was assembled under the generalship of Tiberius (later named emperor). This army laid siege to the city of Jerusalem.
It was the Passover season, so that in addition to the normal population several hundred thousand pilgrims were trapped in the city. Thousands starved during the siege. Those who attempted to escape were crucified when captured. These executions were carried out at a rate as high as two hundred per day. The entire area around Jerusalem was deforested to provide siege materials and crosses. At one point the Romans suspected that escapees were trying to smuggle out the temple treasury by swallowing gold coins. Two thousand were disembowelled in the search for the treasure. Tiberius put a stop to this practice because he thought it was "undignified".
In 70 C.E. the Romans broke through the city walls and a killing frenzy ensued. Witnesses recorded that the streets literally ran with blood. The killing only stopped when the Roman soldiers collapsed in exhaustion from the slaughter. Some Jews held out for another six weeks in the Antonia Fortress. Historians estimate that a million or more died. For the Jews it was a disaster of incredible magnitude. The temple was profaned, looted and put to the torch. The city itself was razed and a large portion of the city walls were torn down. Those who survived were either sold into slavery or were taken in chains to Rome for the entertainment of the crowds in the wild animal shows. It must have looked like the final chapter in the long story of the Jewish people.
The destruction of Jerusalem had an important secondary effect as well. The Jewish Christians of the Jerusalem Church died in their thousands alongside their Jewish brothers and sisters. The Jewish branch of the early Christian Church never fully recovered. If the Christian faith were to survive at all, it was going to have to do so in the Gentile world dominated by Rome. By this point in time the Romans were already beginning to show hostility toward the Christians. It certainly did no good to the Christian cause to point out to their Roman persecutors that they were being held responsible for the death of Jesus.
There was certainly no denying the fact that the Romans had carried out the execution of Jesus, but perhaps the situation could be made more palatable if the actual blame for the execution was shifted from the Romans to the Jews. We are talking here about a matter of survival, the message of God's love as embodied in the life and teaching of Jesus simply had to survive. Putting the blame on the Jews must have seemed harmless, since at the time it looked very much like the Jews were finished anyhow.
In the end the Christian Church did survive and prosper. However the Jews survived as well. No one could possibly have predicted the depth of their faith, their great loyalty to their traditions and to each other and their tenacious resilience in the face of terrible hardship. The survival of the institutional Christian church has meant almost two thousand years of persecution for the Jews. It wasn't intended to be that way but that is how it turned out. They have been vilified as an evil race, as a people who have rejected God, and "Christ killers". It is simply not true!
To give an example of Jewish tenacity, consider the small town in Spain which "came out of the closet" about twenty years ago. In about the year 1490 C.E. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered the expulsion from Spain of all Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism. The great majority left the country often under terrible hardship. The remainder reluctantly converted. The inhabitants of this town converted but continued to secretly practice their Jewish faith. To have been discovered would have resulted in trial before the Inquisition and most likely torture and death. For over 500 years they kept their faith and their secret. Now that it is safe, they are openly practicing their faith again. I find it difficult to imagine a similar group of Christians doing this! In addition, many people of Spanish background are discovering , when researching their family tree, that they are actually descendants of Jews forcibly converted. A large number of these people have actually renounced their Christian affiliations and converted back to Judaism.
If it were within my power to erase a single verse from every Bible which has ever existed it would be: "His blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew 27:25). More prejudice, more persecution, more murder, more genocide can be blamed on that one little sentence than on any other sentence in any language at any time in human history.
Various Christian denominations are belatedly beginning to confront the horror of anti-Semitism. The Roman Catholic Church has issued a formal statement to the effect that the Jews cannot collectively be held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. The Lutheran Church in the U.S.A. has more recently repudiated the vicious anti-Semitism of Martin Luther himself. This represents a hopeful beginning. However, the Christian churches have yet to confront the anti-Semitic bias in our own scriptures.
In this discussion today I have really only scratched the surface. We could examine quite a number of other Bible stories for a similar anti-Jewish bias. The story of "the Slaughter of the Innocents" by King Herod and the story of "the Betrayal of Jesus" by Judas Iscariot are but two of the numerous possibilities. Both stories admirably serve the purpose of portraying the Jews as an evil race.
As committed Christians we must confront the issues of anti-Semitism and racism and our own historical complicity in them. We must ask ourselves "to what extent are WE collectively or individually guilty of these crimes?" We must then act to set our house in order. Before closing let me just mention that in November 1996 in the Toronto Star newspaper, I found an article concerning two congregations in Waterloo which have jointly built and are sharing a place of worship. The two are Westminster United Church and Temple Shalom. If this can happen, there is real hope for a healing between Christian and Jew.
AMEN
Sermon delivered to:
Carlisle / Kilbride United Church in July 1994.
Rockton United Church in November 1996.
