Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews

The book by Paula Fredrickson, of the same title, is an astounding short read. It is an attempt to understand the crucifixion of Jesus historically. Why did the Jewish rabbi named Jesus die the death of a violent revolutionary? Of course the simple answer would be that he was a violent revolutionary – yet absolutely no direct evidence remotely hints that he was. All indications are that Jesus led a peaceful, arguably pacifist, movement. Fredrickson notes that if Jesus did lead a violent revolutionary movement, his followers along with him would have been crucified. James, the new leader of this movement lived in Jerusalem after the crucifixion. He moved freely there with no worry for his life. This is the fundamental paradox Fredrickson seeks to answer.

In the beginning of the book she briefly moves through the various methodological blunders that have taken the reins of the historical quests. I’m not entirely sure how to take certain portions of her writing. It is almost as if she willfully attempts various methodologies, liberal and fundamentalist to solves the problems but only gets frustrated. I cannot sort out what could be sarcasm from what could be a severe disdain for certain conclusions (regardless of method). By the end of the book she is fully engaged in, what I acknowledge to be based on other works of historical inquiry, the right kind of historical method.

The traditional explanation to the crucifixion is to follow the synoptic accounts. Jesus’ actions in the Temple are the direct reason for Jesus’ death by Pilate. Jerusalem during the feast of Passover was an intense time because of both the increased Roman military presence, and the heightened eschatalogical hope for salvation of the Jewish people. So, the slightest Jewish aggression would have incurred a Roman military response. The theory goes that Jesus’ actions in the Temple would have given the ruling Jewish aristocrasy a reason to get the Romans involved.

Fredrickson goes on to show why this fails for two reasons. First, another notable Jerusalem Jew Jesus ben Hanan, spoke of the Temple’s coming destruction – for seven years during all of the feasts. He was not put to death. He received punishment by both the Jewish ruling class and the Romans and was left to continue. Second, Jesus’ actions in the Temple would barely have been noticed by the throngs of people there. The temple mount is three football fields wide. The market is on one side under the porticos. Roman soldiers would have been stationed on the elevated porticos. Only the immediate masses around Jesus would have seen his actions, and only the Roman soldiers some sixty-plus yards away would have seen him. Combining these two facts, it would be historically unlikely that Jesus was crucified for this one action. So where do we go from here?

Fredrickson does a good job setting the scene of Jewish apocalyptic hope. I’m not sure if she retains the idea that the Jewish, and subsequently Christians, believed in the coming “end of the world”, or (what is gaining traction with me) the other understanding of apocalyptic literature, investing current events with theological significance through the use of cosmic and symbolic imagery. She also does a good job showing that there are various traditions behind the concepts of Kingdom, the Gentile participation, and Messiah. They all float on continums and gradients with various teachers and sects putting in their stakes at certain points along the way. Fredrickson does a fantastic job highlighting the relationship between Galilee, Jerusalem, and their respective rulers leading up to the time of Jesus, some of which brilliantly runs against current thinking on the subject. And in another brilliant turn she goes to the gospel of John, long thought to be the least historical, to find an answer to her perplexing question of Jesus’ crucifixion.

John’s basic structure depicts a wandering itinerant preacher Jesus, active for three years, with followers all over Israel, in Galilee, Jerusalem, Bethany, and more cities. The fair presumption here is that Herod of Galilee and Pilate of Jerusalem would have known who this Jesus is. He made regular appearances in synogagues and the Temple in Jerusalem. He did not hide from public life. In another interesting twist Fredrickson chooses not to see things from Jesus’ perspective here, but rather from Pilate’s! Because Pilate knows who Jesus is, there is no threat. Jesus has not actively sought to build an army. He has not actively made a messianic claim (no doubt some of his followers could have, and did, come to this conclusion. Again, she does not go towards Jesus’ self-understanding, Pilate couldn’t have cared less.) She writes “A straight line connects the Triumphal Entry and the Crucifixion.” Pilate witnessing this would not immediately be afraid of Jesus. He doesn’t see Jesus having any power. He knows that Jesus preaches a Kingdom which God will usher in, not the might of men. Surely other messianic claimants like Theudas the Egyptian made the same claim. Yet he also gathered thousands in the desert on marches re-enacting Joshua’s military entry into the promised land over the Jordan. Gathering crowds like this got Rome’s attention and they got rid of Theudas. However, Jesus never gathered crowds out in the desert like that. Yes, he baptized and fed. But nothing that wasn’t near a city where the people were from, or outside an already present congregation like the Temple or synogague. Fredrickson argues that precisely because of the crowds reaction to Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, laden with messianic tones, Pilate found it necessary to crucify Jesus. Again, it is passover and this is the time that sedition is most likely to break out. The people don’t even need a messianic figure to get started – and now they think they’ve found one. This satisfies how Jesus was crucified as an insurrectionist and his disciples were not. Because Pilate was not directly challenged, militarily, by the Jesus movement. Only indirectly by the claims of the masses on Passover. It was the crowd Pilate needed to control, and he did it by crucifying their newest messiah.

I find this line of argumentation, historically, to be very very persuading. It is no means a conclusive statement on Jesus’ identity, I don’t think it was intended to be. But it is very persuasive, and would require strong argumentation to dislodge, concerning the historical means of crucifixion.

On other accounts of theology, and Jesus’ self-identity, I don’t see any conflicts that this line brings up. It creatively uses the perspective of Pilate to understand Pilate’s own actions. And it has to do this in the first century Jewish context. It succeeds on both points. Having said that, I find myself very persuaded by NT Wright’s line of argumentation concerning Jesus’ self-identity. His work is equally historically focused, but from the perspective of Jesus himself. The only interesting point of integration required is the always sticky synoptic problem of where to put the Temple scene: with John in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, or with the synoptics, at the end. Bauckham’s work is giving John’s gospel a more vaulted place as history than is traditionally given to it. Certainly, the gospel of John isn’t any worse off (from a literary point of view) “getting Jesus crucified” without the Temple incident. And all of the synoptics include the Triumphal Entry. The argument of where it appropriately belongs may very well be less valuable than thought, if it is not a requirement for his crucifixion, where, again, in John it is not a requirement.