The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-up in History
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But the Jewish authorities, representatives of the priestly Sadducees, did care; they wanted him dead. Those in Jesus’s small community of disciples were powerless to protect him and could only watch helplessly as the tragedy unfolded. So if his escape did not serve some purpose of either the Roman or Jewish authorities, who did have cause and power enough to make it happen, one would think that such an escape would have been impossible. And yet, there are enough hints in the gospel accounts to give one pause for thought. The situation is not as clear-cut as it is presented.
First, and importantly, crucifixion was historically the punishment for a political crime. According to the Gospels, however, Pilate gave Jesus over to the mobs, who then brayed for his execution on the basis of religious dissent. The Jewish execution for this particular transgression was death by stoning. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment reserved for sedition, not religious eccentricity. This contradiction alone illustrates that the Gospels are not reporting the matter truthfully. Could they be trying to hide some vital aspects of the events from us? Trying to blame the wrong people perhaps?
Jesus was, we can be certain, sentenced for execution on the basis of political crimes. We can also be certain that it was the Romans, not the Jewish authorities, who called the shots, whatever spin the Gospels might try to put on it. And the Gospels certainly spun the message to the point that modern Christians still find the suggestion of any political action on the part of Jesus to be outrageously, even dangerously, “off-message.” Yet it has been over fifty years since Professor Samuel Brandon of Manchester University in England drew attention to this critical theological distortion: “The crucial fact remains uncontested that the fatal sentence was pronounced by the Roman governor and its execution carried out by Roman officials.”2 Brandon continued:
It is certain that the movement connected with [Jesus] had at least sufficient semblance of sedition to cause the Roman authorities both to regard him as a possible revolutionary and, after trial, to execute him as guilty on such a charge.3
In fact, in later years Brandon became blunter, perhaps exasperated with those who continued to ignore this important fact: “All enquiry,” he wrote forcefully, allowing little room for doubt on the matter, “concerning the historical Jesus must start from the fact of his execution by the Romans for sedition.”4
We will find that we are dealing not only with the intricacies of religion but with the machinations of politics. Even today not all the mines have been cleared.
Apart from the brutal mode of execution, we are left to wonder whether there is any other suggestion in the Gospels that the Romans were ultimately in charge and that the crime involved was sedition rather than contravention of Jewish teachings.
The answer: indeed there is. Jesus was crucified between two other men, described as thieves in the English translations of the Bible. However, if we go back to the original Greek text, we find that they are not called thieves at all there but are described as lestai, which, strictly speaking, translates as “brigands” but which was, in Greek, the official name for the “Zealots,” the Judaean freedom fighters who were dedicated to ridding Judaea of its Roman occupation (Matthew 27:38).5 The Romans considered them to be terrorists.
The Zealots were not just seeking some kind of political land grab but had a less venal motive: they were concerned, above all else, with the legitimacy of the priests serving in the Temple of Solomon and, in particular, with the legitimacy of the high priest—who was, at the time, appointed by the Herodian rulers.6 They wanted priests who were “sons of Aaron,” priests of the bloodline of Aaron, the brother of Moses, of the Tribe of Levi, who founded the Israelite priesthood and was the first high priest of Israel. “The sons of Aaron” had become the term used to describe the sole legitimate line of priests in ancient Israel.
The undeniable implication of Jesus’s placement between two condemned Zealots at Golgotha is that, to the Roman authorities, Jesus was also a Zealot. As was Barabbas, the prisoner released under what is described as a feastday amnesty by Pilate. The prisoner was described in Greek as a lestes (John 18:40).7 There really seem to have been a lot of Zealots around Jesus.
This observation also extends to Jesus’s disciples: one is called Simon Zelotes (Simon xeloten)—Simon the Zealot (Luke 6:15). Furthermore, a particularly nasty group of assassins within the Zealot movement were called Sicarii after the small curved knife—a sica—that they carried to assassinate their opponents; Judas Iscariot was clearly Sicarii (whether active or former we do not know). This suggestion of Zealot militancy takes on an added significance when we recall the events preceding the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. According to Luke’s Gospel, as Jesus and his disciples were gathering, Jesus told his immediate entourage to arm themselves: “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” He was told that they had two swords. “It is enough,” replied Jesus (Luke 22:36-38). Here Jesus is described in a context defined by the strong and often violent Judaean desire for liberation from Roman rule. To see it as anything but that is to ignore too much of the texts.
It is, in some way, as a representative of this anti-Roman faction that Jesus was sent for crucifixion. Pilate reportedly washed his hands of the entire business, but his insistence that the sign King of the Jews remain on the cross reveals that he had not washed his hands of Roman law, which was very specific. By its provisions, Pilate’s task was clear: he had to crucify Jesus. By placing the sign where he did, he signaled to all people that he knew the truth about the situation.
So we are still left to ask, if Jesus survived the crucifixion, whether by substitution or rescue, who was likeliest to have helped him? Certainly not the Romans—why should they have saved someone opposed to their rule over Judaea? And certainly not the chief priests of the Temple, for Jesus was highly critical, at the least, of their authority. Help, we assume, could only have come from the Zealots.
But as we press on we shall discover that we could not be more wrong.
In 37 B.C., Herod captured Jerusalem. He was not a native of Judaea but came from a southern region called Idumaea. Although he was a competent soldier and administrator, he was also a thug. His friend Mark Antony had provided him with a large Roman army to take Jerusalem, but even with this help it still took a five-month siege to destroy the city’s resistance. Immediately upon taking power, Herod executed forty-five of the Sanhedrin, thereby destroying all of its influence. He also arrested Antigonus, the last of the Jewish kings, and dispatched him to Antioch, where Mark Antony was in residence. There the Jewish king was conveniently beheaded. Herod was installed as king in his stead, ruling as “Herod the Great” and remaining a close friend of his backers, the Romans.
Herod remained deeply hostile toward all members of the legitimate royal Jewish bloodline. Although he married a royal princess, he nevertheless had her brother, the high priest, drowned in a swimming pool at the palace in Jericho. Herod later had his own royal wife killed as well. He also had his two sons by this marriage executed. In fact, during his reign he methodically executed all remaining members of the royal dynasty of Israel. He did ultimately rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, but despite this largesse, he remained hated by most of the Jewish people in the region. When he died in 4 B.C., his final action was to order the burning to death of two Pharisees whose supporters had torn down the golden Roman Eagle that, by Herod’s orders, was fixed upon the Temple’s front wall.
The only chronicler of this period is the Jewish historian Josephus. He reports that, following the death of Herod, the “people” called for the high priest of the Temple in Jerusalem—a Herodian appointee—to be dismissed. They demanded that a high priest of “greater piety and purity” be appointed.8 This is the first indication that a significant part of the Jewish population had been deeply concerned about these matters, a point that will be of crucial importance to our understanding of the entire period. But who exactly were these “concerned people”?
Josephus describes three distinct factions in Judaism at the time: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Sadducees maintained the Temple worship and supplied the priests who performed the daily sacrifices. The high priest was also drawn from their ranks. The Pharisees were more concerned with the Jewish tradition, the collection of laws built up by sages past, and were less concerned with the Temple sacrifices. The Essenes, who lived communally, were variously and confusingly described as anti- or pro- Herod, peaceful or warlike, celibate or married, all depending upon which parts of Josephus’s works one looks at. This has led to considerable confusion among modern scholars and muddied the waters rather badly. The Essenes were typified, however, by their devotion to the Jewish law; as Josephus mentions, even under severe torture by the Romans, they refused to blaspheme Moses or break any of the law’s precepts.9 They also, Josephus writes, maintained the same doctrine as “the sons of Greece”; perhaps he has in mind the Pythagoreans or the later Platonists in that they too viewed humans as housing an immortal soul within a mortal, perishable body.
In his later work, Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus added a fourth group: the Zealots.10
Those who wanted a new high priest were not just concerned with intellectual protest. The clamor for the change came at the end of the weeklong mourning period for Herod. His son Archelaus had every expectation that he would become king in turn, but the decision was in the hands of Augustus Caesar.
Archelaus was in the middle of a grand funeral feast at the Temple prior to his departure for Rome when he heard the noise of an angry mob outside making their demands. The main focus of the clamor—the high priest—must have also been present at the feast. Archelaus was enraged by this noisy demonstration, but he did not wish to inflame the situation, so he sent his military commander to reason with the crowd gathered in the Temple. It was a crowd enlarged by the many who had traveled in from the outlying countryside in preparation for the approaching Passover. But those present stoned the officer before he could even begin to speak. He quickly withdrew.
Archelaus must have panicked, fearing for his own life, because after that point things turned very ugly, very quickly. Moving swiftly, Archelaus ordered a cohort of troops to enter the Temple and arrest the leaders of the crowds who were calling for the changes. This was a sizable force: in the regular Roman army it would have meant six hundred soldiers; for auxiliary forces, which these were most likely to have been, it could have meant anything from five hundred to seven hundred or more soldiers. It is clear that trouble was imminent and Archelaus intended to crack down fast and hard. But his plan didn’t work. The people in the crowd were outraged by the sudden appearance of armed troops and attacked them with stones as well. Incredibly, Josephus reports, most of the soldiers were killed, and even the commander was wounded, narrowly escaping death. This was clearly a major battle, indicating that these “people” not only wanted a high priest of “greater piety and purity” but that they were serious, organized, and prepared to fight and die for their beliefs.
Following their defeat of the troops, the crowds proceeded to perform the Temple sacrifices as though nothing untoward had happened. Archelaus took this opportunity to order his entire army into action: his infantry attacked the streets of Jerusalem, while his cavalry attacked the surrounding countryside. It is clear that this opposition to the high priest was far greater, far more structured, and far more widespread than Josephus is prepared to admit. For some reason, Josephus plays down the extent of what was evidently a major insurrection centered in the Temple followed by a major and bloody street battle throughout Jerusalem. Josephus is clear, however, about how he views the event. For him, it was “sedition.” Through his use of this derogatory term we can be sure that Josephus took the side of Archelaus and the Romans.
The battle ended with several thousand civilian deaths, including most of those who were in the Temple. Those who survived fled, seeking refuge in the neighboring hills. The funeral feast was promptly ended, and Archelaus, without further delay, departed for Rome. Meanwhile, his brother Antipas contested the will and claimed the throne for himself.
While Archelaus was arguing his case before the emperor in Rome, further revolt erupted in Judaea. On the eve of the Pentecost feast (Shavuot, the fiftieth day after the Passover Sabbath), a huge crowd surrounded the Roman bases, effectively placing them under siege. Fighting broke out in both Jerusalem and the countryside. Galilee especially seemed to be a breeding ground for the most serious organized discontent, and it was from there, in 4 B.C., that the first leader emerged, Judas of Galilee, who raided the royal armory to seize weapons. At the same time, Herod’s palace at Jericho was burned down. Could this act of political heresy have been revenge for the drowning of the last legitimate high priest? It seems very likely. Moving as rapidly as possible, the Romans gathered three legions and four regiments of cavalry, together with many auxiliaries, and struck back. In the end some two thousand Jews, all leaders of the resistance, were crucified—for sedition, of course.
Meanwhile in Rome, during that same year, Augustus Caesar had decided to divide Judaea among Herod’s sons, each of whom would rule with a lesser title than king. He gave the richest half of the kingdom, including Judaea and Samaria, to Archelaus, who ruled as an ethnarch; he divided the other half into two tetrarchies (from the Greek meaning “rule over one-fourth of a territory”), giving one tetrachy each to two other sons, Philip and Herod Antipas. Herod Antipas held Galilee and lands across the Jordan; Philip received lands north and east of Galilee.
Two points need to be noted here: first, while Josephus seems to suggest on the surface that the demands for a pure and pious high priest came from a loosely gathered, even impromptu mob that was simply part of the usual crowd in the Temple assembled for the coming Passover, it is clear, given the extent of the fighting and the opposition mounted in both Jerusalem and beyond, that this opposition group was well led and its network extensive. It was no accident that they had gathered at the Temple on the day of the funeral feast. They had come deliberately, prepared for trouble. In fact, they must surely have expected trouble. This begs two questions: Who were these people? And what if anything can we glean about their ideology from their deep desire to see a “pure and pious” high priest put in place?
It seems that these events provide an essential context for Jesus’s early life: in 4 B.C., when Herod died, Jesus was, according to the most widely held estimates, approximately two years old. Thus, we can be sure that his birth and life occurred against a background of agitation against the corrupt and hated Herodian dynasty. And though his birthplace was Bethlehem, in Judaea, Matthew (2:22-23) records that Jesus was taken to Nazareth in Galilee as a child. After a long period of silence in the gospel record, Jesus is said to have emerged from Galilee to be baptized by John the Baptist. And it is from Galilee that he gathered his disciples—at least two of whom were Zealots. Certainly he was commonly called Jesus of Galilee. As we have seen, Galilee was a hotbed of revolt, and it was from here that Judas, the leader of a large group of rebels, came. What then was the relationship of Jesus with these political agitators, these crowds bent upon sedition? Was he later to become their leader? Clues once again come from Josephus.
The opposition Josephus describes was reaching a wide movement that he takes great pains to play down while at the same time disparaging as “sedition.” Yet Josephus also records that the opposition did not end with the vicious slaughter in Jerusalem. In fact, he notes, it became worse with time. Archelaus proved so brutal in his rule that after ten years Caesar exiled him to Vienne in France. The lands of Archelaus were then ruled directly by Rome as the Province of Judaea. Since Philip and Herod Antipas were elsewhere, ruling their respective tetrarchies, a prefect, Coponius, was appointed and dispatched from Rome to rule Archelaus’s domains from his capital, the coastal city of Caesarea. Traveling with him was the new governor of Syria, Quirinius. Rome wanted a full accounting of the regions it now had to rule, and so Quirinius undertook a census of the entire country. This census was, to say the least, deeply unpopular. The date was A.D. 6. Trouble was inevitable.
Judas of Galilee led an uprising. He accused all men who paid a tax to Rome of cowardice. He demanded that Jews refuse to acknowledge the emperor as master, claiming that only one master existed and that was God. This question of the tax was the key means of knowing who was for Judas and who was against him. At the same time, Josephus reports, the hotheaded Sicarii first appeared. They were the faction behind all the violence. Josephus hints that Judas of Galilee either founded the group or led them, and it is clear from his accounts that Josephus hated them. He accuses them of using their politics as a cloak for their “barbarity and avarice.”11
Amazingly, a mention of Judas in the New Testament corroborates this profile. “After…rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished” (Acts 5:37). Josephus further explains that Judas, along with another fighter, Zadok the Pharisee, was responsible for adding a fourth faction to Judaism after the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes: the Zealots, so called because they were “zealous in good undertakings.”12 The term “Zealot” occurs only in the history of Josephus; no other Roman author mentions them, and even Josephus is reluctant to name them. Instead, he prefers to refer to them negatively as Lestai (brigands) or Sicarii (dagger-men).
This too finds a mention in the New Testament, within the Book of Acts. Speaking of a meeting between Paul and James in Jerusalem after Paul returned from many years of preaching in Greek and Roman cities such as Tarsus, Antioch, Athens, Corinth, and Ephesus, James and his companions mention the “many thousands of Jews” who were all “zealous of the law” (Acts 21, 20). Later in the same book (Acts 21, 38), another more sensitive term is used. Paul was accused of being the leader of “four thousand men who were murderers” by the Romans and then arrested. But when we look at the original Greek text, we find that “murderers” is not what the text says at all. In fact, Paul was being accused of leading four thousand sicarion—Sicarii.
Despite the labels—“Zealots” or “murderers”—or maybe even because of them, we are still left to ask: who were these Jews who were prepared to die rather than serve the Romans? Again Josephus would have us believe that they were a small band of hotheaded individuals bent upon sedition. Yet the revolts he chronicles suggest that they fought with fury and vigor and significant manpower. The inherent contradiction leads us to believe that he was not telling the truth about this faction. They were obviously more serious than he wished to admit. And this is crucial to our story and to our understanding.
So why did Josephus hate the Zealots so much? A look at his career makes it quite plain to us: Josephus had actually begun his career as a Zealot. He was even a Zealot military commander. Amazingly, he was in charge of all of Galilee—the Zealot heartland—at the start of the war against Rome. But after the loss of his base, he defected to the Roman side and became a close friend of Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus, the army commander. Finally, Josephus ended up living in Rome within the emperor’s very own palace, with a pension and Roman citizenship. But his treachery against his own people cost him dearly. For the rest of his life he had to watch his back because he was hated by even those Jews living in Rome.
In his first book, The Jewish War—written around A.D. 75 to 79 for a Roman and Romanized audience—Josephus blames the Zealots for the destruction of the Temple. Although he had access to all the Jewish records that survived the siege and the Temple fires and access to Roman records, we find that we cannot entirely believe what he says. Despite his excellent source material, he had joined the enemy and was writing for the enemy—a Roman Gentile audience. Josephus’s writing of The Jewish War is analogous to a Nazi writing a history of Poland that justifies the invasion of 1939. Since one man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot, we need to be careful with our use of his works. We must keep his reporting in perspective.
For now let us turn our attention to an extraordinary event that occurred in 1947. A Bedouin shepherd named Mohammad adh-Dhib was roaming on the northern end of the Dead Sea searching for some lost goats. Thinking that they might be in a cave he had come upon, he threw a rock in to frighten them and drive them out. Instead of the outraged bleat of a goat, he heard the shattering of pottery. Intrigued, he crawled through the small cave entrance to see what was there. Before him lay some large clay pots—one now broken—in which he found the first collection of documents famous ever since as the “Dead Sea Scrolls.”