Trevor J. Hoffman: Judas on Trial
[Trevor J Hoffman is a retired academic lawyer who has spent the last decade researching the origins of Christianity. He is currently working on a history of Roman Catholicism, and has just finished ‘The Sion Prophecy’, a novel exploring early Christian intrigue.]
2006 started well for Judas Iscariot; after almost two millennia of top-shelf vilification the apostle who betrayed Jesus was having his case reviewed. The London Times announced in January that the unlikely brief of rehabilitating the greatest traitor in Christendom had been given to the Vatican’s Pontifical Committee for Historical Science. No character in recorded history has attracted more bad press than Judas, so the question on everyone’s lips was: Why? What on earth, or in heaven, could have happened to call for such a momentous about-face? The Times reporter in Rome clearly thought he knew; in what, quite understandably, must have appeared a miracle of coincidence, a copy of the long lost ‘Gospel of Judas’ had come to light. Known to have existed back at the dawn of Christianity, the Gospel was thought lost to posterity until the Maecenas Foundation of Switzerland recently revealed it had a copy dating back to the third or fourth century, and in conjunction with National Geographic, was planning to have a book published revealing its contents.
But alas, oh cynicism, for there is no coincidence, and there is to be no Vatican turnaround; Monsignor Walter Brandmuller, the gentleman credited with heading up the Vatican makeover, flatly denied any such project exists, describing the Judas Gospel as religious fantasy before the planned book was even published. With the contents of the ancient text now in the public domain, it seems unlikely that the Monsignor’s attitude will change, as the work is reportedly the same as the one dismissed with the same sort of put-down more than eighteen hundred years ago by that early Church father, Irenaeus. Given its age and seemingly unquestioned authenticity, however, the Maecenas Foundation is in possession of a very important piece of history.
The recently revealed text reflects the beliefs of the Gnostics, an early, mystically oriented Christian sect that over the centuries was persecuted almost to extinction by the Orthodox Church. The Gnostics had no time for the God of the Old Testament, and rejected the material world in favour of the realm of the spirit. According to them, Judas was no traitor; in fact, quite the opposite. In this Gospel he is portrayed as the favourite apostle specially chosen by Jesus to be the one who hands him over to the authorities. Apart from the intimate relationship Judas is shown to enjoy with Jesus, the net effect is not remarkably different from the Gospel of John, where Jesus actually instructs Judas to go and carry out the betrayal quickly. The crucial difference from Christianity’s viewpoint appears to lie in the failure of the Judas Gospel to point out that Jesus was laying down his life for the salvation of mankind. Indeed, in this version Jesus’ main, if not sole, objective seems to be to have himself killed so that his spirit can be released from its physical body, and he asks Judas to be the one who “will sacrifice the man that clothes me". This failure to mention the redemption of mankind as being even part of Christ’s motivation to give up his life would seem to be the major factor behind Irenaeus’ pronouncement of the text as heretical, though betrayal was clearly an issue with the early Church.
Bearing in mind that the core purpose of Jesus’ earthly mission is to lay down his life in order that we might all be saved, how his death is brought about should be of little consequence to Christianity. It should not matter a whit if there was no betrayal, and that Judas was simply a favoured apostle acting on instructions. But judging from the near hysterical reactions to this aspect of the old text from large sections of both the clergy and the media, clearly it does. More significantly, it mattered way back at the birth of Christianity. The big question is: Why should betrayal be a necessary component in the death of Christ?
While I’m no theologian, my experience in the legal profession has given me special expertise in evidence, and in my opinion, the Gospel of Judas is cause for, at the very least, a re-examination of the evidence we have on the role Judas played in the events leading up to the Crucifixion. Any examination of the part Judas played in history must, of course, take place in the context of the story of Jesus. Unfortunately, almost all the information we have on both is contained in the New Testament, and while it’s possible to extract certain valuable evidence from that venerable old book, few works of non-fiction are less populated with facts. For our purposes the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of a fact will do: a thing that is indisputably the case.
Throughout the various documents that make up the New Testament there are no eyewitness accounts, so all the evidence we have to examine is hearsay. No contemporaneous writing about Jesus or Judas exists, either by them, or by any of their contemporaries, and although the Gospels bear the names of four apostles, nobody knows who really wrote them. What is certain is that they arose out of oral traditions (what we would call anecdotes or yarns), and were written decades after the events they describe; indeed, it is unlikely any were in existence before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, almost forty years after the Crucifixion. Paul’s Epistles, dating from around 50 CE, represent what are commonly accepted as the earliest contributions to the New Testament, but Paul, who knew neither Jesus nor Judas, is unconcerned with biographical details.
The New Testament reports the experiences of Jesus as he travels around the Holy Land with Judas and the rest of the apostles, preaching the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven (or Kingdom of God), healing the sick, exorcising devils, and generally attracting followers. As the feast of the Passover approaches, in or around 33 CE, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey to be greeted as the King of the Jews. Whip in hand he proceeds to the Temple, upturns the money-changers’ tables and drives out the livestock. The Last Supper follows shortly on where Jesus tells his apostles he will be betrayed by one of them, after which he repairs to Gethsemane with several apostles. Judas duly arrives with a crowd of soldiers, priests, and others, and betrays Jesus with a kiss. Jesus is taken away and tried respectively before the Jewish priests, King Herod, and Pontius Pilate. The priests claim they have no right to impose the death penalty and implore Pilate to execute Jesus. Pilate is reluctant, but in accord with a Passover custom he refers to, offers the Jews a choice between the life of Jesus, and that of a prisoner called Barabbas. The Jews choose Barabbas, so Pilate issues orders for Jesus to be flogged and crucified.
If one omits the parables and miracles, that, in essence, is the story in the New Testament. At first glance it seems relatively straightforward, but when one delves a little deeper there are glitches in the detail that hint at another dimension to the tale.
To ride a donkey into Jerusalem during the Passover period might seem a relatively innocuous thing for Jesus to do, but there is a symbolism involved here that makes it one of the most significant events in the whole of the New Testament. All four Gospels make it clear that the Jews witnessing the spectacle regard this as the arrival of their King, or Messiah, and Matthew and John specifically refer to the words of Zechariah’s prophecy that herald the coming of the Messiah ‘humble and seated on a donkey’. In Hebrew the word ‘Messiah’ means simply ‘anointed one’ but its connotation in the context of this donkey ride is of critical importance. Jewish High Priests were also anointed and could be called Messiah, but they were not royal Messiahs. The practice of royal anointment originated in Mesopotamia, and came to the Jews through the Egyptians, who used to anoint their Kings with crocodile fat, Messeh being the Egyptian word for crocodile, a creature they held to be holy. David, of ‘David and Goliath’ in the Old Testament, was one of the first Jewish Kings to adopt the practice, except he used ‘spikenard’ a costly ointment made from a plant found in Northern India. The sacred ritual is recorded in the Old Testament Song of Solomon, where the Queen anoints her King with oil of spikenard while he is seated at a table, just as Jesus is anointed at Bethany in the New Testament. After David, all Jewish Kings of his line were anointed; they were all called Messiahs, or Christs (from the Greek ‘Christos’ meaning ‘anointed one’). All four Gospels refer to Jesus’ Davidic bloodline, but Matthew and Luke discuss it in depth, and while there are discrepancies in their genealogies, they both place critical importance on his Davidic descent through Joseph. Thus, according to the Gospels in the New Testament, Jesus was a genuine Davidic Messiah, a Jewish King descended from David.
Before exploring what was expected of a Davidic Messiah, we’ll look briefly at the riot in the Temple that Jesus went on to cause after the donkey ride, which, despite the understated treatment the event receives in the New Testament, was no minor matter. In Jesus’ time the Temple was the very hub of daily Jewish life. A huge complex of various buildings and grounds, it was both a centre of commerce and a church. It was a place where Rabbis preached, prayers and sacrifices were offered up, taxes were paid, money was changed, and all the time its halls and corridors were patrolled by Temple Guards. To cause trouble of any sort in the Temple was a serious matter, but to defile it in the manner Jesus is reported to have done was an offence that under Jewish law would have warranted the perpetrator being stoned to death.
The New Testament doesn’t say how the riot ended up, but one thing is certain: Jesus could not have quietly walked away as if nothing happened. If somebody disrupted the daily Temple activities by driving out the birds, sheep, and cattle, then upended the moneychangers’ tables, as we are told Jesus did, absolute pandemonium would have ensued. This was the busiest time of the year in the Temple; there would have been thousands of people about, and, you can be sure of it, proportionately more Temple Guards to maintain order. The fact they did not smartly arrest Jesus and his followers almost certainly means they had planned their escape. But the question is begging: why does Jesus all of a sudden fly into a rage in the Temple when the Jews are only doing what they’ve always done there? This was, after all, the sort of Temple activity Jesus had grown up with; why does he suddenly deplore it?
Following shortly on from the mayhem in the Temple comes the Last Supper where Jesus announces to his apostles he will be betrayed by one of them. All four Gospels report the betrayal by Judas, but it’s never quite clear what Jesus is betrayed for having done; nor is any credible motive offered for Judas’ treacherous behaviour. The greed angle is played up, but why would the treasurer of the Jesus movement, which we are told Judas was, sell off his source of income? With Jesus gone the money flow would stop, and Judas would be out of work. Why wouldn’t he just leave Jesus be and steal from the takings as treasurers so inclined have always done? Then we are told that Jesus knows in advance Judas is going to betray him; he even tells Judas he knows; odder still, he tells him to go and do it. Interestingly, in respect of that word ‘betrayal’, Professor William Klassen, of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, makes the point that in the original Greek Gospels, from which the English versions derive, wherever the word ‘paradidomi’ appears in relation to Judas it is interpreted to mean ‘betrayal’, whereas in the other instances relating to Christ’s death it is translated to mean ‘hand over’.
The New Testament is riddled with niggling inconsistencies, but in relation to Judas there are irreconcilable differences, especially relating to his demise. Matthew says Judas hangs himself, whereas in the ‘Acts of the apostles’ we are told he topples headlong in the potter’s field with his intestines spilling out. Then there is the blood money, the thirty pieces of silver Judas is paid for the betrayal: Matthew says he hurls it back into the Temple, and the priests use it to buy the potter’s field (also known as the field of blood), but Acts states unequivocally it is Judas who uses the blood money to buy the field. Both sources make it clear they are working towards the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies: Acts cites the desolate habitation envisaged in the Book of Psalms, equating this with the field of blood. Matthew concentrates on the amount of blood money, quantifying it as thirty pieces of silver and citing Jeremiah. Matthew, however, has slipped up; the quote he needs is in Zechariah.
The Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified, but despite the fact that this was a Roman punishment carried out by Romans for crimes against Rome, when it comes to Christ’s Crucifixion, all four go to great lengths to blame the Jews for it. They don’t dispute that the Romans physically executed Jesus, they just leave no room for doubt that the Jews, not the Romans, were responsible. Even as Pilate is in the process of ordering Jesus to be taken away and crucified, Matthew has the Roman Governor literally washing his hands saying, ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just person.’
While it is difficult to discern exactly what charge Jesus was ultimately crucified for, it is absolutely impossible to work out why in all the Gospels the Jewish priests struggle to find some charge to bring against him, when the obvious one of defiling the Temple goes unmentioned. The following passage in Mark almost beggars belief: ‘The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any.’
When Jesus is arraigned before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council recognised by the Romans, there is talk of his having threatened to destroy the Temple, but he had also said he would build it again so the accusations move to blasphemy. In each of the Gospels Jesus is pronounced guilty of this, but the priests go on to claim they have no right to inflict the death penalty (a claim refuted by both the Old and New Testaments) and petition Pilate to execute him. Pilate, however, is unbothered by Jewish theological offences, so the priests accuse Jesus of claiming to be the King of the Jews, and thus a rival to Caesar. Such a claim, which is not denied by Jesus, constitutes treason against Rome and warrants instant execution, but oddly, Pilate continues to find no fault with Jesus. According to Luke, Jesus is next arraigned before Herod, the Roman-appointed Tetrarch of Galilee, who also refuses to intercede. Finally, in what is portrayed as a last ditch bid to save Jesus from the wrathful Jews, Pilate refers to a custom whereby as Governor he is supposed to release a prisoner at Passover, and offers the Jews a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, a man described as a ‘notable’ prisoner, guilty of ‘sedition and murder’.
The first significant feature of the Barabbas incident is the fact that the custom referred to by Pilate does not exist. In the entire history of both the Jews and the Romans nobody has ever been able to find any mention of this custom outside the New Testament. The second point to note is the fact that Barabbas is not a name, but a conjoint version of the title, Bar Abbas, meaning ‘Son of the Father’. But the third, and most intriguing point here is the fact that Barabbas is referred to in the early versions of Matthew’s Gospel as Jesus Bar Abbas, and this is the same name by which he is still referred to in the Syriac and Armenian Gospels. Even the Vatican now admits that Jesus Bar Abbas is the correct name for the mysterious prisoner.
So, what’s happening here? The Barabbas reportage isn’t just a flight of fancy by one particular Gospel author; they all record it. If the prisoner release custom never existed, how come it is reported in all four Gospels? And, more importantly, if there is something tricky going on here - and there is no other conclusion one can sensibly reach - why was such a clumsy subterfuge introduced in the first place? After all, Barabbas is guilty of sedition and murder - he is a revolutionary. He is the last type of person a Roman Governor is going to set free. Who then, is this ‘notable’ prisoner who was originally called Jesus, the Son of the Father? When one stops to think, it really only makes sense to call somebody Jesus the Son of the Father if the father’s name is also Jesus. Now, is it possible that Jesus Bar Abbas is the son of Jesus Christ? Is it possible that Jesus was married?
Scholarly estimates vary on the year Jesus was born, but around 6 BCE is a fair assumption, which means he could easily have had a twenty year old son. And there is nothing new in the proposition that Jesus was married. Most biblical scholars without a religious barrow to push will tell you that, at the least, it’s a distinct possibility. The rumour that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married is older than the New Testament. Indeed, one eminent scholar (Dr Barbara Thiering in her work on the Dead Sea Scrolls) has written that not only was Jesus a genuine Davidic King who married Mary Magdalene in the Marriage Feast at Cana and fathered children to her, but that he survived the Crucifixion, was granted a divorce, then remarried and fathered another child. The preservation of bloodlines has always been of paramount concern to royal families, and the House of David would have been no exception in this regard. For a Jewish King not to have a wife would have been unthinkable to the Jews of any period in history, and if Jesus was, as the New Testament persistently states, of the bloodline of King David, it goes without saying that he would be expected to marry and produce heirs to preserve the royal bloodline.
Returning now to the donkey ride, which in deference to Zechariah’s prophecy, Jesus took into Jerusalem: it is clear from the Gospels that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he got on that donkey, so it’s worth looking at the words of Zechariah:
‘Rejoice, Oh daughter of Sion!
Shout aloud, Oh daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your King comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is He,
humble and riding on a donkey.
I will smite the chariot from E'phraim,
and the horse of war from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and He shall command peace to the nations.
His dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.’
Zechariah’s King is depicted as ultimately victorious and commanding peace, but before this he will humbly ride a donkey into Jerusalem to much rejoicing, following which there will be smiting of chariots and horses of war, and a cutting off of the battle bow. These are clearly fighting words, but then it has never been a secret that the Jews of Roman-occupied Judea were forever waiting for, indeed forever praying for, a genuine Jewish King, a Davidic Messiah, who would take up the sword to lead them in holy war and throw the Romans out of their Promised Land. So, is it possible that Jesus Christ, the Christian God of peace was in truth a Jewish warrior King descended from David, the greatest of all Jewish warrior Kings? The New Testament leaves little room for doubt that this is the claim Jesus was making when he rode that donkey into Jerusalem, and that was most certainly what the exultant crowds thought he was.
Jesus was born into an era of intense political agitation, and Galilee, where he grew up and received his education, was the home of Jewish extremism; it was the epicentre of the Zealot movement, the Al Qaeda of its day. The Jewish people never took kindly to foreign rule, and uprisings against the Romans were commonplace. When Jesus was about twelve the Romans put down a particularly spirited uprising, crucifying more than two thousand Jewish revolutionaries and selling another twenty thousand into slavery. History also records that the period after the Crucifixion, leading up to the great Jewish revolt less than forty years later, was remorselessly racked by outbursts of anarchy and mini-rebellions.
If Jesus was a Jewish King from the line of David, then it’s highly likely his sympathies would be with the Zealots; after all, he was brought up in their Galilean home-base, and who better to help him fulfil Zechariah’s visions, and rid the Holy Land of the Roman oppressors. There is even someone called Simon the Zealot amongst Jesus’ apostles, and a formidable array of scholars are of the opinion that Simon’s son, Judas Iscariot, was also a Zealot, albeit a Zealot with a difference. As is the case with Barabbas, Iscariot is not a name; it is a Greek corruption of the Latin ‘Sicarius’ meaning ‘dagger-man’, which referred to members of the Zealot movement’s cadre of assassins. The word derives from a curved dagger called a ‘sica’, which was the assassins’ preferred killing instrument. We also know Peter was handy to have around when the going got rough, for when Jesus was about to be taken into custody at Gethsemane, John tells us that, ‘Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the High Priest's servant, and cut off his right ear.’
Despite intensive editing in the centuries leading up to its acceptance as the Christian canon, the New Testament records Jesus saying certain things that reinforce the view that the revolution he was embarking on might not have been a spiritual one.
In Matthew and Mark, Jesus privately warns his disciples that war is inevitable: ‘And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be;’ And this war Jesus envisages will be a divisive one that will tear families apart: ‘Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.’ In Luke and Matthew, Jesus makes it clear (in words we heard more recently from the US President, also in the context of war) what he expects of his followers: ‘He who is not with me is against me,’ he tells them, and in Matthew, he could not be more explicit: ‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’ Then in Luke Jesus instructs his followers, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.’ And later at Gethsemane his followers have clearly taken the advice for when Judas arrives and ‘they saw what was going to happen they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?"
At times there is also a degree of secrecy in Jesus’ behaviour. In Matthew, he advises that when it comes to the collection of funds: ‘let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.’ And in both Mark and Luke, when Peter states that Jesus is the Christ (the anointed one), Jesus says that, ‘they should tell no one.’ At this stage Jesus has made no Messianic claims, but knowing what is expected of Davidic Kings, the reason for secrecy could very likely be that Jesus is travelling around the Holy Land collecting funds and raising an army. And quite a force it would have been too, if as some scholars have alleged, the five thousand odd followers present for the miracle of the loaves and fishes was a Messianic army. Blessed indeed, would be the ‘poor’, the ‘meek’, and the ‘humble’ if they were literally the soldiers of Christ; and truly wondrous would be the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, if that was to be the Holy Land without the Romans.
Going back now to the riot in the Temple: this can only be realistically explained as a brazen act of civil defiance constituting a direct challenge to the established order. Remember that up till this time Jesus has done or said nothing to indicate he is the Davidic Messiah, the rightful King of the Jews. When he rides that donkey into Jerusalem, however, he is leaving the Jewish people in no doubt that this is what he is claiming to be. The timing too is symbolic. This was the Passover, and since Moses led the children of Israel out of bondage in ancient Egypt, it has been a Jewish celebration of freedom from foreign rule and oppression. What better time for a Davidic Messiah to appear, and what better way of announcing his arrival than to start a riot in the Temple. This would be classic behaviour for a Davidic Messiah: publicly revolting against not only the Romans, but the despised Sadducees, the aristocratic Jewish sect who controlled the Sanhedrin and were collaborating with Rome. Viewed in this light the donkey ride and the riot in the Temple could easily be taken as a signal that a Messianic revolution has begun.
Luke reports that Barabbas is guilty of ‘sedition and murder’, and that the offences occurred somewhere in Jerusalem; and history has shown us that Roman punishment was brutal and instant. In the Roman system, Jewish criminals, especially revolutionaries, had no rights whatsoever. There were no jails, as such, in occupied lands like Judea; the Romans had no need for them. If a Jew was guilty of some minor offence, he would be sold into slavery, if the offence was serious, he would be executed, and if he was innocent, he would be lucky to be set free without a flogging. The only ‘sedition’ recorded as happening around this time in Jerusalem was the riot Jesus caused in the Temple; and a wild enough scene it was too, if, as seems likely, it’s where Barabbas committed that ‘murder’. Though Jesus and most of his men obviously escaped, Barabbas, or Jesus Bar Abbas as we now know his real name to be, was caught. So too, it is submitted, was Judas.
Even prior to the discovery of the Judas Gospel certain serious scholars hypothesised that Judas never betrayed Jesus, but simply played the role of negotiating some form of prisoner exchange. Now, if one looks at the Barabbas incident in the light of both Barabbas and Judas being captured during the riot in the Temple, the whole strange affair is suddenly capable of making sense.
Is it possible then, that the following scenario is what really happened in Jerusalem on the feast of the Passover back in 33 CE?
After the Temple melee the Romans realise they have caught the son of Jesus and see a chance to nip the impending Messianic revolution in the bud. Harking back to the ‘loaves and fishes’, we know Jesus had a following of at least some five thousand; if this was an army, it was a considerable force. Rather than risk a confrontation with this powerful Messianic movement, the Romans use Judas as a go-between to broker a deal, whereby they agree to release Jesus the Son, if Jesus the Father gives himself up and calls off the revolution. Judas is freed to deliver the Roman ultimatum, and when Jesus receives it, he convenes a special meeting of the leaders in the Messianic Army. This is the Last Supper where Jesus announces that the revolution is off, and he is going to surrender himself so that his son can be freed. Judas is then despatched back to the Romans with the message that Jesus will be waiting for them in the Garden at Gethsemane.
The Gospels record various trial processes, but their reportage is hopelessly conflicting and it’s impossible to gain any clear picture from them. It is difficult to disagree with the large school of thought that deems it unlikely Jesus received any trial at all, by the Sanhedrin, by Herod, or by the Romans. None of the authorities had reason to be happy about the arrival of a Davidic Messiah or favour him with special treatment; and a trial for a troublemaking Messiah in Roman-occupied Judea would have been special treatment of the rarest kind. The appearance of a Davidic Messiah meant change, and the Sadducee priests who controlled the Sanhedrin had no wish to change anything. As long as they continued to collaborate with the Romans, their wealth, power and privileges were assured – the last thing they wanted on the scene was a Davidic Messiah. The same was true for Herod. And as far as the Romans were concerned, Jewish Kings meant trouble, and nobody dealt with trouble more quickly, brutally, and efficiently than the Romans. Anyone in those times rioting in the Jerusalem Temple, and claiming to be the King of the Jews, would have been immediately carted off and crucified without any such legal nicety as a trial. An indication of how serious the Romans were about putting down trouble can be gleaned from the Gospel of John, where it’s reported that a Cohort of Roman soldiers turned up at Gethsemane to arrest Jesus: a Cohort comprises six hundred soldiers.
We will probably never know what truly happened back in the old city of Jerusalem on the Passover of 33 CE, but though the above depiction of events is put purely as hypothesis, it does manage to make sense of those glitches we have in the existing evidence. Of course, if it were true, it would mean that Jesus laid down his life, not for mankind, but for his son, and the bewildering implications of that premise pose questions that go to the very heart of whatever it is that makes us human. As for the first century Jews of Roman-occupied Judea, admirable in all as was Jesus’ sacrifice, a failed Messiah was of no practical use to them, and the Crucifixion was the end of the story. Fortunately for the Christian world to come, Paul was travelling a different path. Paul was enlightened by a resurrection of the spirit - his was a spiritual path. Pauline theology sat in marked contrast with that of conventional Jews of the time; they were interested only in traditional preaching to traditional Jews, and had no wish to share their God with anyone. The Pauline evangelists, on the other hand, had this new supernatural take on the Jewish God, and they wanted to broaden the field by bringing gentiles into the flock. This is one of the main reasons the Gospels display such a distinct bias in blaming the Jews, not the Romans, for Christ’s death. But it’s also important to bear in mind that at the time they were written, the great Jewish revolt of 66-70 CE had just been ferociously put down, the Temple had been destroyed, and Jerusalem lay flattened; if the authors had portrayed the Romans in a negative light their work would never have survived.
Ironically, it was under the guiding hand of a Roman Emperor in the early part of the fourth century that the New Testament was shaped into what would ultimately be accepted as its final form. The mighty Constantine, unquestionably the most powerful man in the world at the time, played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Christianity we know today, and while many scholars remain cynical about his motivations, none doubt his influence. Whatever the truth about Constantine’s innermost thoughts on spiritual issues, there were immense advantages to be had in uniting all the competing Christian factions in the Empire under one religious umbrella. By Constantine’s time Christian sects had become extremely popular, though there was much disagreement as to dogma. The most divisive issue in the fledgling faith was the question of whether Jesus was of a human or a divine nature. This was to prove no problem to the politically astute Constantine who was fully aware that the divine element was essential if you wanted to compete in the Greco-Roman, pagan cult arena.
In 325 CE at Nicea, Constantine convened the First Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church, personally selecting the Bishops who would attend. From a golden throne he presided over the opening ceremony, making it abundantly clear to the assembled clerics that he was on the ‘divine’ side. After due debate a declaration was produced formally recognising that Jesus was of the same essence as God the Father, and those who signed were invited to stay for celebrations - those who declined were to leave at once. Records of attendance vary, but it seems there were around 300 delegates present with only a couple refusing to sign (Constantine would later order the destruction of all written works that challenged the ‘Nicene Orthodoxy’). Constantine took advantage of the occasion to adopt the popular pagan spring fertility festival of Easter as the time to celebrate the passion of Jesus; and shortly after Nicea, Sunday, the sacred day of Sol Invictus, the great Sun God, became the sacred day of Christianity. It was just a decade or so later, that the sun would finally start to set on the old pagan Gods when Pope Julius I, taking a leaf out of Constantine’s book, declared December 25 - hitherto the traditional celebration of the birth of the ‘Unconquered Sun’ - the birthday of Jesus Christ, the new Christian God.
2006 started well for Judas Iscariot; after almost two millennia of top-shelf vilification the apostle who betrayed Jesus was having his case reviewed. The London Times announced in January that the unlikely brief of rehabilitating the greatest traitor in Christendom had been given to the Vatican’s Pontifical Committee for Historical Science. No character in recorded history has attracted more bad press than Judas, so the question on everyone’s lips was: Why? What on earth, or in heaven, could have happened to call for such a momentous about-face? The Times reporter in Rome clearly thought he knew; in what, quite understandably, must have appeared a miracle of coincidence, a copy of the long lost ‘Gospel of Judas’ had come to light. Known to have existed back at the dawn of Christianity, the Gospel was thought lost to posterity until the Maecenas Foundation of Switzerland recently revealed it had a copy dating back to the third or fourth century, and in conjunction with National Geographic, was planning to have a book published revealing its contents.
But alas, oh cynicism, for there is no coincidence, and there is to be no Vatican turnaround; Monsignor Walter Brandmuller, the gentleman credited with heading up the Vatican makeover, flatly denied any such project exists, describing the Judas Gospel as religious fantasy before the planned book was even published. With the contents of the ancient text now in the public domain, it seems unlikely that the Monsignor’s attitude will change, as the work is reportedly the same as the one dismissed with the same sort of put-down more than eighteen hundred years ago by that early Church father, Irenaeus. Given its age and seemingly unquestioned authenticity, however, the Maecenas Foundation is in possession of a very important piece of history.
The recently revealed text reflects the beliefs of the Gnostics, an early, mystically oriented Christian sect that over the centuries was persecuted almost to extinction by the Orthodox Church. The Gnostics had no time for the God of the Old Testament, and rejected the material world in favour of the realm of the spirit. According to them, Judas was no traitor; in fact, quite the opposite. In this Gospel he is portrayed as the favourite apostle specially chosen by Jesus to be the one who hands him over to the authorities. Apart from the intimate relationship Judas is shown to enjoy with Jesus, the net effect is not remarkably different from the Gospel of John, where Jesus actually instructs Judas to go and carry out the betrayal quickly. The crucial difference from Christianity’s viewpoint appears to lie in the failure of the Judas Gospel to point out that Jesus was laying down his life for the salvation of mankind. Indeed, in this version Jesus’ main, if not sole, objective seems to be to have himself killed so that his spirit can be released from its physical body, and he asks Judas to be the one who “will sacrifice the man that clothes me". This failure to mention the redemption of mankind as being even part of Christ’s motivation to give up his life would seem to be the major factor behind Irenaeus’ pronouncement of the text as heretical, though betrayal was clearly an issue with the early Church.
Bearing in mind that the core purpose of Jesus’ earthly mission is to lay down his life in order that we might all be saved, how his death is brought about should be of little consequence to Christianity. It should not matter a whit if there was no betrayal, and that Judas was simply a favoured apostle acting on instructions. But judging from the near hysterical reactions to this aspect of the old text from large sections of both the clergy and the media, clearly it does. More significantly, it mattered way back at the birth of Christianity. The big question is: Why should betrayal be a necessary component in the death of Christ?
While I’m no theologian, my experience in the legal profession has given me special expertise in evidence, and in my opinion, the Gospel of Judas is cause for, at the very least, a re-examination of the evidence we have on the role Judas played in the events leading up to the Crucifixion. Any examination of the part Judas played in history must, of course, take place in the context of the story of Jesus. Unfortunately, almost all the information we have on both is contained in the New Testament, and while it’s possible to extract certain valuable evidence from that venerable old book, few works of non-fiction are less populated with facts. For our purposes the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of a fact will do: a thing that is indisputably the case.
Throughout the various documents that make up the New Testament there are no eyewitness accounts, so all the evidence we have to examine is hearsay. No contemporaneous writing about Jesus or Judas exists, either by them, or by any of their contemporaries, and although the Gospels bear the names of four apostles, nobody knows who really wrote them. What is certain is that they arose out of oral traditions (what we would call anecdotes or yarns), and were written decades after the events they describe; indeed, it is unlikely any were in existence before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, almost forty years after the Crucifixion. Paul’s Epistles, dating from around 50 CE, represent what are commonly accepted as the earliest contributions to the New Testament, but Paul, who knew neither Jesus nor Judas, is unconcerned with biographical details.
The New Testament reports the experiences of Jesus as he travels around the Holy Land with Judas and the rest of the apostles, preaching the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven (or Kingdom of God), healing the sick, exorcising devils, and generally attracting followers. As the feast of the Passover approaches, in or around 33 CE, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey to be greeted as the King of the Jews. Whip in hand he proceeds to the Temple, upturns the money-changers’ tables and drives out the livestock. The Last Supper follows shortly on where Jesus tells his apostles he will be betrayed by one of them, after which he repairs to Gethsemane with several apostles. Judas duly arrives with a crowd of soldiers, priests, and others, and betrays Jesus with a kiss. Jesus is taken away and tried respectively before the Jewish priests, King Herod, and Pontius Pilate. The priests claim they have no right to impose the death penalty and implore Pilate to execute Jesus. Pilate is reluctant, but in accord with a Passover custom he refers to, offers the Jews a choice between the life of Jesus, and that of a prisoner called Barabbas. The Jews choose Barabbas, so Pilate issues orders for Jesus to be flogged and crucified.
If one omits the parables and miracles, that, in essence, is the story in the New Testament. At first glance it seems relatively straightforward, but when one delves a little deeper there are glitches in the detail that hint at another dimension to the tale.
To ride a donkey into Jerusalem during the Passover period might seem a relatively innocuous thing for Jesus to do, but there is a symbolism involved here that makes it one of the most significant events in the whole of the New Testament. All four Gospels make it clear that the Jews witnessing the spectacle regard this as the arrival of their King, or Messiah, and Matthew and John specifically refer to the words of Zechariah’s prophecy that herald the coming of the Messiah ‘humble and seated on a donkey’. In Hebrew the word ‘Messiah’ means simply ‘anointed one’ but its connotation in the context of this donkey ride is of critical importance. Jewish High Priests were also anointed and could be called Messiah, but they were not royal Messiahs. The practice of royal anointment originated in Mesopotamia, and came to the Jews through the Egyptians, who used to anoint their Kings with crocodile fat, Messeh being the Egyptian word for crocodile, a creature they held to be holy. David, of ‘David and Goliath’ in the Old Testament, was one of the first Jewish Kings to adopt the practice, except he used ‘spikenard’ a costly ointment made from a plant found in Northern India. The sacred ritual is recorded in the Old Testament Song of Solomon, where the Queen anoints her King with oil of spikenard while he is seated at a table, just as Jesus is anointed at Bethany in the New Testament. After David, all Jewish Kings of his line were anointed; they were all called Messiahs, or Christs (from the Greek ‘Christos’ meaning ‘anointed one’). All four Gospels refer to Jesus’ Davidic bloodline, but Matthew and Luke discuss it in depth, and while there are discrepancies in their genealogies, they both place critical importance on his Davidic descent through Joseph. Thus, according to the Gospels in the New Testament, Jesus was a genuine Davidic Messiah, a Jewish King descended from David.
Before exploring what was expected of a Davidic Messiah, we’ll look briefly at the riot in the Temple that Jesus went on to cause after the donkey ride, which, despite the understated treatment the event receives in the New Testament, was no minor matter. In Jesus’ time the Temple was the very hub of daily Jewish life. A huge complex of various buildings and grounds, it was both a centre of commerce and a church. It was a place where Rabbis preached, prayers and sacrifices were offered up, taxes were paid, money was changed, and all the time its halls and corridors were patrolled by Temple Guards. To cause trouble of any sort in the Temple was a serious matter, but to defile it in the manner Jesus is reported to have done was an offence that under Jewish law would have warranted the perpetrator being stoned to death.
The New Testament doesn’t say how the riot ended up, but one thing is certain: Jesus could not have quietly walked away as if nothing happened. If somebody disrupted the daily Temple activities by driving out the birds, sheep, and cattle, then upended the moneychangers’ tables, as we are told Jesus did, absolute pandemonium would have ensued. This was the busiest time of the year in the Temple; there would have been thousands of people about, and, you can be sure of it, proportionately more Temple Guards to maintain order. The fact they did not smartly arrest Jesus and his followers almost certainly means they had planned their escape. But the question is begging: why does Jesus all of a sudden fly into a rage in the Temple when the Jews are only doing what they’ve always done there? This was, after all, the sort of Temple activity Jesus had grown up with; why does he suddenly deplore it?
Following shortly on from the mayhem in the Temple comes the Last Supper where Jesus announces to his apostles he will be betrayed by one of them. All four Gospels report the betrayal by Judas, but it’s never quite clear what Jesus is betrayed for having done; nor is any credible motive offered for Judas’ treacherous behaviour. The greed angle is played up, but why would the treasurer of the Jesus movement, which we are told Judas was, sell off his source of income? With Jesus gone the money flow would stop, and Judas would be out of work. Why wouldn’t he just leave Jesus be and steal from the takings as treasurers so inclined have always done? Then we are told that Jesus knows in advance Judas is going to betray him; he even tells Judas he knows; odder still, he tells him to go and do it. Interestingly, in respect of that word ‘betrayal’, Professor William Klassen, of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, makes the point that in the original Greek Gospels, from which the English versions derive, wherever the word ‘paradidomi’ appears in relation to Judas it is interpreted to mean ‘betrayal’, whereas in the other instances relating to Christ’s death it is translated to mean ‘hand over’.
The New Testament is riddled with niggling inconsistencies, but in relation to Judas there are irreconcilable differences, especially relating to his demise. Matthew says Judas hangs himself, whereas in the ‘Acts of the apostles’ we are told he topples headlong in the potter’s field with his intestines spilling out. Then there is the blood money, the thirty pieces of silver Judas is paid for the betrayal: Matthew says he hurls it back into the Temple, and the priests use it to buy the potter’s field (also known as the field of blood), but Acts states unequivocally it is Judas who uses the blood money to buy the field. Both sources make it clear they are working towards the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies: Acts cites the desolate habitation envisaged in the Book of Psalms, equating this with the field of blood. Matthew concentrates on the amount of blood money, quantifying it as thirty pieces of silver and citing Jeremiah. Matthew, however, has slipped up; the quote he needs is in Zechariah.
The Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified, but despite the fact that this was a Roman punishment carried out by Romans for crimes against Rome, when it comes to Christ’s Crucifixion, all four go to great lengths to blame the Jews for it. They don’t dispute that the Romans physically executed Jesus, they just leave no room for doubt that the Jews, not the Romans, were responsible. Even as Pilate is in the process of ordering Jesus to be taken away and crucified, Matthew has the Roman Governor literally washing his hands saying, ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just person.’
While it is difficult to discern exactly what charge Jesus was ultimately crucified for, it is absolutely impossible to work out why in all the Gospels the Jewish priests struggle to find some charge to bring against him, when the obvious one of defiling the Temple goes unmentioned. The following passage in Mark almost beggars belief: ‘The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any.’
When Jesus is arraigned before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council recognised by the Romans, there is talk of his having threatened to destroy the Temple, but he had also said he would build it again so the accusations move to blasphemy. In each of the Gospels Jesus is pronounced guilty of this, but the priests go on to claim they have no right to inflict the death penalty (a claim refuted by both the Old and New Testaments) and petition Pilate to execute him. Pilate, however, is unbothered by Jewish theological offences, so the priests accuse Jesus of claiming to be the King of the Jews, and thus a rival to Caesar. Such a claim, which is not denied by Jesus, constitutes treason against Rome and warrants instant execution, but oddly, Pilate continues to find no fault with Jesus. According to Luke, Jesus is next arraigned before Herod, the Roman-appointed Tetrarch of Galilee, who also refuses to intercede. Finally, in what is portrayed as a last ditch bid to save Jesus from the wrathful Jews, Pilate refers to a custom whereby as Governor he is supposed to release a prisoner at Passover, and offers the Jews a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, a man described as a ‘notable’ prisoner, guilty of ‘sedition and murder’.
The first significant feature of the Barabbas incident is the fact that the custom referred to by Pilate does not exist. In the entire history of both the Jews and the Romans nobody has ever been able to find any mention of this custom outside the New Testament. The second point to note is the fact that Barabbas is not a name, but a conjoint version of the title, Bar Abbas, meaning ‘Son of the Father’. But the third, and most intriguing point here is the fact that Barabbas is referred to in the early versions of Matthew’s Gospel as Jesus Bar Abbas, and this is the same name by which he is still referred to in the Syriac and Armenian Gospels. Even the Vatican now admits that Jesus Bar Abbas is the correct name for the mysterious prisoner.
So, what’s happening here? The Barabbas reportage isn’t just a flight of fancy by one particular Gospel author; they all record it. If the prisoner release custom never existed, how come it is reported in all four Gospels? And, more importantly, if there is something tricky going on here - and there is no other conclusion one can sensibly reach - why was such a clumsy subterfuge introduced in the first place? After all, Barabbas is guilty of sedition and murder - he is a revolutionary. He is the last type of person a Roman Governor is going to set free. Who then, is this ‘notable’ prisoner who was originally called Jesus, the Son of the Father? When one stops to think, it really only makes sense to call somebody Jesus the Son of the Father if the father’s name is also Jesus. Now, is it possible that Jesus Bar Abbas is the son of Jesus Christ? Is it possible that Jesus was married?
Scholarly estimates vary on the year Jesus was born, but around 6 BCE is a fair assumption, which means he could easily have had a twenty year old son. And there is nothing new in the proposition that Jesus was married. Most biblical scholars without a religious barrow to push will tell you that, at the least, it’s a distinct possibility. The rumour that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married is older than the New Testament. Indeed, one eminent scholar (Dr Barbara Thiering in her work on the Dead Sea Scrolls) has written that not only was Jesus a genuine Davidic King who married Mary Magdalene in the Marriage Feast at Cana and fathered children to her, but that he survived the Crucifixion, was granted a divorce, then remarried and fathered another child. The preservation of bloodlines has always been of paramount concern to royal families, and the House of David would have been no exception in this regard. For a Jewish King not to have a wife would have been unthinkable to the Jews of any period in history, and if Jesus was, as the New Testament persistently states, of the bloodline of King David, it goes without saying that he would be expected to marry and produce heirs to preserve the royal bloodline.
Returning now to the donkey ride, which in deference to Zechariah’s prophecy, Jesus took into Jerusalem: it is clear from the Gospels that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he got on that donkey, so it’s worth looking at the words of Zechariah:
‘Rejoice, Oh daughter of Sion!
Shout aloud, Oh daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your King comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is He,
humble and riding on a donkey.
I will smite the chariot from E'phraim,
and the horse of war from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and He shall command peace to the nations.
His dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.’
Zechariah’s King is depicted as ultimately victorious and commanding peace, but before this he will humbly ride a donkey into Jerusalem to much rejoicing, following which there will be smiting of chariots and horses of war, and a cutting off of the battle bow. These are clearly fighting words, but then it has never been a secret that the Jews of Roman-occupied Judea were forever waiting for, indeed forever praying for, a genuine Jewish King, a Davidic Messiah, who would take up the sword to lead them in holy war and throw the Romans out of their Promised Land. So, is it possible that Jesus Christ, the Christian God of peace was in truth a Jewish warrior King descended from David, the greatest of all Jewish warrior Kings? The New Testament leaves little room for doubt that this is the claim Jesus was making when he rode that donkey into Jerusalem, and that was most certainly what the exultant crowds thought he was.
Jesus was born into an era of intense political agitation, and Galilee, where he grew up and received his education, was the home of Jewish extremism; it was the epicentre of the Zealot movement, the Al Qaeda of its day. The Jewish people never took kindly to foreign rule, and uprisings against the Romans were commonplace. When Jesus was about twelve the Romans put down a particularly spirited uprising, crucifying more than two thousand Jewish revolutionaries and selling another twenty thousand into slavery. History also records that the period after the Crucifixion, leading up to the great Jewish revolt less than forty years later, was remorselessly racked by outbursts of anarchy and mini-rebellions.
If Jesus was a Jewish King from the line of David, then it’s highly likely his sympathies would be with the Zealots; after all, he was brought up in their Galilean home-base, and who better to help him fulfil Zechariah’s visions, and rid the Holy Land of the Roman oppressors. There is even someone called Simon the Zealot amongst Jesus’ apostles, and a formidable array of scholars are of the opinion that Simon’s son, Judas Iscariot, was also a Zealot, albeit a Zealot with a difference. As is the case with Barabbas, Iscariot is not a name; it is a Greek corruption of the Latin ‘Sicarius’ meaning ‘dagger-man’, which referred to members of the Zealot movement’s cadre of assassins. The word derives from a curved dagger called a ‘sica’, which was the assassins’ preferred killing instrument. We also know Peter was handy to have around when the going got rough, for when Jesus was about to be taken into custody at Gethsemane, John tells us that, ‘Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the High Priest's servant, and cut off his right ear.’
Despite intensive editing in the centuries leading up to its acceptance as the Christian canon, the New Testament records Jesus saying certain things that reinforce the view that the revolution he was embarking on might not have been a spiritual one.
In Matthew and Mark, Jesus privately warns his disciples that war is inevitable: ‘And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be;’ And this war Jesus envisages will be a divisive one that will tear families apart: ‘Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.’ In Luke and Matthew, Jesus makes it clear (in words we heard more recently from the US President, also in the context of war) what he expects of his followers: ‘He who is not with me is against me,’ he tells them, and in Matthew, he could not be more explicit: ‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’ Then in Luke Jesus instructs his followers, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.’ And later at Gethsemane his followers have clearly taken the advice for when Judas arrives and ‘they saw what was going to happen they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?"
At times there is also a degree of secrecy in Jesus’ behaviour. In Matthew, he advises that when it comes to the collection of funds: ‘let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.’ And in both Mark and Luke, when Peter states that Jesus is the Christ (the anointed one), Jesus says that, ‘they should tell no one.’ At this stage Jesus has made no Messianic claims, but knowing what is expected of Davidic Kings, the reason for secrecy could very likely be that Jesus is travelling around the Holy Land collecting funds and raising an army. And quite a force it would have been too, if as some scholars have alleged, the five thousand odd followers present for the miracle of the loaves and fishes was a Messianic army. Blessed indeed, would be the ‘poor’, the ‘meek’, and the ‘humble’ if they were literally the soldiers of Christ; and truly wondrous would be the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, if that was to be the Holy Land without the Romans.
Going back now to the riot in the Temple: this can only be realistically explained as a brazen act of civil defiance constituting a direct challenge to the established order. Remember that up till this time Jesus has done or said nothing to indicate he is the Davidic Messiah, the rightful King of the Jews. When he rides that donkey into Jerusalem, however, he is leaving the Jewish people in no doubt that this is what he is claiming to be. The timing too is symbolic. This was the Passover, and since Moses led the children of Israel out of bondage in ancient Egypt, it has been a Jewish celebration of freedom from foreign rule and oppression. What better time for a Davidic Messiah to appear, and what better way of announcing his arrival than to start a riot in the Temple. This would be classic behaviour for a Davidic Messiah: publicly revolting against not only the Romans, but the despised Sadducees, the aristocratic Jewish sect who controlled the Sanhedrin and were collaborating with Rome. Viewed in this light the donkey ride and the riot in the Temple could easily be taken as a signal that a Messianic revolution has begun.
Luke reports that Barabbas is guilty of ‘sedition and murder’, and that the offences occurred somewhere in Jerusalem; and history has shown us that Roman punishment was brutal and instant. In the Roman system, Jewish criminals, especially revolutionaries, had no rights whatsoever. There were no jails, as such, in occupied lands like Judea; the Romans had no need for them. If a Jew was guilty of some minor offence, he would be sold into slavery, if the offence was serious, he would be executed, and if he was innocent, he would be lucky to be set free without a flogging. The only ‘sedition’ recorded as happening around this time in Jerusalem was the riot Jesus caused in the Temple; and a wild enough scene it was too, if, as seems likely, it’s where Barabbas committed that ‘murder’. Though Jesus and most of his men obviously escaped, Barabbas, or Jesus Bar Abbas as we now know his real name to be, was caught. So too, it is submitted, was Judas.
Even prior to the discovery of the Judas Gospel certain serious scholars hypothesised that Judas never betrayed Jesus, but simply played the role of negotiating some form of prisoner exchange. Now, if one looks at the Barabbas incident in the light of both Barabbas and Judas being captured during the riot in the Temple, the whole strange affair is suddenly capable of making sense.
Is it possible then, that the following scenario is what really happened in Jerusalem on the feast of the Passover back in 33 CE?
After the Temple melee the Romans realise they have caught the son of Jesus and see a chance to nip the impending Messianic revolution in the bud. Harking back to the ‘loaves and fishes’, we know Jesus had a following of at least some five thousand; if this was an army, it was a considerable force. Rather than risk a confrontation with this powerful Messianic movement, the Romans use Judas as a go-between to broker a deal, whereby they agree to release Jesus the Son, if Jesus the Father gives himself up and calls off the revolution. Judas is freed to deliver the Roman ultimatum, and when Jesus receives it, he convenes a special meeting of the leaders in the Messianic Army. This is the Last Supper where Jesus announces that the revolution is off, and he is going to surrender himself so that his son can be freed. Judas is then despatched back to the Romans with the message that Jesus will be waiting for them in the Garden at Gethsemane.
The Gospels record various trial processes, but their reportage is hopelessly conflicting and it’s impossible to gain any clear picture from them. It is difficult to disagree with the large school of thought that deems it unlikely Jesus received any trial at all, by the Sanhedrin, by Herod, or by the Romans. None of the authorities had reason to be happy about the arrival of a Davidic Messiah or favour him with special treatment; and a trial for a troublemaking Messiah in Roman-occupied Judea would have been special treatment of the rarest kind. The appearance of a Davidic Messiah meant change, and the Sadducee priests who controlled the Sanhedrin had no wish to change anything. As long as they continued to collaborate with the Romans, their wealth, power and privileges were assured – the last thing they wanted on the scene was a Davidic Messiah. The same was true for Herod. And as far as the Romans were concerned, Jewish Kings meant trouble, and nobody dealt with trouble more quickly, brutally, and efficiently than the Romans. Anyone in those times rioting in the Jerusalem Temple, and claiming to be the King of the Jews, would have been immediately carted off and crucified without any such legal nicety as a trial. An indication of how serious the Romans were about putting down trouble can be gleaned from the Gospel of John, where it’s reported that a Cohort of Roman soldiers turned up at Gethsemane to arrest Jesus: a Cohort comprises six hundred soldiers.
We will probably never know what truly happened back in the old city of Jerusalem on the Passover of 33 CE, but though the above depiction of events is put purely as hypothesis, it does manage to make sense of those glitches we have in the existing evidence. Of course, if it were true, it would mean that Jesus laid down his life, not for mankind, but for his son, and the bewildering implications of that premise pose questions that go to the very heart of whatever it is that makes us human. As for the first century Jews of Roman-occupied Judea, admirable in all as was Jesus’ sacrifice, a failed Messiah was of no practical use to them, and the Crucifixion was the end of the story. Fortunately for the Christian world to come, Paul was travelling a different path. Paul was enlightened by a resurrection of the spirit - his was a spiritual path. Pauline theology sat in marked contrast with that of conventional Jews of the time; they were interested only in traditional preaching to traditional Jews, and had no wish to share their God with anyone. The Pauline evangelists, on the other hand, had this new supernatural take on the Jewish God, and they wanted to broaden the field by bringing gentiles into the flock. This is one of the main reasons the Gospels display such a distinct bias in blaming the Jews, not the Romans, for Christ’s death. But it’s also important to bear in mind that at the time they were written, the great Jewish revolt of 66-70 CE had just been ferociously put down, the Temple had been destroyed, and Jerusalem lay flattened; if the authors had portrayed the Romans in a negative light their work would never have survived.
Ironically, it was under the guiding hand of a Roman Emperor in the early part of the fourth century that the New Testament was shaped into what would ultimately be accepted as its final form. The mighty Constantine, unquestionably the most powerful man in the world at the time, played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Christianity we know today, and while many scholars remain cynical about his motivations, none doubt his influence. Whatever the truth about Constantine’s innermost thoughts on spiritual issues, there were immense advantages to be had in uniting all the competing Christian factions in the Empire under one religious umbrella. By Constantine’s time Christian sects had become extremely popular, though there was much disagreement as to dogma. The most divisive issue in the fledgling faith was the question of whether Jesus was of a human or a divine nature. This was to prove no problem to the politically astute Constantine who was fully aware that the divine element was essential if you wanted to compete in the Greco-Roman, pagan cult arena.
In 325 CE at Nicea, Constantine convened the First Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church, personally selecting the Bishops who would attend. From a golden throne he presided over the opening ceremony, making it abundantly clear to the assembled clerics that he was on the ‘divine’ side. After due debate a declaration was produced formally recognising that Jesus was of the same essence as God the Father, and those who signed were invited to stay for celebrations - those who declined were to leave at once. Records of attendance vary, but it seems there were around 300 delegates present with only a couple refusing to sign (Constantine would later order the destruction of all written works that challenged the ‘Nicene Orthodoxy’). Constantine took advantage of the occasion to adopt the popular pagan spring fertility festival of Easter as the time to celebrate the passion of Jesus; and shortly after Nicea, Sunday, the sacred day of Sol Invictus, the great Sun God, became the sacred day of Christianity. It was just a decade or so later, that the sun would finally start to set on the old pagan Gods when Pope Julius I, taking a leaf out of Constantine’s book, declared December 25 - hitherto the traditional celebration of the birth of the ‘Unconquered Sun’ - the birthday of Jesus Christ, the new Christian God.