Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: 28 October 1998

The Trial before Pilate

Mark 15:1 tells us that the Sanhedrin held a consultation and delivered Jesus to the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate, the highest official in the province. Is this the same morning as the arrest or has another day gone by in Mark? It is ambiguous. The consultation mentioned might have really been the committal hearing already described which, as we saw, it is difficult to believe was held at night. But conceivably the priests wanted to report their decision to the full Sanhedrin.

Now in fact, Jewish law required a court to meet twice on separate days to convict a man legally of a capital crime. These courts were formalities because Pilate was not going to let a seditionist free whatever the Jews decided, but we have no reason to believe that the formalities would have been omitted, except that it suits the Christian myth. Mark is not clear, but he seems to be saying that a second meeting was held in the morning, thereby inserting another day into the story. If the Passover was over and the next day was not a sabbath, the Sanhedrin could have met. Bearing in mind that the solar calendar of the Essenes, which would have been the one used for relating the original Nazarene tradition, was different from the priests’, it becomes possible for Jesus to have completed his Passover before the lunarists, the priests, had celebrated theirs.

Having been turned over to the Romans by the priests, Jesus Barabbas was quickly brought for trial. The Romans had built and administered the greatest empire the world had seen by being systematic, organised and thorough. Admittedly, they were a severe and cruel people but they had a sense of justice, and Roman law is still the model for civil law everywhere. Is it credible that they felt threatened by a man who told moral tales and thought he had a kingdom in heaven? Christians insist it is, but the Roman governors of Judaea had a lot more to concern them than mendicant preachers. Judaea had been in turmoil since even before the Romans annexed it in 6 AD, and only a quarter of a century after the crucifixion of the Christian god from Galilee, the Jews rose as a nation against their foreign rulers in a bloody war. When Jesus was crucified as a king, Roman governors were worried about the constant rebellions that occurred in Judaea.

When full scale war eventually broke out, it was no minor fracas. It lasted from 66 AD until 70 AD but the last resistance of the Jews was not broken until 73 AD when Jewish defenders the fortress of Masada committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans. The fanatical resistance by the Jews against the world’s greatest war machine had brewed over centuries of oppression by foreign rulers. The Romans were particularly hated but Jews hardly distinguished them from the Greeks who started the trouble in the time of the anonymous author of the scriptural Book of Daniel—about 160 BC.

Pontius Pilate, the Prefect of Judaea in the latter part of the reign of Tiberius as Emperor, had taken on the difficult task of ruling this people convinced they were breaking a law God had handed down to Moses—the Royalty Law—by accepting a foreigner, the Roman Emperor, as their king. Pilate also had to raise taxes, called “tribute”, for the Emperor and had to raise enough for his own remuneration, pension and lifestyle as a colonial governor—Prefects were not paid. The Jewish priestly aristocracy also lived off the backs of the people and so the burden of taxation was quite severe, though possibly not much worse than most imperial colonies.

Being orderly people, the Romans wanted to know how much revenue to expect by determining how many people were available to pay it and how wealthy they were. So every fourteen years they held a census, a law instituted by the first Emperor, Augustus. We know that Quirinius, Legate of Syria supervised a census in 6 and 7 AD and can deduce therefore that they were held every fourteen years thereafter. The Jews thought this was as bad as being ruled from abroad—the Mosaic law also proscribed numbering the people. So, we had yet another cause of tension.

The most important event of the career of the historical Jesus was his manner of death. Jesus was crucified. The Christian explanation is that a travelling holy man, the only begotten son of God himself, impoverished, docile and peace loving, who scarcely ever lost his temper, was thought such a threat to the rulers of Judaea that they sentenced him to hang on a cross, a death reserved for slaves and traitors. Christians say that Jesus was neither. He was not a criminal at all. But somehow this divine teller of parables had given the authorities the impression he wanted to be a Jewish king—to rival Caesar in one of his dominions—when all he really wanted to do was to save mankind from its sins. The Roman governor of Judaea even ordered the hanging man to be labeled with a sign saying “The King of the Jews”.

Something is odd here. How could an innocent man suffer the lowest form of death? Christians say it was all a mistake—a cruel injustice brought upon by his enemies. So we have a peculiarity. Christians tell us their god suffered the death of a traitor to the Emperor through an error. It is a peculiarity of Christianity that it is built on excuses. They are the sign of pious lying.

Knowing the background, can we really imagine that Pilate was mistaken or even jesting when he had the notice “The King of the Jews” written on the cross? Even Christians accept Jesus as the messiah. What is a messiah in Jewish mythology? A king! Perhaps Pilate had sound reasons to think Jesus was a king.

Jesus is delivered up to Pilate. The gospels record the trials of Jesus as if there were a visitors’ gallery in each of the courtrooms. Ordinary Jews or supporters of Jesus could not have been present at either of the two hearings. Roman practice was only to admit the public for the verdict, not during the hearing. The gospel writers can have known little about the proceedings—they were not there taking shorthand. It is not clear therefore how accurate records of the proceedings of the Roman Court or the Court of the High Priest could have reached us. If the story were related at second hand by others who were present then distortions are more likely. A brief report of the trial by Pilate must have been posted and could have formed the basis of subsequent romanticized versions by the disciples.

Mark speaks of no evidence offered. Only Luke 23:2 tells us the charges brought before Pilate against Jesus. They are precisely those of an insurrectionist and they exactly match the crimes described in the gospels:

We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a king.

These charges were serious. They are charges of treason. There is absolutely no doubt that Crimen Laesae Majestatis, High Treason against the Emperor, was the most serious felony in the Roman book. Notionally, sacrilege was more serious but with the emperors taking on the role of gods from the time of Augustus, even though as yet informally, in practice the two crimes were already equal.

Majestas, as it was known for short, was any crime against the Roman people or their security, and so included conspiracy, abetting the enemies of Rome or assuming the power of a king. Under the less liberal emperors it became broader and less well defined so that any offence against an emperor, such as abusing his statue, was culpable. Refusing to pay tribute to the emperor fell under this heading. The crime was usually death.

The sheer audacity of Christian commentaries on the trials before the Sanhedrin and Pilate are staggering. They take the—quite inconsistent—gospel accounts and act as umpire as to their legality under laws and conditions that they know nothing about. Most important, they ignore the evidence of the rest of the gospels, pretending that the only evidence at hand was that supposedly presented to the courts according to the gospel authors. The gospels tell us, in describing scenes preceding the trial, what happened and we can judge for ourselves whether the accused was guilty on the basis of that evidence, not on the basis of the bogus evidence that the gospel writers say was offered.

The gospels categorically admit that Jesus and the Nazarene band committed crimes, though they do not say they are crimes. So, it is foolishmess or dishonesty to pretend that Jesus was innocent on the basis of the bogus accounts given of the proceedings. The writers sought to present Jesus as innocent, confident apparently that Christians were too thick to draw their own conclusions. Their confidence has proved sound for 2000 years. If we take it that the gospels themselves are the evidence on which Jesus and the Nazarenes had to be tried then any court would have to find them guilty under Roman law.

Let us consider a crime that was committed but which was not explicitly put before the court—the crime of carrying a sword in a public place and causing grievous bodily harm to a servant of the state, namely cutting off his ear. The gospels admit this but do not say it was a crime punishable by death—it was! Jesus did not commit the crime, the gospels tell us, but he was in charge and had told his men to purchase swords. In Roman eyes, he was therefore responsible, and was unequivocally guilty on this evidence.

Jesus is plainly guilty of a crime that was too trivial to be brought, unless it was subsumed by the charge of perverting the nation, in that Jesus persuaded citizens to buy and carry weapons illegally. Suffice it to say that ordering tradesmen from a public place, namely the temple, was taking the law into his own hands—in Roman law, Laesae Majestatis, and that was sufficient for Romans to bring in a verdict of guilty of the crime of Laesae Majestatis too. The same conclusion can be reached in respect of the other charges brought, as we shall see below.

So, the three charges were put before Pilate: perverting the nation, refusing tribute and making himself a king. Prosecutions did not bring every possible charge because, in Roman courts each had to be tried separately, and the proceedings would get unnecessarily complicated. There was a good reason for bringing only the most serious charges. In the gospels, Pilate immediately ignores the first two and begins to interrogate Jesus on the most serious one. A conviction on this would save the bother of hearing the others.

Claiming to be a King

Are you the king of the Jews?

Pilate picked on the charge that Jesus claimed he was a king as the most serious, and asked him how he wished to plead. He had no choice but to try such a charge. As the Prefect, he stood in the place of the emperor and had to uphold his dignity. If the verdict was guilty there was no way out of declaring crucifixion as punishment. Pilate put the charges to Jesus who refuses to answer, according to the synoptic gospels, just as an Essene would. The Greek of Pilate’s opening question implies emphasis on the you suggesting disbelief or contempt.

Jesus replies: “Thou sayest”, an ambiguous reply. It might be agreement, meaning “As you say”. On the other hand it could be a defiant and surly, “So you say”, or even “That’s what you say” but Pilate takes it to mean “No”.

Pilate might have hoped for an admission of the crime to secure himself against the accusation that he executed paople illegally. But Jesus was acclaimed a king as the gospels themselves loudly declare. It was a crime under Roman law to be acclaimed a king. Jesus was unarguably guilty!

Jesus is not being helpful in the court. By refusing to answer or giving unhelpful answers he is effectively refusing to recognise the court. Interestingly Essenes were forbidden to swear a brother to death under the law of the gentiles as we can read at the start of column 9 of the Cairo Damascus Document following Geza Vermes:

Every man who vows another to death by the laws of the gentiles will himself be put to death.

This also is delightfully ambiguous, in typically Essene fashion. It can be read as upholding gentile authority or as denying it. It would be easier for the Damascus Rule to get into Roman hands than others since it was the rule for the village Essenes rather than the more secretive monastic ones. Essenes would have known precisely what it meant but anyone intent on betrayal could not show from the text what was intended. If the trial of Jesus is anything to go by, he was following a rule like this in refusing to assist the court. The death which Essenes feared was eternal death—exclusion from the kingdom of God. Jesus would have considered it wrong even to vow himself to death under the laws of the Romans, in case he would thereby lose his ticket into the kingdom.

In any case, though Jesus might have been convinced he was God’s king until the night of the Passover, he was now the worthless shepherd, and as an Essene unable to recognize Roman justice he would neither affirm nor deny the charge.

John’s much later gospel, the last gospel written, blatantly seeks to dissociate the events in the temple from Jesus’s arrest. It puts them at the start of a four year ministry instead of at the end of a shorter one as do the other gospels. John also fails to make it clear that Jesus’s band had resisted arrest and that the Sanhedrin, as the civic authority, had issued a formal warrant for Jesus’s arrest, as they must if they were to remain within the laws laid down by Rome and not leave themselves open to accusations of incompetence in Pilate’s eyes.

John or an editor of the fourth gospel had altered the book to make Jesus’s crime bringing a man, Lazarus, back from the dead, not capturing Jerusalem as he must have done to control the temple precinct with its police, and even soldiery nearby in the Antonia tower. John was rewriting history because he thought it too obvious in the synoptics. He underestimated the stupidity of human kind.

John has Jesus defending himself, proving that it was a romance. He pleads (Jn 18:36) “confusion and avoidance” or what we would call “guilty but with mitigation”. He had spoken of a kingdom, but confusion had arisen because it was “not of this world,” a later addition because the idea of another-worldly kingdom of God was developed by Christianity, the Jews believing firmly that the kingdom of God would be here on earth. In John’s romance, the explanation is sufficient for Pilate to find the uncouth mendicant philosopher, Jesus, innocent.

But Jesus’s ignoble Jewish supporters have now turned against him, and Pilate gets cold feet at the Jewish antagonism. Pilate had nothing but disgust for the Jews and their opinions, so will hardly have bothered about the crowd. In Luke, he sends the Galilaean to Herod—more romance, but as a Roman bureaucrat, he would not have abandoned his responsibilities and he would not have sent Jesus for another trial having just tried him. Roman law might have seemed hard to us but Romans as a race were correct people.

Herod sends Jesus back to Pilate dressed as a king, perhaps a half-hearted attempt to absolve the Romans of the mockery of a god by suggesting that Herod was the source of it. Finally, Pilate can hardly have been expected to use a Jewish ritual to dramatically “wash his hands” of the matter. Such a concession would have been beneath him. Instead, he should have asked the sun to witness the justice of his act, but no gospel has him doing this—proof that his verdict was unjust!

Yet even if John’s defence of Jesus were true history and even if Pilate had been a humane person, and he was not, he would himself have invited a charge of treason to have ignored a challenge to the authority of the Emperor. Pilate undoubtedly knew this but John 19:12 has the Jews reminding him of his duty:

If you release this man you are not Caesar’s friend: everyone that maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.

Here the gospel writer puts the indefensible case against Jesus in a nutshell. It is absurd to imagine that the Roman Prefect of Judaea needed reminding of Roman law, or of his own duty. That this line should be included proves that the gospel writer knew that Pilate had no option but to crucify the defendant. All that had gone before was pure fiction composed to absolve Romans of the guilt of murdering a god.

Nor could Pilate have found Jesus innocent because his acts had shown him to be guilty. If we take the gospels at face value, Jesus had deliberately arranged a foal so that he could ride it into Jerusalem in fulfilment of prophecy. The student should read the whole of the prophecies of Zechariah to understand what Jesus the Nazarene was up to. In Zechariah 9:9 we read:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

This passage is purely messianic. It states unequivocally that the king will ride into Jerusalem on a foal. For what purpose? It is worth quoting succeeding passages in Zechariah.

When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man.

Zechariah 9:13

And they shall be as mighty men, which tread down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle: and they shall fight, because the Lord is with them, and the riders on horses shall be confounded.

Zechariah 10:5

These passages prove that Jesus’s intentions were not peaceful when he ordered a foal of an ass to enter Jerusalem. He intended to destroy the enemies of Israel and institute a Jewish kingdom to bring peace to the world. By deliberately entering Jerusalem on a foal, Jesus was declaring himself King of the Jews, and declaring his intention to follow the prophecy of Zechariah. No Jew could have mistaken the symbolism and they shouted, “Free us, Son of David” as he entered the city.

John 18:36 is a very telling little verse because Jesus also says to Pilate:

If my kingdom were of this world then my men would fight to prevent me from being captured.

The author hoped to show that rumours of Jesus being an armed rebel were nonsense by making Jesus himself say:

We could have fought if we had wanted to—but we didn’t.

The band of pilgrims, including women, Christians love to imagine were Jesus’s companions could hardly have been considered a fighting force. Unwittingly, John gives the game away, admitting that Jesus led a force of men capable of fighting. If the Nazarenes were the rag-bag of stupid disciples depicted by the clergy, this passage could only have been a joke. Obviously it was not. The Nazarenes were sufficient in numbers, armed and willing to fight at Jesus’s command!

We know they were armed because in Luke 22:36-38 Jesus tells his disciples to buy swords. Two turn out to be enough! Luke is trying to explain the rumours that Jesus and his men were armed. The fact that two is sufficient is obviously a Christian dilution. Some say that Jesus wanted a sword to die as a false prophet, having realised his prophecies had failed. But for that, only one was needed.

The gospel picture of Pilate as a kindly man is also nonsense. The Emperor Tiberius wanted to keep peace and order in a sensitive but politically important area of the empire. To get the confidence of some at least of the population he allowed the Jews religious privileges: they were free to pursue their own religion; they were exempt from military service; Roman soldiers were not allowed to insult the Jewish religion on pain of death and were subject to the Jewish penalty of death if they stepped beyond the court of the gentiles in the temple.

But Pontius Pilate was singularly crass in his treatment of the Jews, offending them repeatedly. He was spiteful, unjust, greedy and indiscreet.

• As soon as he was appointed, he carried Roman standards bearing the image of Caesar into Jerusalem, and possibly into the temple, knowing the Jews would have been incensed.
• He took the temple treasure to build an aqueduct into the city, an action that one might have thought would be welcomed—but the Jews put God before any beneficent actions of the foreigner.
• He strongly favoured the Priestly Party of the Sadducees—disliked by the masses—and its leaders, the Annas family.

Such obduracy led to a series of uprisings. One of these was the uprising of Simon Magus, an Egyptian Jew who was hailed as messiah in Samaria. After savagely putting down the uprising the complaints of the Samaritans to the Roman Legate in Syria, Vitellius, led to Pilate’s recall to Rome where he disappears from history.

Jesus was acclaimed a king—there is no denying that crime. Pilate had enough evidence. Jesus was guilty! The verdict was read from a tablet. Once written, it could not be changed, whence Pilate’s, “What I have written, I have written”. The subscription on the cross proves that Jesus was condemned for “Majestas” —he had sought to be a king. Such a “titulus” was commonly paraded before the prisoner proceeding to execution.

It only remained for Pilate to write a precis of the report to be sent to Rome as his duty required and his role was complete. Christians pretend that the whole matter was so trivial in the vastness of the Roman empire that Pilate would not have bothered to file a report, but these reports could not be bypassed. Pious lies! Without reports like these most of the genuine stories of the saints and martyrs would have been unknown—most of them are fictitious anyway.

Moreover, Justin, Tertullian and Eusebius, giants of the early church, assure us there was such a report. Christian apologists again say that even their own Church fathers did not know this but were only assuming it. Christians always want it all ends up. Even at an early date, the Fathers of the Church considered it inconceivable that Pilate would not have filed such a report. We can be certain that he did, and the fact that it has not even survived as a copy proves that it did not favour the Christian version of the story.

Speaking of saints, Pilate himself is a saint of the Abyssinian Church—25 June being his holy day. Pilate is said to have been beheaded by Tiberius. As his head fell off, it was caught up by angels and a voice declared:

All generations will call thee blessed… for under thee all these things were fulfilled.

Tertullian called Pilate “a Christian in his convictions”. Eusebius claims that forged Acta Pilati were produced by heathens as a weapon against Christianity in the reign of Maximinus. We take it from Eusebius that these unfavourable documents were forged, but he had every reason for saying they were forged even though they were genuine—plainly they did not support the Christian myth. Maximinus is supposed to have deliberately aimed to undermine the superstition of Christianity by having the Acta Pilati taught to all schoolchildren. Acts of Pilate are even mentioned in records of contemporary Christian martyrs like Andronicus but these are a set of Christian forgeries now known as the Gospel of Nicodemus.

Perverting the Nation

When Luke speaks of “perverting the nation” he is referring to the Roman law of Laesae Majestatis whereby the assumption of the power of the government without authority was punishable by death. The gospels state clearly that Jesus defied the civic authorities. He overthrows the tables in the temple court and controls access into it because he refuses, in Mark, to allow anyone to carry anything through it. Under his regime Jesus taught daily in the temple implying a continuous period of occupation of at least several days. The parable of the vineyard and the husbandmen told the enthusiastic audience that Israel would soon be under new management.

Some fragments of an unknown gospel and of Josephus even say that Jesus officiated as a priest, entering the Holy Place, implying both that Jesus had the role of an alternative priest and that he was in a position to play it because the temple had been captured. The only people who maintained a priestly tradition outside the temple Priesthood were the community at Qumran, guardians of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The High Priests had absolute power in the temple precinct and would have set the temple police on to anyone disrupting temple activities in such a manner. Instead they merely asked Jesus on whose authority he carried out these acts. Of course they might well have asked this question to get Jesus to incriminate himself, but whatever his reply he would have been swiftly arrested. Why did they not do it?

The gospels admit the High Priests feared the people, confirming the immense support Jesus had. But ordinary Jews, though they hated the collaborators, would have respected their rights within the temple because they would have felt they had them by God’s will.

The only explanation is that Jesus and his followers had forcibly occupied the temple and almost certainly the city as well. These are crimes of Laesae Majestatis. Guilty!

Refusing Tribute

What of Jesus’s attitude to the money required as tribute to Caesar (Mt 22:15-22). The gospel story seems to refute the idea that Jesus was a nationalist because his answer seems to acknowledge Caesar’s political power and imply that Jesus would have paid the tribute. Yet in Luke 23:2 he was accused of refusing to pay it! Even for Alfred Loisy, the biblical scholar, who was excommunicated by the Pope for his intellectual honesty, this declaration meant the kingdom of God was not to be established by violence. Loisy’s prejudice for the Christian image of gentle Jesus had distorted his judgement. Jesus’s answer does not acknowledge Caesar’s political power, it denies it. Jesus is asserting clearly that Caesar had no authority over God’s country and people. It means he would not have paid the tribute. That explains Luke’s charge.

The question was a trick like “Have you stopped beating your wife?”. A reply of either “Yes” or “No” would have discredited him. To have denied the tribute money would have suited Jewish nationalists but would have been treasonable to the Romans; to have recognised Caesar’s right to tribute would have pleased the Romans but lost support from most Jews. The answer in the gospels:

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,

is considered to be very clever by Christians, implying that the tribute money is merely this-worldly whereas God was interested only in other-worldly matters.

This interpretation is nonsense. If the reported words were those of Jesus, he was openly defying Caesar and the Romans. He was telling Romans they had no right to be there and he had no intention of paying them tribute. When Jesus spoke of “the things that are God’s” no Jew could mistake his meaning—it was Eretz Israel itself and the Jewish people, God’s Chosen people! There could be no mistake in the context in which it is spoken—what is God’s is contrasted with what is Caesar’s. He is saying:

Judaea is God’s land; the Jews are God’s Chosen People. Caesar is welcome to what is his, the rest of the Roman Empire, but he can have no claim to what is God’s.

That this is the correct interpretation explains Luke’s charge of refusing to pay the tribute money. Jesus refused to pay tribute. Guilty!

Commentators on the gospels try to find in Jesus’s audience both collaborators and nationalists so that one or the other would be offended by Jesus’s answer. Taking the Pharisees to be collaborators, they identify Mark’s Herodians with Jewish nationalists—people of the philosophy of the real Jesus. Yet the Herods were Roman puppets! It is true that Josephus tells us that the Essenes were favoured by Herod the Great but the discoveries at Qumran suggest quite the opposite. Nobody is certain who the Herodians were, but their name must imply associations with the detested puppet kings. They were allies of the Romans and allies of the Sadducees and might have been the Sadducees by another name. There is no need to look for explicit mention of nationalists and collaborators—they were there. The band accompanying Jesus were nationalists—the inquisitors were collaborators.

Depicted as part of Jesus’s confrontation with the Jewish authorities—Mark places this episode in the temple. But Pharisees would not defile the temple with unclean coin—it was against the Law of Moses. In the same episode related in Luke 20:19-26 it was the Chief Priests who posed the question. This seems more likely. The Sadducees were out and out collaborators, kept wealthy out of the temple tax, paid by all Jews, and the sale of sacrificial animals. As agents of the occupying power they were the real enemies of Jesus.

Really the incident must have happened elsewhere. Jesus would not have discussed money in the temple after cleansing it and, having disposed of the Jerusalem garrison, he would not have been bothered about tribute anyway. Its real setting was on entering Judaea at the customs post of Jericho. Its absence there explains the curious double reference to Jericho in Mark 10:46. Then Herodians and Sadducees is the original tradition—they were the border officials and customs men. Mark replaced Sadducees with Pharisees and an editor moved the incident into the temple. Luke then changed Mark’s text because he realized that in the temple the inquisitors should have been the priests, but seemed to hedge his bets in that he implies that the question was put at another time at the instigation of the Sadducees.

The people marvelled or were amazed. Why! These are words used of daring deeds or remarkable events like miracles. Interpreted the Christian way, the answer was clever but not amazing. Interpreted properly it was amazing because it was so bold. Jesus was openly defying Caesar.

Note that the priests address Jesus as one who teaches “the way of God in truth”. They state categorically that he is an Essene.

17:24 And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? 17:25 He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? 17:26 Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. 17:27 Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

Besides the story of Caesar’s tribute money in Matthew, we also get what seems to be an entirely different tribute—the annual temple tax of half a shekel. There is no Christian who will not read this episode as a miracle—the precise coin to pay the tax for Jesus and Peter is found in the mouth of a fish—but you will note that no miracle is recounted. We are not told that such a marvellous fish is caught!

Jesus’s direct speech has become nonsense through pious editing, and yet the original meaning shines through—for anyone not blinkered! Jesus is not telling Peter to pay the tax, he is telling him not to pay it. And the tax he meant must have been the tribute money to Caesar not the temple tax. The miracle is not recorded because Jesus was being heavily sarcastic in saying:

go to the sea, cast a hook, open the mouth of the first fish that you catch, and if you find the money for the tax, take it to them and pay it.

He was really saying, “It will take a miracle for me pay this tax”.

Now Jesus would not have paid either the temple tax or the tribute to Caesar, and Jesus shows that neither himself, nor any of his followers owed the Temple tax. Jesus is not contradicting the law, though. The law requires a temple tax to be payed by every male aged twenty and over (Ex 30:11-16) but does not say how often. Pharisees and Sadducees seem to have paid annually, but Essenes had no respect for the polluted temple and, as the scrolls indicate, would have fulfilled only the strictest requirements of the law by paying the tax once in their lifetime:

The money of the valuation which a man gives as ransom for his life shall be half a shekel in accordance with the shekel of the sanctuary. He shall give it only once in his life.

4Q159

Jesus would already have paid it at his age. The tone of the tax collector in Mt 24 is menacing, and the implication is that Peter agreed with him to avoid trouble. Temple Levites would have bullied many people into paying the tax, though they could not afford it, but they would not have wasted their efforts on any as committed as Essenes, who had a vow of poverty, besides their disdain for the temple. Peter, who was a rock, would not have been intimidated by a temple bully. He would, however, have been scared of anyone collecting the Roman tribute levied by Caesar.

Though the text, by using in the Greek the word didrachmon, implies that the tax is the temple tax, it also uses words which mean custom and poll tax. The temple tax is a Jewish matter but the poll tax is the tribute owed to the Romans. Though the evangelist has tried to confuse the issue, there is no doubt in Matthew that Jesus is talking about the Roman tax. Jesus asks Peter:

Of whom do the kings of the earth take tribute?

The kings of the earth cannot be priests in the temple of Jerusalem but must be gentile kings—the emperors of Rome, the rulers of almost the whole known world. He is referring to Tiberius Caesar.

Jesus’s question has been slightly altered by an editor. The question was originally:

Of whom do the kings of the earth take tribute, of God’s children or of strangers?

Peter gives the correct answer—of strangers. God’s children paid tribute only to God. The kings of the earth take tribute from those they have conquered—as long as they are not God’s children! Jesus then says:

Then are the children free.

When Jesus says the children he does not mean immature adults he means the children of Israel, establishing the original question. Jesus reaffirms the principle that God’s children do not pay tribute to foreigners—he is refusing tribute just as he did in Luke—and just as Judas of Galilee a few years earlier had refused to pay tribute. He concludes with his heavily ironical: By all means pay the tribute—if you can catch a fish with the money in its mouth.

Interestingly there must have been a census in 20-21 AD because there was one in 6-7 AD and they were every fourteen years. This numbering of the people was the sad calamity of Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews that led to Jesus’s uprising, but has been suppressed. Luke’s reference to the census at the time of the birth of Jesus was perhaps a transference of the fact that a census led to his death! Jesus plainly saw the census as yet another sign of the times.

We are told the incident in Matthew occurs in Capernaum in Galilee but Matthew probably knows less about Jesus’s itinerary than Mark. He has set it in Capernaum because it refers to catching fish, and Matthew has to make that possible. If it corresponds with Mark it occurred in Judaea, where it would have been collected when Jesus entered the country on his way to Jerusalem. The oasis of Jericho is only five miles from the river Jordan.

Did Jesus Think he Was Christ, a God?

It might be argued that, if the Jews did not consider it blasphemous to claim to be the messiah, it is all the more reason why Jesus could have reasonably made this claim. Yet, scholars agree that in the gospels Jesus never asserted that he was the messiah. Of the five instances when he mentions it, three are later interpolations (Mk 9:41; Lk 24:26,46), one is improbable (Mk 13:6) but if true either implies that the messiah was yet to come or to return (but Jesus never suggested he would—see later) and the final one (Mk 12:35-37; Mt 22:41-46) is part of a scriptural discussion the rest of which is omitted. Had there been other instances the gospel writers and editors would have used them. Other references to messiahship, those in the nativity stories, those in the titles of Matthew and Mark and those in an editorial clause in Matthew are plainly added by editors.

Messianic words only get used in the gospels after the troubles began in Jerusalem. Jesus silences a demon who reveals who he is; he does not admit it even to Peter when he replies to Jesus’s direct question, “You are the messiah”. The congratulation to Peter, not present in Mark, looks like an interpolation to get rid of this embarrassing silence. In exchanges with the High Priest, Jesus answers coyly, his replies do not mean “yes” and could mean the opposite. Similarly, the answer to Pilate’s question: and in fact Luke implies that Pilate takes it to be a denial.

In Acts, Jesus definitely is the Christ though the claim is still not attributed to Jesus, and the book implies that Jesus became the messiah on his resurrection. Peter (Acts 3:17-18) and Paul (Acts 17:3; 26:23) both cite the scriptures as evidence that Jesus was the messiah, through his suffering, but do not give a source. John is written with the premise that Jesus is the messiah and introduces him as such in John 2 when Andrew announces, “We have found the messiah”.

Jesus’s earthly leadership was transformed to a heavenly one after his crucifixion, possibly because ideas of a pre-existent messiah and a suffering messiah were becoming popular. Jews hoped for a Davidic redeemer with soldierly powers, righteousness and holiness. But there were also other speculations:

• about a priestly or prophetic messiah,
• that the messiah had already come,
• that he pre-existed in Heaven,
• and even about a “slain” messiah.

2 Baruch 30:1 provided the idea of a heavenly messiah who would “return” in glory to heaven after his mission on earth but there was never a suggestion that he was divine. He was always human. In Zechariah 2:10-12 there is a suggestion of a “slain” messiah, “him who they have pierced…” Though this is discussed in the Rabbinical literature, it is not mentioned before the second Jewish War when Bar Kosiba is killed suggesting that it might be a reference to him. Equally it could be a reference to the Essene Teacher of Righteousness.

One school of thought based on the Jewish scriptures was that there would be three men sent towards the end of days, a prophet, a royal messiah and a priestly messiah; all were equals. The scriptural meaning of “prophet” is that of a man with special insight. But the title was also used of men who were admired for their miraculous deeds. The Essenes thought that their Teacher of Righteousness was the prophet. John, the evangelist, and Peter give the title to Jesus. After Jesus’s resurrection, a disciple, Cleopas, described him as

a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

Jesus also claimed to be a prophet himself and compared himself with Elijah and Elisha. Other holy men, the Hasidim, did the same.

Yet, for the rabbis, the era of prophecy had ended with Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Even Daniel was not regarded as a prophet, and his book was not included among the Prophets in the Jewish Bible but in the Writings. Even if a man were worthy of the holy spirit the belief was that men generally had become unworthy of prophecy. Though the great teacher Hillel was considered worthy, his generation was not. In Against Apion Josephus explains that prophecy had not ended but no Jew could trust a prophet any more because the exact line of succession from the Old Testament prophets had been lost so no one could distinguish true prophets from false prophets.

Such was the thinking of learned men, but the ordinary people still believed in saints and prophets and a prophetic revival was expected based on 1 Maccabees. Both views are expressed in the gospels. The Chief Priests could not arrest Jesus after his entry into Jerusalem because

They were afraid of the people, who looked on Jesus as a prophet.

After they do capture him the High Priest’s more sceptical followers hit him and asked mockingly, “Now prophet, who hit you?”

The people expected miracles, but the Pharisaic intellectuals could not accept them—though they could accept Insight. Hillel and Shammai, on opposite wings of the Pharisaic party, and founders of modern Judaism, were not accredited with any miracles despite their acknowledged insight. Josephus, a Pharisee himself, considered wonder workers to be charlatans. In The Jewish War, Josephus angrily notes the:

impostors and deceivers, pretending divine inspiration, provoking revolutionary actions and provoking the masses to madness. They led them out to the wilderness so that God would show them signs of impending freedom.

The gospels (Mk 13:22; Mt 24:24) issue similar warnings but the Palestinian poor eagerly followed one after another, desperate for signs that their tribulations were nearing an end. Repeated failure led to a degradation of the term prophet and, though Jesus had been one of those Josephus had spoken of, his followers considered it unworthy and inadequate for him and it ceased to be used. The gospels however, show that Jesus was titled a prophet, in fact.

What then of the titles Son of God and Son of Man? Surely these mean that Jesus was claiming to be the messiah and, indeed, a god? The title Son of Man occurs over 60 times in the synoptic gospels and very often in John but otherwise it occurs only three times in the New Testament, once in Acts and twice in Revelations.

It occurs nowhere in the Epistles!

Curiously no one but Jesus uses the expression in the synoptics, and it is never used as a form of address to the prophet as it is by God addressing Ezekiel. No one, not even a Pharisee, is puzzled or offended by Jesus’s use of the expression. The reason is, as scholars agree, that in Aramaic at that time it simply meant “a man” or “the man” and was used as equivalent to “one” or “someone”. This usage is known in documents from the second century but it seems from the gospels that it was also used in the first century. It was a modest circumlocution used to avoid the use of “I” which might have seemed arrogant. Furthermore since God gave his name to Moses with the words: “I am who I am”, pious Jews would not have wanted to risk saying the name of God even inadvertently. The Essene punishment for so doing, even accidentally, was banishment, which meant death. Jesus would therefore have avoided the first person singular of the verb “to be”.

There is no evidence that “Son of Man” was used as a synonym for “the messiah” as John 12:34 implies. The expression is used in Daniel 7:13, where a supernatural being “like a son of man” is described, but the Jewish scholar, Geza Vermes, points out that the expression “like” is common in describing dreams (which Daniel’s was) and it is used of beasts in the same description. The being, “like a son of man”, is a symbolic representation of Israel and implies no title to a particular person, though some later rabbis did identify this representative figure with the messiah. The difference from the messiah of the gospels was that this one was a glorious figure not a humble one.

Finally, in Hebrew even the two uses are not the same. The prophetic title is “ben Adam”, the everyday use was “bar nash”, showing that it was not identifiable with the title. The gospel passages that refer to Daniel 7:13 are later interpolations intended to identify the everyday expression with a messianic prophecy. Further, there is contemporaneous evidence in 4 Ezra 13 written after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. There the messiah is described not as the “son of man” but as the “form of a man”. In the Parables of the Book of Enoch, verses 46 to 71, the expression “son of man” is used 16 times but always as is clear with the meaning “man” and not as a title. Fragments of the Book of Enoch from Qumran lack the Parables or Similitudes. Some scholars believe they were second century additions, possibly by a Jewish Christian!

There can be no doubt that since the expression was a way of saying simply “man” it could not also have been a title of honour since the two meanings were too apt to be confused with embarrassing consequences. The two meanings offer problems to translators of the bible into Aramaic and ungainly constructions have to be used to circumvent the ambiguity.

The title Son of God today implies divinity because, from the Council of Nicaea, that is how the Christians defined it. Yet scholars largely agree that Jesus never referred to himself as Son of God and the concept never played a part in his teaching. In the gospels it never occurs in narration but only in confessions. In the Psalms of Solomon everyone led in righteousness as the Holy People of the messiah are Sons of God. Thus it was used of the just or saintly men known as Hasidim. Hanina ben Dosa was a Son of God. Correspondingly, the Hasidim were likely to call God Abba, father. The Psalms of Solomon have every indication of deriving from the Qumran Community and it is not impossible that the New Covenanters thought of themselves all as Sons of God. Jesus, if he were an Essene, might therefore have been a Son of God in this diluted sense.

The formula for anointing a king or a priest was to use the term “only begotten” or “beloved” son, so in this sense Jesus certainly was the Son of God. Many New Testament cases of the use of “Son of God” occur in descriptions of miracles. The reason is that miracles were concocted to disguise the actions taken by Jesus’s supporters when someone was indiscreet enough to call Jesus a Son of God, which would give away the secret aims of the Nazarene band.

Since the title “Son of God” applied to a Hasid or an anointed king, it also applied to the messiah, who was a holy king, but Jesus could still not have been thought of as a god, that was blasphemy, and none of the synoptic gospels unequivocally say it. Once he was thought of as messiah, Jesus as an Essene (who considered themselves appointed by God from before the creation) would easily have been identified then with the pre-existent messiah, already accepted by some Jewish thinkers.

After the dispersal of the Jerusalem Church, the step to divinity would have been easier for the remaining gentile followers. Nevertheless even Paul and the epistle writers were hesitant, using expressions like “the image of god” rather than leaping in with full blown divinity. Ignatius of Antioch, at the turn of the first century AD, felt able to refer to Jesus as “our god”.

“All right,” you might say, “but what about the use of the word “Lord”. Surely that means that Jesus was a god?”

Certainly the expression “the Lord” was an important religious title to the Jews into the intertestamental period. It was used as an alternative to Yehouah and as an absolute address for God. The Canaanites, the ethnos of the Jews before the Persian period, called their beloved god, “Baal”, which is “Lord”. The Wisdom of Solomon uses it for God 27 times. Lord and God are used interchangeably in one of the scroll fragments. Josephus says the Galilaeans would not call any man Lord and nor could they if they used it as a title for God. We can deduce from this that jesus’s own followers would not have called him, Lord. The Greek word for Lord—Kyrios—was imported into Aramaic as Kiri in the Hellenistic period as an alternative. Sometimes in the gospels, the original word used to address Jesus, Master, has been wrongly translated as Lord.

For those who were less dogmatic “Lord” was used in a lesser sense as an address for a person with some degree of power, perhaps a father or husband as well as people of higher rank. In this sense “Lord” used of Jesus, as a person of authority, was to be expected. Rabbi is a title of a teacher of authority but Vermes shows us that “Lord” is the higher title: a first century Hasid, Abba Hilkiah, is addressed “Lord” by rabbis sent to him whereas they refer to each other as rabbi only—yet the holy man was only a farm worker! “Lord” was also used in respectful speech to replace “you” when addressing a senior figure or a holy man.

Jesus could have been addressed as “Lord” in any of these latter senses without any implications of divinity. In the synoptic gospels there is a progression in the usage of the word “Lord”. In the earliest gospel, Mark’s, the form “Lord” is used rarely of Jesus. It is a form of address to him usually by strangers, though in one instance it is rendered absolute as “the Lord”. All of the vocative uses are in the context of miracles suggesting that it was originally Master. In Matthew the usage is slightly extended, it being used by Jesus’s followers and in some cases with a prophetic implication. Luke applies it less in the context of miracle working, more in the context of a teacher of authority and most commonly in the absolute sense of “the Lord”. Finally, in John where the usage is largely in the context of a teacher of authority there is eventually a clear identification of “Lord” and god (Jn 20:28).

The conclusion is that there is little direct evidence in the gospels that Jesus thought of himself as the messiah. That might have been expediency, so as not to attract undue attention to himself while he built up support—the Messianic Secret. That he thought of himself as divine is a non-starter. No one brought up in the most strictly monotheistic of religions could possibly consider it. Yet, if the symbolism of the entry into Jerusalem on the foal is not a gospel writer’s device, then he certainly believed he was the messiah by the time he attempted an insurrection in Jerusalem and was willing to state it theatrically.

Kings of the Jews

• It was a capital offence to act against the Empire or Caesar
• It was a capital offence to assume the actions of an official without authority
• It was a capital offence to join an armed body in capturing a public place.

The gospels are clear that Jesus was unequivocally guilty of each of these offences. Pilate had no discretion in the matter of sentencing. Under the laws of Rome Jesus was guilty of treason. Simply being acclaimed a king without an insurrection would have been sufficient for the Roman authorities to have found him guilty. There is no argument about this! The punishment for these crimes could only be crucifixion.

Nor did Pilate imagine that Jesus was innocent as the gospels make out. Pilate insisted that the inscription on the cross should read “The King of the Jews” rather than “They said he was King of the Jews”. Pilate intended the execution and the inscription to serve as a lesson to any future nationalists similarly claiming kingship over the Jews. Thus ended the career in life of Jesus Barabbas, the Zealot, better known later as Jesus Christ. The crucifixion of Jesus however did not have the effect desired by Pilate.

Many unknown people were crucified by the Romans in the period preceding the Jewish war but three men are recorded in history besides Jesus. Could Jesus have been one of them? They were Judas of Galilee (6 AD), Theudas (44 AD) and Benjamin the Egyptian (60 AD). Since these three people were all thought to be the messiah, any one could have been confused with Jesus later.

Judas of Galilee had preached in Galilee and had collected many followers before being crucified by the Romans. The story of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee could be based on the life of Judas of Galilee. Judas and Jesus were both Galilaean. In those times it might have been easy to confuse them, especially for Jews in the diaspora who were removed from the scene.

Since Matthew says Jesus had come out of Egypt, he could have been confused with Benjamin the Egyptian. Paul certainly was in Acts! Some authors have suggested that Jesus was the Egyptian, although their deaths were different, and that the tribune who questioned Paul suspected him of being one of the gang rather than the Egyptian himself.

The author of the Acts of the Apostles, which seems to use Josephus’s book Jewish Antiquities (93—94 AD), treats Jesus, Judas of Galilee, Theudas and Benjamin the Egyptian, to be four different people. That though could be deliberate obfuscation or accidental confusion which could not be undone. Josephus has no reference to Jesus which is certainly not a Christian interpolation. Christian editors need only to have displaced some of the Chronology of Josephus to give quite a wrong impression, one which Christians prefer to the truth.

After Pilate’s disgrace in 36 AD, Roman Prefects came and went until Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, was instated for a few years until 44 AD whereuopon Roman rule resumed under the Procurators. Immediately there was an uprising under a messiah called Theudas who was slain. Some of Jesus’s disciples, notably James of Zebedee and some say his brother John, were killed in 44 AD by Agrippa. Had some of Jesus’s disciples turned to Theudas in another attempt to evict the Romans?

A High Priest was murdered by the Sicarii. Simon Magus assembled a crowd at the Mount of Olives to see a miracle. The revolt of Lazarus continued for twenty years until he was captured and sent to Rome. James the Just, the brother of Jesus, was stoned to death in 62 AD.

The Jewish War began in 66 AD with astonishing successes. The leader of the Zealots, Menehem, a son of Judas of Galilee, and Eleazar, the captain of the Temple Guard, revolted at the same time. The Zealots captured the fortress of Masada and murdered the Roman garrison. The Captain of the Temple Guard refused to allow a daily sacrifice for the Emperor, a blatant outrage to the Romans The Roman garrison in Jerusalem surrendered and was butchered. The Legate of Syria had to send an army of twenty thousand men which the rebels promptly defeated.

Then it began to go wrong—the rebels began to quarrel among themselves. Menehem declared himself king only to be murdered by the Sadducees. John of Gischala, another Galilaean, leader of the Zealots, then murdered the High Priest, Annas, and overthrew the Sadducees.

It took a large force from Rome under the generalship of Vespasian, soon to be Emperor, and his son Titus to put down the rising, taking advantage of the disunity of the Jewish factions. With the fall of Jerusalem after a siege of five months, the Jewish state was crushed:

• the Temple was shattered and with it the party of the Sadducees
• Jews were taken captive to Rome
• Jewish wealth was plundered
• the Sanhedrin was disbanded
• the Rabbis and the Pharisees were scattered to re-establish Judaism centred on the synagogue
• most important of all from the viewpoint of Christianity, the Jewish followers of Jesus in Jerusalem were also dispersed, a few remnants taking to the desert.

Even after Jerusalem and the Temple had been razed, Jewish spirit was not destroyed. There were to be further messianic uprisings in 116 AD and 136 AD when, with the slaying of Bar Kosiba, the flame of revolt was finally extinguished.

Something powerful had fanned these flames for two hundred years. What was it? It was the Star Prophecy—The Star of Bethlehem.

Further Reading

• More on the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread
• More on the commital of Jesus before the High Priest
• More on the crucifixion
• More on the death of God and secular Christianity

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