When evil was ordinary

We know where Jesus of Nazareth must have entered Jerusalem — the Messiah Gate is there even if blocked up by Turks as afraid of the Messiah returning as the Romans must have been at the possibility that the Jewish tale was true and that the Messiah would come.

We have a fair idea of what the Temple was like and we know from Josephus writing only about 45 years after the Jesus event, of another Jesus. That other Jesus proclaimed that the Temple would be destroyed and woe to Jerusalem.

He was dragged before Sanhedrin and Romans, flogged, and escaped crucifixion only because the Romans declared him mad. He was eventually lynched — stoned to death by an angry Jewish crowd.

Blasphemy

Jesus of Nazareth had not only declared that the Temple would be destroyed. He had proceeded to chase out those who changed the foreign money of Jews of the Diaspora into the “clean” money permitted in the Temple. These moneychangers made a hefty profit.

Their boutiques were owned by members of the priestly class. Sacrifice was obligatory and could only be offered in the Temple.

It is known that Caiphas, the chief priest at the time, and his family owned much of the commerce in animals. It is known that the ordinary Jews of the time disliked the Temple rip-off.

Caiphas could hardly have been pleased at Jesus calling their boutiques nothing less than a den of thieves. We know the code words for God, a name Jews then and orthodox Jews today, do not pronounce.

I am was one such phrase. Jesus declared “before Abraham was, I am” — no, not I was — that would cause little furore. At his trial he would conform what the I am meant.

The Son of Man was an ambiguous phrase used rarely by Jews. They were the sons of God — daughters did not come into the picture. Son of Man could mean son of God. It could also mean God in Judgment as Daniel used it.

However Jesus’ declaration that they would see the Son of Man coming on clouds of glory clarified what he meant. Clouds was one of the code words for God. The punishment for this, the most serious of blasphemies, was death.

A riot?

The entry into Jerusalem was hailed not only by Galileans, but by the desperate thrown off work as an economic depression hit Israel, plus the whipping out of the Temple affair, posed another problem for the priestly class: the possibility of rioting at the time of the Passover.

Caiphas owed his position to the tacit agreement with the Romans, that he would maintain order and contain any possible attempts to revolt.

Caiphas could rightly fear that Jesus could easily arouse the crowd, already with no love for Pilate and easily persuaded to riot.

There were therefore real reasons for wanting this difficult Galilean, Jesus of Nazareth, permanently out of the way. There is nothing extraordinary about this.

No devil complete with horns and tail lurks near to Caiphas or whispers into the ears of the Sanhedrin. It turns out that Evil is the most normal of things.

Blasphemy may still merit death. People still arrange to have those likely to affect their profits, out of the way.

States, and indeed the ruling elite, are still jittery if someone turns up who could stir the crowd into a riot. If it is serious enough the offender may still face death for subversion or terrorism.

That it is better that one man should die rather than that the entire people should suffer is the most common of political truisms. Nothing extraordinary in the Sanhedrin condemnation of Jesus of Nazareth. Nothing extraordinary in Evil.

Complaints to Rome

Nothing extraordinary about Pilate’s part in the affair. Pilate hated the Jews. He had marked his contempt at the beginning of his taking up the post. Unlike any other Roman civil servant, Pilate had entered Jerusalem, his cortege carrying the emblems of the Roman gods aloft. Jews, horrified that pagan gods would defile the Holy City of the one true God, barred his passage by lying down on the streets. It was only his first massacre.

He provoked a massacre over the building of an aqueduct. Jesus mentions it. The blood of Jews mingled with the blood of their sacrificial animals. Jews complained to Rome and Rome had no wish for a showdown with what must have been the most irritating part of its Empire. Pilate must have been told to “cool it.” He would be eventually removed in disgrace — but that was long after the Jesus affair. Then he had quarrelled with Herod and moved over to the smaller garrison near to the Jaffa Gate. It turned out that this garrison was near to a small crucifixion site. These punctuated the area outside of the wall which marked the perimeter of the Holy City.

A normal governor

Pilate had no reason to love Caiphas and would hardly have been impressed with a charge of blaspheming a God of the Jews. He may well have been delighted at the idea.

Another complaint to Rome was a different matter. Pilate was superstitious. His wife’s warning about a dream scared Pilate. He had no reason to save Jesus. He had reason to fear a Jewish trap that would leave him responsible for the death of a popular Jew. He washed his hands ceremoniously and publicly. There is not a devil with horns and tails in sight. Pilate is a normal colonial governor or any governor of an occupied country.

One extraordinary event

There is nothing extraordinary about the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The severe flogging was part of any crucifixion. The wailing women who meet Jesus were upper class Jewish women who did this at any crucifixion and prepared a drink of vinegar and herbs to dull the pain. It was part of their charitable occupations.

The only extraordinary event is that Pilate allows Joseph of Arimithea to bury the body. But Joseph of Arimithea was a wealthy man.

Pilate may have good reasons for having Joseph on his side. Nothing extraordinary. Not even the people closest to Jesus see anything extraordinary in the crucifixion at the time.

His apostles are afraid that it is the beginning of a round up of his followers. They go into hiding. The women keep the Passover and the Sabbath. They go to the tomb only after dawn on the first day of the week — Sunday. They expect to find Jesus dead.

The tomb is empty. He who was dead, is alive. It is the only extraordinary event in the history of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the resurrection which prompts his followers to look back at what they had seen of him and what they heard him say.

A journey of Faith

The journey of Faith was not always easy. Peter had to face his impetuous promises and his cowardly denials. All, except John and he was a teenager, have to face that they were more preoccupied with saving their own skins than staying at the foot of the cross with Magdalene.

She who was an outcast, a prostitute and who probably anointed Jesus with ointment bought with the gains of her sinning. And they have to face Mary of Nazareth, a widow, childless and as such considered by Jews cursed by God. In this journey of Faith they realise that they had indeed walked with the Messiah. And the Messiah was God who had again and finally saved his people.

As the gospels tell the story, not even the resurrection is within the context of the extraordinary. Magdalene mistakes Jesus for the gardener.

No one believes the women’s story. John outruns Peter to the tomb then pauses, and impetuous Peter enters only to find the grave clothes neatly folded.

Two disciples leave Jerusalem shattered at the finality of death and the ending of hope. Someone walks with them.

They talk on the way. They invite him to stay with them because it is late. He breaks the bread as the male head of every Jewish family does before a meal. They recognise him. He is gone.

There is the wonderful tale of Thomas, the Kevin Baldeosingh of the apostles. What rubbish! Not until I see for myself and verify that it isn’t some figment of my imagination.

He sees for himself and believes. These are stories of ordinary occasions — except that the reason why these stories are related is that these men and women have met the crucified one. He is alive.

Rooting in history

I continue to be struck by the ordinariness of it all. And the almost material rooting in geography and history. This was near on two thousand years ago. Much of today’s science was yet to be discovered.

Modern physics or chemistry was centuries ahead. Today we live in a world where a hair can yield the identity of someone. We can indeed move mountains, we can communicate across space, we can reconstruct what someone ate before his death six thousand years ago.

Witches and bush tea

And yet with all the progress of science, we get hooked on the medieval hunt for the Holy Grail even when we know that it is little more than the romanticism of King Arthur or the love songs of Roland.

The tallest of tales, the Da Vinci Code, has sold millions of copies and profited the tourist industry. The most sensible of people look for a “sign” in a tile or on a window.

We walk around as certain that God is a leaf, a dog or ourselves as the most fervent of animists. A range of healing tools — or gimmicks — convince us.

We are as much hooked on bush tea as those without modern medicine. Witches are so popular that you can buy a book and practise witchcraft yourself. Covens of witches now exist.

We don’t believe in God, but we say that we conjure up the dead and ask their advice. We search the Bible for predictions, and see catastrophes in visions.

We put down illnesses to some ancestral misdemeanour and get exorcised of bad luck. We have a superstitious belief in power and wealth and an equally superstitious belief that the devil, horns and all, possesses the vulnerable.

Well the crucifixion and the resurrection are nothing of that. It is an ordinary story of ordinary people. Evil is ordinary. Jesus of Nazareth is ordinary. All that is extraordinary is the resurrection. And that a very ordinary failure of a Jewish carpenter, was Eternal God.