Supported by his Twelve Apostles (including his brother James), Jesus emerged again in his Galilean homeland, moving southwards as he preached what he called ‘the good news’, in his own subtle and homespun style, often using parables. But the message was direct and dramatic: ‘Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Jesus left no writings and his teachings have been endlessly analysed, but the four Gospels reveal that the essence of his ministry was his warning of the imminent Apocalypse – Judgement Day and the Kingdom of Heaven.
This was a terrifying and radical vision in which Jesus himself would play a central part as the mystical semi-messianic Son of Man, a phrase taken from Isaiah and Danieclass="underline" ‘The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.’ He foresaw the destruction of all human ties: ‘And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death … Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’
This was not a social or nationalistic revolution: Jesus was most concerned with the world after the Last Days; he preached social justice not so much in this world as in the next: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Tax-collectors and harlots would enter God’s kingdom before grandees and priests. Jesus shockingly evoked the Apocalypse when he showed that the old laws would no longer matter: ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’ When the world ended, ‘the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory’ and all the nations would gather before him for judgement. There would be ‘everlasting punishment’ for the evil and ‘life eternal’ for the righteous.
However, Jesus was careful, in most cases, to stay within Jewish law and in fact his entire ministry emphasized that he was fulfilling biblical prophecies: ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’ Rigid adherence to the Jewish law though was not enough: ‘except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven’. Yet he did not make the mistake of directly challenging the Roman emperor, or even Herod. If the Apocalypse dominated his preaching, he offered a more direct proof of his sanctity: he was a healer, he cured cripples and raised people from the dead and ‘great multitudes were gathered together unto him’.
Jesus visited Jerusalem at least three times for Passover and other festivals before his final visit, according to John, and had two lucky escapes. When he preached in the Temple during Tabernacles, he was hailed by some as a prophet and by others as the Christ – though snobbish Jerusalemites sneered, ‘Shall Christ come out of Galilee?’ When he debated with the authorities, the crowd challenged him: ‘Then they took up stones to cast at him but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going though the midst of them.’ He came back for Hanukkah (the Festival of Dedication), but when he claimed ‘I and my Father are one, then the Jews took up stones again to stone him … but he escaped’. He knew what a visit to Jerusalem would mean.
Meanwhile in Galilee, Antipas’ discarded Arab wife escaped from the dungeons of Machaerus to the court of her father, Aretas IV, the wealthiest King of Nabataea, the builder of the remarkable Khazneh shrine and royal tomb in ‘rose-red’ Petra. Furious at this insult, Aretas invaded Antipas’ principality. Herodias had first caused the death of a prophet and had now started an Arab–Jewish war which Antipas lost. Roman allies were not permitted to launch private wars: the Emperor Tiberius, who bathed in increasingly senile debauchery in Capri, was irritated by Antipas’ folly but backed him.
Herod Antipas now heard about Jesus. People wondered who he was. Some thought him ‘John the Baptist but some say Elias and others, one of the prophets’, while his disciple Peter believed he was the Messiah. Jesus was especially popular among women, and some of these were Herodians – the wife of Herod’s steward was a follower. Antipas knew of the connection to the Baptist: ‘It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.’ He threatened to arrest Jesus, but significantly some of the Pharisees, evidently friendly towards him, warned him: ‘Depart hence: for Herod will kill thee.’
Instead Jesus defied Antipas. ‘Go ye, and tell that fox’ that he would continue healing and preaching for two days and on the third he would visit the only place where a Jewish Son of Man could fulfil his destiny: ‘It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.’ His sublimely poetical message to the son of the king who had built the Temple is steeped in Jesus’ love for the doomed city: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee: how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.’46
JESUS OF NAZARETH: THREE DAYS IN JERUSALEM
At the Passover of AD 33,* Jesus and Herod Antipas arrived in Jerusalem at almost the same time. Jesus led a procession to Bethany on the Mount of Olives, with its spectacular view of the gleaming snowy mountain of the Temple. He sent his Apostles into the city to bring back an ass – not one of our donkeys but the sturdy mount of kings. The Gospels, our only sources, each give slightly different versions of what happened in the next three days. ‘All this was done’, explains Matthew, ‘that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled’.
The Messiah was prophesied to enter the city on an ass, and as Jesus approached, his followers laid down palms before him and hailed him as ‘Son of David’ and ‘King of Israel’. He probably entered the city, like many visitors, through the southern gate near the Siloam Pool and then climbed to the Temple up the monumental staircase of Robinson’s Arch. His Apostles, Galilean provincials who had never visited the city, were dazzled by the grandeur of the Temple: ‘Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!’ Jesus, who had often seen the Temple, replied, ‘Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.’
Jesus expressed his love for and disappointment in Jerusalem but he foresaw the abomination of desolation. Historians believe that these prophecies were added later, because the Gospels were written after Titus had destroyed the Temple. Yet Jerusalem had been smashed and rebuilt before, and Jesus was reflecting the popular anti-Temple traditions.* ‘Destroy this Temple and I shall build another not made by human hands,’ he added, echoing his prophetic inspiration, Isaiah. Both saw beyond the real city to a heavenly Jerusalem that would have the power to shake the world, yet Jesus promised to rebuild the Temple himself in three days, perhaps showing that it was the corruption, not the Holy House itself, that he opposed.
By day, Jesus taught, and healed sick people at the Bethesda Pool just north of the Temple and at the Siloam Pool to its south, both crowded with Jewish pilgrims purifying themselves to enter the Holy House. At night he returned to his friends’ home in Bethany. On the Monday morning, he again entered the city but this time he approached the Royal Portico of the Temple.
At Passover, Jerusalem was at its most crowded and dangerous. Power was founded on money, rank and Roman connections. But the Jews did not share the Roman respect for military kudos or cold cash. Respect in Jerusalem was based on family (Temple magnates and Herodian princelings), scholarship (the Pharisee teachers) and the wild card of divine inspiration. In the Upper City, across the valley from the Temple, the grandees lived in Grecian-Roman mansions with Jewish features: the so-called Palatial Residence excavated there has spacious receiving-rooms and mikvahs. Here stood the palaces of Antipas and the high priest Joseph Caiaphas. But the real authority in Jerusalem was the prefect, Pontius Pilate, who usually ruled his province from Caesarea on the coast but always came to supervise Passover, staying at Herod’s Citadel.