c. 1996 Religion News Service
JERUSALEM (RNS)-It was in or near Bethpage, a Herodian-era cemetery marking the city limits of ancient Jerusalem, that the Easter story began on Palm Sunday.
And from a similar site the Resurrection story unfolded a week later-a week marked by nadirs of agony and despair and pinnacles of joy.
Even today, Bethpage, a small field of fruit trees and pasture tumbling down from the Mount of Olives toward the Judean desert, remains apart from the hum and din of the modern city-an oasis in time.
The rocky, arid ground is rich with grass after the end of the winter rains. The first fruits are beginning to sprout from the fig trees-which were the subject of one of Jesus’ last sermons. An empty tomb, once covered by a round stone, juts out from the ground in the old cemetery. It is probably smaller than the Jewish aristocrat’s tomb in which Jesus is believed to have been buried-but similar in style and dating.
Jesus”entered”Jerusalem from Bethpage, launching Holy Week with his Palm Sunday procession, notes prominent Hebrew University archaeologist Jim Fleming. Fleming, a Christian scholar, has spent nearly three decades in Israel researching Christian history in its Jewish religious, cultural and archaeological context.
But unlike the popular image of Palm Sunday of a”nice day with children picnicking and flowers waving in the breeze,”the original march was more of a tense political demonstration that almost became a riot, Fleming said.
The procession from Bethpage was Jesus’ first overt assertion of his messianic mission, in Fleming’s view.”Even if Jesus thought he was the Messiah, he would have been foolish to say so in the Herodian period”because of the era’s cruel repression of Roman rule.
Ancient Jewish prophecies had predicted that the Messiah, when he came, would enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Jesus’ ride from Bethpage was a very purposeful dramatization of that ancient vision, Fleming suggested.”No one could be arrested for riding on a donkey. But those who have eyes to see could understand,”he said.
Jesus’ choice of Bethpage for his entry to the city was a natural one. Several of his closest friends, including Mary, Martha, Lazarus and Simon, lived in nearby Bethany, a small village on the ridge extending from the Mount of Olives along the road to Jericho. In the week before his death, Jesus probably walked into Jerusalem every day from Bethany via Bethpage, drawing inspiration from its breathtaking vistas of the desert.
From the Mount of Olives one can see in the distant Judean desert the flat-topped mountain of Herodian, built by King Herod as a fortress from another nearby hill. The desert heights seem almost to fall into the Dead Sea, which is visible farther to the east.
It must have been this view, said Fleming, that inspired Gospel sayings by Jesus in his last week of life, such as”If you have faith … you can say to this mountain, `Go throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done”(Matthew 21:21).
Galilee Jews traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover holidays typically camped on the Mount of Olives when they entered the city. This multitude was certainly among the first to join the procession led by the popular teacher from Galilee when Jesus rode to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
The waving of palm branches was a covert political symbol in Galilee-a symbol of”people power”and Jewish independence, said Fleming. When, in 24 A.D., the governor of Galilee, Herod Antipas, had tried to print coins with Tiberius Caesar’s face-a forbidden image-Jews staged a near-rebellion and the coins were reminted with a palm branch.
Likewise, the”Hosannas”uttered by the crowd were not just shouts of praise. Translated from the ancient Hebrew, the words meant”save us.” While the Palm Sunday march is a key event in the Gospels, it was not unique.”What happened in the Gospel story happened periodically in Jewish history, particularly at Passover,”observed Fleming. Jews were constantly looking for a messiah, who in Jewish historical terms was supposed to arise to save them from oppression-from the bitter rule of the Romans. Passover, celebration of Jewish liberation from Egyptian slavery, was a time when the passion for freedom became irresistible.
When Jesus was brought before the Roman rulers a few days later to be tried and crucified, he was charged with a political crime, not a religious one-the crime of claiming to be”King of the Jews.” Many aspects of crucifixion have been distorted in religious art and legend, noted Fleming. Still, historical and archaeological examination of the crucifixion story can yield a picture even more gruesome than the biblical one.
Crucifixion was probably more common on rooted trees, rather than on the sawn planks depicted in much biblical art, said Fleming. He noted that the Roman orator Cicero, in a visit to the region around 60 B.C., described seeing crucified victims on trees lining the major Roman highway of Palestine.
The only archaeological evidence of crucifixion is from the grave of a Jew named Yehohanan ben Hagkol, uncovered in a 1968 excavation on Givat Ha Mivtar, a hill adjacent to the Mount of Olives. Hagkol, a man in his 20s, died sometime between 7 and 70 A.D., and his bones were found intact in a marked ossuary (bone casket) with the iron nail that had pierced the ankle still in place.
From this find, historians learned more about crucifixion techniques in practice in the Roman period. For instance, wood shavings found on the nail indicated that Hagkol was crucified on a short olive tree, not a high cedar or pine typically depicted in Christian art.
Judging from the angle at which the nail pierced the ankle, the victim’s feet were not nailed to the bottom of the cross, but bent up along the side, so that the spike pierced the ankle.
Roman sources, meanwhile, describe a”saddle,”placed under a victim’s buttocks to prolong the torture. The victim typically tried to push his buttocks onto the saddle to rest and breathe more easily. But the saddle thus prolonged life-and the torture lasted longer.
While Jews have at times in history been held to blame for Jesus’ crucifixion, Fleming sees it as a purely Roman deed, performed with the consent of a few Jewish religious leaders who were already known collaborators with the hated Roman occupiers.
Caiaphas was the Jewish high priest who first detained Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and later turned him over to the Roman governor Pilate. Even in the Jewish Talmud, a collection of rabbinic writings, Caiaphas is remembered as a man inordinately concerned with business affairs of the temple bazaar, rather than ethical teachings.
The Greco-Jewish philosopher Philo suggests that Caiaphas collaborated with Pilate in not only Jesus’ crucifixion, but in the repression of other rebel Jewish”zealots.” Crucifixion, moreover, was a distinctively Roman form of punishment, particularly offensive to Jews, said Fleming. Jewish tradition forbade such a tortuous death sentence, and those who suffered it under foreign rulers were sometimes regarded as”cursed”by God himself.
The covert sympathy for Jesus among many prominent Jews was evident in the story of his burial. Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent religious Jew and a member of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish religious authority of the day, obtained permission to claim Jesus’ body. Joseph buried Jesus in his own family tomb, presumably a large tomb with an antechamber where mourners could gather.
Another wealthy Jew and Sanhedrin member, Nicodemus, brought spices and myrrh to dress the body in aristocratic style. Jesus’ burial at the onset of the Jewish Sabbath Friday evening, however, left little time to perform the ritual anointments. That is why Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb just before dawn Sunday morning.
The Gospel of John describes how the burial cloth that had enshrouded Jesus’ head was found by Peter”folded up by itself, separate from the linen”that had been used to wrap the body.
Typically, if someone had undressed a wrapped mummy, the shroud for the head and body would still have been connected. It was this arrangement of the cloths, said Fleming, that persuaded Peter that a theological mystery, not a theft of the body, had occurred.
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The Resurrection story coincides with a Jewish feast day that is little known in the Christian world-the Jewish Temple feast of the first fruits, which was celebrated on the Sunday following the Sabbath after Passover by offering barley from the Galilee on the altar.
It is that feast, which the apostle Paul was probably speaking about in the Book of Acts when he called Jesus the”first fruits”of the hoped-for resurrection of the dead.
The dominance of the Easter story in Acts, as well as the Gospels, attests to its importance to early Christians, said Fleming. The week of Jesus’ crucifixion-beginning with Palm Sunday and ending Easter Day-occupies a full half of the Gospel of John and one-quarter to one-third of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
How does Fleming, the Christian scholar, respond to the dramatic finale, the resurrection of Jesus? The red-bearded academic speaks about it in terms of the word”memory.””In the Western mind, memory is a mere visualization of the past. In antiquity, memory was understood as a more powerful thing,”he said.
Jesus, when quizzed by the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in life after death, answered them by paraphrasing a statement by God to Moses in the Book of Exodus:”Have you not read what God said to you, `I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead but of the living”(Matthew 22:31-32).”If the memory of a person can be a powerful thing, how much more powerful would it be if God remembers something? If God chooses to remember, you cannot underestimate the reality of that memory. They come alive,”said Fleming.”On Resurrection Day, Mary Magdalene, who was loved by Jesus, had a lot of things she would rather forget.”When she sees him in the garden, from the other side of death, Jesus says `Mary,’ (John 20:16)-I remember you. In effect, John says that there is memory from the other side of death. And that, for me, is the essence of the Resurrection.”
MJP END FLETCHER
