What follows is an old sermon of mine on this topic. It will have to be in several installments.
WHO WAS BARABBAS?
THE BIBLICAL ROOTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM
by
ALASTAIR MacDONALD
This is not so much a sermon as it is an historical investigation. Like any good historian, I must begin by setting the context of the story. You have all heard it said that the Bible must be read "in context", that you can't read or interpret a verse in isolation. Many would say that you must take into account the verses immediately before and after the verse in question. I would go even further by saying that you must at least try to look at the entire context and by this I mean the whole economic, social, political, religious and historical background. This can be a very tall order.
The most important fact of life in Judea and Galilee at the time of Jesus was the fact that they were Roman provinces under occupation by detachments of the Roman army. This was not a relatively benign occupation such as occurred in West Germany following World War II. It was much more like the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe... a brutal military repression. At the same time, the Roman authorities exacted an outrageous level of taxation through the notorious system of "tax farming". In this system the rights to collect taxes were sold to the highest bidders. These "publicans" then proceeded to enrich themselves by setting exorbitant tax rates and by brutally enforcing their collection. People were known to be driven to suicide or even to selling their children into slavery as a result of the demands of the publicans.
Combine this oppression with the two thousand year struggle of the Jewish people for independence and freedom and you have an extremely volatile political climate. It was so volatile in fact that in the time period from one hundred years before Jesus, to one hundred years after him, the Jews rose in revolt an amazing sixty-two times. Interestingly enough all but one of these revolts originated in Galilee. Is it any wonder that the Roman authorities viewed any gathering of Galileans or any Galilean leader with great suspicion? Although quite a few of these revolts were small and localized, two of them evolved into full scale wars. The end result of all of this was the complete destruction of the Jewish nation and the great "Diaspora" of the Jewish people.
One of these many revolts occurred in the year 6 C.E. in Galilee. At this time Jesus was probably about ten years old. The revolt was triggered by the calling of a Roman census. The sole reason for such an numeration was to consolidate and expand the already exorbitant tax base. The revolt was led by the Pharisee Rabbi Judas BarEzekias whose followers regarded him as the long awaited "messiah". After some initial success including the capture of Sephoris, the capital city of Galilee, the revolt was suppressed by the arrival of a Roman army dispatched from Syria. Rabbi Judas and about two thousand of his rebels were captured and crucified en mass. Judas was not to be the only messiah to die in this fashion. To this day Judas is regarded as a national hero of the state of Israel. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that the young Jesus may have witnessed some of the events surrounding this revolt since the city of Sephoris was located only an easy walk from Jesus's home town of Nazareth.
In view of what I have just outlined, the truly surprising fact is that the Romans are seldom mentioned in the gospels. The actual word "Roman" is used just once in the four gospels and the Romans are mentioned in just three contexts: first in the nativity story with the reference to the census, second in Jesus's cure of the centurion's child and finally in the events surrounding the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus. There is an excellent reason for this lack of reference that we will examine a little later.
Let us now look ahead in time to Palm Sunday. Jesus, together with his Galilean disciples, enters Jerusalem in precisely the manner foretold in the ancient scriptures. Some scholars are convinced that this entry was timed deliberately to coincide with the entry of Pontius Pilate and a cohort of troops moving up from Caesarea as they did each year at this time. There Jesus is greeted by the joyous population who acclaim him as the messiah. I am not completely convinced that Jesus ever claimed the title of messiah for himself, but his disciples and the gospel writers certainly did. Before we can proceed further, I must pause to examine the meaning of the word "messiah" itself.
Messiah means literally "anointed one" and was the common way in which the Jews referred to kings of the dynasty of David. "Anointed" refers of course to the method of coronation of the Jewish kings. It translated into the Greek as "Christos". The Jews regarded themselves as a "theocracy"... a kingdom ruled by God. The Jews also envisaged a (metaphorical) throne room in which there were three thrones. God occupied the central throne. At "the right hand of God" was the throne of the "king messiah" who was the reigning king of the house and family of David. At "the left hand of God" was the throne of the "priest messiah" who was the high priest of the house and family of Zadok. Ideally there were always two messiahs who were known collectively as the "sons of God". All these terms, "messiah", "kingdom of God", "at the right hand of God" and "son of God" were political rather than religious statements. It was a later generation of gentile Christians who re-interpreted these phrases in a very different religious sense. Both before and after the death of Jesus the early Christians, who were, after all, practicing Jews, understood these terms in their traditional sense. Jesus in claiming to be the messiah had not committed any blasphemy... there was no religious crime that the high priest could legitimately charge him with. That is why they went to the Romans to do the job.
Keep in mind as well that our gospels were written by practicing Jews for a primarily Jewish audience. The early Christians were not expelled from the synagogues until about the year AD 90. They were familiar with the terminology just mentioned. Unlike the average reader today they knew that a term like "son of God" carried the meaning mentioned above and did not infer in any way that the person so described was in any way divine. As a matter of fact the inference of divinity would have been profoundly shocking to them, indeed they would have called it blasphemy. Thousands of Jews and later Christians went to their deaths for refusing to admit that the emperor was divine. It was only later, when the Jewish influence on the early church had diminished to the point of non-existence, that Christian believers in their ignorance of these terms began to take them at face value. Whenever we read a document we should always ask ourselves "How were these words intended by the author and how were they understood by the reader?" We must never try to impose a modern understanding on words that are almost 2,000 years old.
He was, however posing a direct challenge to Roman political authority. As we have already seen, the Romans responded very vigorously to any such challenge. The fact that they did not respond immediately on his entry into Jerusalem can be attributed in the first place to surprise, but more importantly to the fact that the high holy season was at hand. Jerusalem was crowded with perhaps a many as a million pilgrims and any military intervention at the time could trigger a full scale riot or possibly a major insurrection. The Romans chose to bide their time, but from Palm Sunday onward the fate of Jesus was sealed.
Two days later Jesus and his disciples enter the temple and forcefully eject the merchants and money changers. Now he has the full attention of the high priest Joseph Caiaphas. Notice that Jesus still has not committed a religious crime (blasphemy). The notoriously brutal temple guards did not act against Jesus at this time probably for the same reason that the Romans did not act on Palm Sunday.
Two days later Jesus is caught away from the crowds in the garden of Gethsemane. One gospel informs us that the arrest was carried out by a Roman cohort plus a detachment of temple guards. A Roman cohort at full strength consists of six hundred heavily armed legionnaires. Even if it were only part of a cohort, say, a century of one hundred soldiers, it seems obvious that they were not taking any chances with Jesus fighting his way out of the trap that they had sprung on him.
He is now dragged before the high priest and the “elders’. It is quite unlikely that there was any kind of formal trial at this time. To begin with there was no substantive religious charge that could be brought against him. It was not blasphemy to claim to be the "messiah" or a "son of God". If there was a blasphemy, a trial before the Sanhedrin would have brought that out and a sentence of death by stoning could have been brought down. The Sanhedrin did not lose the right to impose the death penalty until the year AD 39. The execution would have to be ratified by the Roman governor. This was just a rubber stamp procedure, after all what did the Romans care about Jews stoning one of their own to death for some obscure religious crime?
We also must take into account the nature of the Sanhedrin itself. It was a very dignified body of seventy elders somewhat in the nature of a supreme court. The high priest chaired but did not control the Sanhedrin, the majority of whose members were Pharisees. The Pharisees opposed the high priest at just about every turn. The high priest was in fact perhaps the most hated man in Judea. Under Roman administration, the high priest was personally appointed by the Roman governor. Caiaphas was the personal choice of Roman procurator Valerius Gratus. The Pharisees regarded Caiaphas as a collaborator and a traitor. The Sanhedrin was not likely to respond to a sudden midnight summons from the high priest. As a matter of fact, it was explicitly forbidden for the Sanhedrin to meet at night or on a religious holiday. They were also not to meet in any place but the Chamber of Hewn Stone on Temple Mount.
You might recall from the Acts of the Apostles that Peter and some of the disciples were actually charged with blasphemy and brought to trial before the Sanhedrin. They were dismissed after being defended by Rabbi Gamaliel who was himself a member of the Sanhedrin and a prominent Pharisee. If Jesus appeared before the high priest at all it was simply to be remanded over to Pontius Pilate. The Romans wanted him for a lot more than disturbing the peace in the temple. They wanted him for sedition and treason.
I am also convinced that the trial before Pilate was a foregone conclusion... a trial in name only. The Bible, however, portrays Pontius Pilate as a reasonable person, a gentleman who thought Jesus was innocent, albeit a little deluded. We also get the impression that Pilate is somewhat of a wimp in that he allows himself to be manipulated by the high priest and elders into executing Jesus.
In truth this portrayal of Pilate is far from factual. He was an ambitious, greedy and brutal man. He once ordered his troops into the temple to loot the treasury. It must be noted that he was not the first nor the last Roman governor to do this. This serves to indicate just how much he was swayed by the opinions or threats of the elders or the high priest who was after all his personal appointee. He was also responsible for the suppression of a number of rebellions at great loss of life. His main objective during his tenure of office seems to have been to be to see just how much he could get away with in offending Jewish religious sensibilities. He was eventually dismissed from office by the emperor for "causing an unnecessary massacre". I suppose that this by way of contrast to all the necessary massacres he was responsible for. Are these the marks of a wimp? of a reasonable man? Certainly not! The trial of Jesus, if there was one, was in name only. Jesus had challenged Roman political authority...Jesus must die.
*continued*