Killing Jesus: A History (29 page)

³
The typical home in Nazareth was a single-family structure of one or two stories, built into the side of a limestone hill. The floors were made of dirt tamped down with ash and clay, while the walls were stones stacked on top of one another. Mud was smeared in the joints to keep out the elements. The roof was flat and made of wood, straw, mud, and lime. A bottom floor was reserved for storage, nighttime animal lodging, and a cooking fire, while the upper floor was for sleeping on thin mattresses stuffed with wool. A ladder led from one floor to the other. There were no indoor bathing or restroom facilities.

⁴
Actium is located at the modern-day city of Preveza, in western Greece, on the Ionian Sea. There are some who believe that Marc Antony was persuaded to give up his claims to the Roman Empire after ten long years of fighting and to retire to Egypt to be with Cleopatra. His forces had been decimated by malaria, and morale was at rock bottom. This theory holds that the Battle of Actium was designed to conceal his retreat. If this is true, Antony was performing one of the greatest ruses in history, committing some 230 war galleys, several thousand archers, and twenty thousand soldiers to the scheme. The entire battle was conducted at sea, ending before Antony’s infantry could engage Octavian’s onshore. Cleopatra, still clinging to her hope of ruling Rome, was present, but on a separate ship from Marc Antony’s. Before the two lovers could escape, more than five thousand of Marc Antony’s men were killed and almost two hundred ships were captured or sunk.

⁵
The legend that Cleopatra killed herself by letting a poisonous asp (or, some say, an Egyptian cobra) bite her naked breast is just that, a legend. The blend of opium and hemlock was also the poison used by the great philosopher Socrates to end his life.

CHAPTER FOUR

¹
Deuteronomy 21:22–23: “If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.”

²
In Hebrew, “Jew” is
Yehudi
, which originally meant a resident of Yehuda (Judaea), which contained Jerusalem and the Temple. This later came to mean a member of the religion of Yehuda, as mentioned in some of the later prophets, and all through the scroll of Esther. The Jews came to be called Hebrews
, or the Sons of Israel. In Greek and Latin they were
Ioudaioi
and
Iudaei
, respectively. In Hebrew they could be
Israel
or Sons of Israel or
Yehudim
.

CHAPTER FIVE

¹
Clearly no one understands the statement at the time, but this passage in Luke 2:49 is the beginning of Jesus unfolding the full meaning of “Son of God.” One important note, however, is that the passage includes a Greek literary device written as δεῖ, meaning “it is necessary.” Luke uses this linguistic phrase eight times in a strategic fashion with respect to Jesus. He alludes to a “necessary” relationship with the Father, though no reaction or explanation is given. As the Gospels unfold, the title becomes imbued with greater significance as Jesus’s personal claims of divinity and acts of divinity become pronounced—but even though references are made, the disciples and the people don’t comprehend the magnitude of what he is saying.

²
The Gospels clearly state that Jesus had four brothers: James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. They also mention that he had sisters, but the number is not specified. The Roman Catholic Church believes that Mary remained a virgin throughout her entire life. This doctrine was first put forth four centuries after Jesus lived, by an early leader in the Church named Simon. The Church considers the siblings mentioned by the Gospels to be Jesus’s cousins. Eastern Orthodox Christians believe them to be stepbrothers and stepsisters brought into the marriage by Joseph, a widower before he married Mary. Most other Christian sects believe that Mary did not remain a virgin for her entire life and that these siblings were Jesus’s brothers and sisters.

³
Numbers 15:38. Also, Deuteronomy 22:12: “You should make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear.”

⁴
Judas of Gamala, a Galilean, is not to be confused with Judas of Galilee, who fomented rebellion after the death of Herod the Great in 4
B.C.
They are two separate individuals, but some historical accounts mistake the two men. Both died horrible deaths for their uprisings. No one knows for sure how Judas of Gamala was executed, but crucifixion is a very likely option. And while Rome practiced this manner of execution almost exclusively during this time, crucifixion was certainly within the Jewish tradition. Most famously, Josephus writes that the Jewish ruler Alexander Jannaeus crucified some eight hundred Pharisees in 88
B.C.
(It should be noted that the historical record confirms that both of Judas of Gamala’s sons were crucified.)

CHAPTER SIX

¹
These were the top religious voices of their day. The Pharisees were sticklers about religious law; the Sadducees were equally pious but were wealthy and more liberal in their thinking; and the Levites were a tribe of priests and Temple guards directly descended from Levi, a son of the patriarch Jacob.

²
This is in reference to the common practice of improving roads before a king journeys from one country to another. Valleys are filled in and crooked paths are made straight so that the king’s travels might be as smooth as possible.

³
The Roman standard was a statue of an eagle, or
aquila
, situated atop a metal post. In the case of the dispute with Pilate, an emblem bearing a likeness to Tiberius was affixed just below the eagle. The standard was the symbol of a legion and was carried at all times by a standard-bearer (from which we get the modern term for someone who represents an ideal or a value). To lose in battle was considered an enormous form of disgrace. When the dying legionaries at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in
A.D.
9 surrendered three standards (legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX), the Roman Empire scoured the Germanic regions in an attempt to get them back. They ultimately succeeded. Worth noting is that an image of Jesus would adorn Roman standards beginning in the fourth century.

⁴
The appearance of the dove is recounted in each of the four Gospels of the New Testament and might be seen as an attempt to insert overt spiritual symbolism into the Gospel narrative. But, in fact, each time the word
dove
is used in the canonical Gospels and the Old Testament, each of them is an allusion to actual doves—not divinity. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (known as the Synoptic Gospels) recount that the dove appeared
after
Jesus’s baptism. John has the bird landing on Jesus beforehand. The Gospels are a combination of oral tradition, written fragments from the life of Christ, and the testimony of eyewitnesses. This would explain the discrepancy. The appearance of the dove may have been coincidental with Jesus’s baptism. However, the Gospels were written as many as seventy years after Jesus’s death (Mark in the early 50s, Luke between 59 and 63, Matthew in the 70s, and John between 50 and 85). For the dove to remain a part of Jesus’s oral tradition for that long indicates that the bird’s appearance must have been remembered quite vividly by all who were there.

⁵
This is a seminal moment in Jesus’s ministry for two reasons. First, the allusions are back to Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1, and possibly Isaiah 41:8. Psalm 2 is a regal psalm, with 2:7 referring essentially to the Messiah, validated by John the Baptist’s comments in Luke 3:16. The Isaiah references, particularly 42:1, are the references to the servant, who has both prophetic and deliverance attributes. Thus the baptism blends two portraits into the figure of the Messiah/servant. Second, the baptism itself marks the beginning of Jesus’s ministry with divine endorsement. The endorsement is through both the divine word from heaven and the anointing by the Spirit.

⁶
For Antipas, the issue is moral as well as political. Josephus shows that the woman Antipas planned to divorce in order to marry Herodias was daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea. This arrangement aroused severe tension between the kingdoms. Many of Antipas’s subjects in Perea were ethnically Nabatean, thus more loyal to Aretas than to Antipas. The arrest of John would of course make matters worse—when Aretas later defeated Antipas in battle, people said it was God’s judgment on Antipas for what he’d done to John the Baptist.

CHAPTER SEVEN

¹
Germanicus died of a mysterious illness. He was a popular general, particularly among the legions. He was responsible for avenging the defeat at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest and for retrieving the fallen eagle standards of legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX. Many thought he would attempt to claim the throne upon the death of Augustus, but he deferred to Tiberius. There were whispers that Tiberius had him killed because he was too great a threat to the eventual ascension of Drusus to the throne. This rumor gained more credibility when Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, the governor of Syria who was to go on trial for Germanicus’s death, committed suicide rather than testify. And while Germanicus would never serve as emperor, his son Caligula would succeed Tiberius on the throne and become infamous for a level of debauchery transcending even that of Tiberius.

²
Drusus was poisoned by his wife, Livilla, and her lover, Lucius Aelius Sejanus. This was done so skillfully that it would be eight years before their plot was uncovered. When it was, Livilla was forced to commit the slow death of suicide by starvation. Sejanus’s death was far more gruesome. He had assumed great power in Rome, thanks to Tiberius’s self-imposed exile to Capri. On October 18 of
A.D.
31, upon learning that Sejanus had murdered Drusus by poisoning his wine, Tiberius ordered his arrest. Sejanus was strangled that night in Rome and his body was thrown to a crowd of onlookers, who tore his corpse to pieces. After this, they conducted a manhunt for all his friends and relatives and killed them, too. Sejanus’s son and daughter were arrested in December of that year and killed by strangulation. When Tiberius was informed that the girl was a virgin, and thus not able under the law to be killed for a capital offense, he ordered the executioner to place the rope around her neck, rape young Junilla, and then, only after the young girl had been deflowered, pull the rope tight.

CHAPTER EIGHT

¹
Scholars debate the exact nature of
karet
. Josephus wrote that it was a physical punishment, perpetrated by man. Some thought it meant dying well before one’s time, likely between the ages of fifty and sixty, “by the hand of heaven.” There is, however, a provision for repentance, which annuls the
karet
.

²
A recitation of the six Psalms, 113–18. While the complete verses are too lengthy to be included in this brief space, their themes, in order, are: a celebration of God’s majesty and mercy; a reminder that Judea is God’s sanctuary; praise to the Lord as the one true God; thanks to God for deliverance from death; a reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness; and a thanksgiving for deliverance from enemies. The term
psalm
is Greek. The traditional Hebrew words are
tehillim
(“praises”) or
tephillot
(“prayers”). There are 150 Psalms in all, of which Psalm 117 is the shortest, at just three sentences.