Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (38 page)

That the coin Jesus asks for, the denarius, is the same coin used to pay the tribute
to Rome is definitively proven by H. St. J. Hart, “The Coin of ‘Render unto Caesar,’ ”
Jesus and the Politics of His Day
, 241–48.

Among the many scholars who have tried to strip Jesus’s answer regarding the tribute
of its political significance are J.D.M. Derrett,
Law in the New Testament
(Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2005) and F. F. Bruce, “Render to Caesar,”
Jesus and the Politics of His Day
, 249–63. At least Bruce recognizes the significance of the word
apodidomi
, and indeed it is his analysis of the verb that I reference above. Helmut Merkel
is one of many scholars who see Jesus’s answer to the religious authorities as a nonanswer;
“The Opposition Between Jesus and Judaism,”
Jesus and the Politics of His Day
, 129–44. Merkel quotes the German scholar Eduard Lohse in refuting Brandon and those,
like myself, who believe that Jesus’s answer betrays his zealot sentiments: “Jesus
neither allowed himself to be lured into conferring divine status on the existing
power structure, nor concurred with the revolutionaries who wanted to change the existing
order and compel the coming of the Kingdom of God by the use of force.” First of all,
it should be noted that the use of force is not the issue here. Whether Jesus agreed
with the followers of Judas the Galilean that only the use of arms could free the
Jews from Roman rule is not what is at stake in this passage. All that is at stake
here is the question of where Jesus’s views fell on the most decisive issue of the
day, which also happened to be the fundamental test of zealotry: Should the Jews pay
tribute to Rome? Those scholars who paint Jesus’s answer to the religious authorities
as apolitical are, to my mind, totally blind to the political and religious context
of Jesus’s time, and, more important, to the fact that the issue of the tribute is
quite clearly meant to be connected to Jesus’s provocative entry into Jerusalem, of
which there can be no apolitical interpretation.

For some reason, the
titulus
above Jesus’s head has been viewed by scholars and Christians alike as some sort
of joke, a sarcastic bit of humor on the part of Rome. The Romans may be known for
many things, but humor isn’t one of them. As usual, this interpretation relies on
a prima facie reading of Jesus as a man with no political ambitions whatsoever. That
is nonsense. All criminals sentenced to execution received a
titulus
so that everyone would know the crime for which they were being punished and thus
be deterred from taking part in similar activity. That the wording on Jesus’s
titulus
was likely genuine is demonstrated by Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, who notes that “If [the
titulus
] were invented by Christians, they would have used
Christos
, for early Christians would scarcely have called their Lord ‘King of the Jews.’ ”
See
The Gospel According to Luke I–IX
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), 773. I will speak more about Jesus’s “trial”
in subsequent chapters, but suffice it to say that the notion that a no-name Jewish
peasant would have received a personal audience with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate,
who had probably signed a dozen execution orders that day alone, is so outlandish
that it cannot be taken seriously.

Oddly, Luke refers to the two crucified on either side of Jesus not as
lestai
but as
kakourgoi
, or “evildoers” (Luke 23:32).

All four gospels give varying accounts of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:1–17; Mark 1:2–15;
Luke 3:1–22; John 1:19–42). It is generally agreed that much of this gospel material,
including John’s infancy narrative in Luke, was derived from independent “Baptist
traditions” preserved by John’s followers. On this, see Charles Scobie,
John the Baptist
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1964), 50–51, and Walter Wink,
John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition
(Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 59–60. However, Wink thinks only some of this
material came from John’s unique sources. He argues that the infancy narratives of
John and Jesus were likely developed concurrently. See also Catherine Murphy,
John the Baptist: Prophet of Purity for a New Age
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003).

Although, according to Matthew, John warns the Jews of the coming of the
“kingdom of heaven,” that is merely Matthew’s circumlocution for Kingdom of God. In
fact, Matthew uses the phrase “Kingdom of Heaven” throughout his gospel, even in those
passages in which he has borrowed from Mark. In other words, we can be fairly certain
that “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven” mean the same thing and that both derived
in some part from the teachings of John the Baptist.

There are many inaccuracies in the gospel account of John’s execution (Mark 6:17–29;
Matthew 14:1–12; Luke 9:7–9). For one, the evangelists refer to Herodias as the wife
of Philip, when she was actually the wife of Herod. It was Salome who was Philip’s
wife. Any attempt by conservative Christian commentators to make up for this blatant
error—for instance, by referring to Antipas’s half brother as “Herod Philip” (a name
that does not appear in any records)—falls flat. The gospels also seem to confuse
the place of John’s execution (the fortress of Machaerus) with Antipas’s court, which
at the time would have been in Tiberias. Finally, it should be mentioned that it is
inconceivable that a royal princess would have performed for Antipas’s guests, considering
the strictures of the day for Jewish women of any status. There are, of course, many
apologetic attempts to rescue the gospel story of John’s beheading and to argue for
its historicity (for example, Geza Vermes,
Who’s Who in the Age of Jesus
, 49), but I agree with Rudolf Bultmann,
History of the Synoptic Tradition
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1968), 301–2, and Lester L. Grabbe,
Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian
, vol. 2, 427–28, both of whom argue that the gospel story is far too fanciful and
riddled with too many errors to be taken as historical.

For parallels between Mark’s account of John’s execution and the book of Esther, see
Roger Aus,
Water into Wine and the Beheading of John the Baptist
(Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 1988). The story also echoes Elijah’s conflict
with Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab (1 Kings 19–22).

Josephus’s account of John the Baptist’s life and death can be found in
Antiquities
18.116–19. King Aretas IV was the father of Antipas’s first wife, Phasaelis, whom
Antipas divorced in order to marry Herodias. It is unclear whether Antipas was exiled
to Spain, as Josephus states in
The Jewish War
2.183, or to Gaul, as he alleges in
Antiquities
18.252.

A catalogue of ablutions and water rituals in Jewish scripture and practice can be
found in R. L. Webb,
John the Baptizer and Prophet: A Socio-Historical Study
(Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 95–132. For more on the use of
water in Jewish conversion rituals, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Rabbinic Conversion
Ceremony,”
Journal of Jewish Studies
41 (1990): 177–203. There were a few notable individuals in first-century Palestine
who practiced ritual acts of immersion, most famously the ascetic known as Bannus,
who lived as a hermit in the desert and who bathed himself morning and night in cold
water as a means of ritual purification; see Josephus,
Life
2.11–12.

Josephus writes at length about the Essenes in both the
Antiquities
and
The Jewish War
, but the earliest evidence about the Essenes comes via Philo of Alexandria’s
Hypothetica
, written between 35 and 45
C.E
. Pliny the Elder also speaks of the Essenes in his
Natural History
, written circa 77
C.E
. It is Pliny who states that the Essenes lived near Engeddi, on the western shore
of the Dead Sea, although most scholars believe the Essenes were located at Qumran.
Pliny’s error may be due to the fact that he was writing after the war with Rome and
the destruction of Jerusalem, after which the Qumran site was abandoned. Nevertheless,
a huge debate has erupted among scholars over whether the community at Qumran was
in fact Essene. Norman Golb is perhaps the best-known scholar who rejects the Qumran
hypothesis. Golb views the Qumran site not as an Essene community but rather as a
Hasmonaean fortress. He believes that the documents found in the caves near Qumran—the
so-called Dead Sea Scrolls—were not written by the Essenes but brought there for safekeeping
from Jerusalem. See Norman Golb,
Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret Qumran
(New York: Scribner, 1995), and “The Problem of Origin and Identification of the
Dead Sea Scrolls,”
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
124 (1980): 1–24. Golb and his contemporaries make some valid points, and it must
be admitted that some of the documents found in the caves at Qumran were not written
by the Essenes and do not reflect Essene theology. The fact is that we cannot be certain
whether the Essenes lived at Qumran. That said, I agree with the great Frank Moore
Cross, who argued that the burden of proof rests not with those who connect the Essenes
with Qumran, but with those who do not. “The scholar who would ‘exercise caution’
in identifying the sect of Qumran with the Essenes places himself in an astonishing
position,” Moore writes; “he must suggest seriously that two major parties formed
communistic religious communities in the same district of the desert of the Dead Sea
and lived together in effect for two centuries, holding similar bizarre views, performing
similar or rather identical lustrations, ritual meals, and ceremonies. He must suppose
that one, carefully described by classical authors, disappeared without leaving building
remains or even potsherds behind: the other, systematically ignored by classical authors,
left extensive ruins, and indeed a great library. I prefer to be reckless and flatly
identify the men of Qumran with their perennial houseguest, the Essenes.” Frank Moore
Cross,
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 331–32. Everything you could
ever want to know and more about Essene purity rituals can be found in Ian C. Werrett,
Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls
(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007).

Among those who believe that John the Baptist was a member of the Essene community
are Otto Betz, “Was John the Baptist an Essene?”
Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls
, ed. Hershel Shanks (New York: Random House, 1992), 205–14;
W. H. Brownlee, “John the Baptist in the New Light of Ancient Scrolls,”
The Scrolls and the New Testament
, ed. Krister Stendahl (New York: Harper, 1957), 71–90; and J.A.T. Robinson, “The
Baptism of John and the Qumran Community: Testing a Hypothesis,”
Twelve New Testament Studies
(London: SCM Press, 1962), 11–27. Among those who disagree are H. H. Rowley, “The
Baptism of John and the Qumran Sect,”
New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of Thomas Walter Manson, 1893–1958
, ed. A.J.B. Higgins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 218–29; Bruce
D. Chilton,
Judaic Approaches to the Gospels
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 17–22; and Joan E. Taylor,
The Immerser: John the Baptist Within Second Temple Judaism
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997).

It should be noted that while Isaiah 40:3 was applied to both John and the Essenes,
there were important distinctions in the way the passage seems to have been interpreted
by both. For more on John’s possible childhood “in the wilderness,” see Jean Steinmann,
Saint John the Baptist and the Desert Tradition
(New York: Harper, 1958). Regardless of whether John was a member of the Essenes,
it is clear that there are a number of parallels between the two, including setting,
asceticism, priestly lineage, water immersion, and the sharing of property. Individually,
none of these parallels definitively proves a connection, but together they make a
strong case for certain affinities between the two that should not be easily dismissed.
In any case, John would not need to have been an actual member of the Essene community
to be influenced by their teachings and ideas, which were pretty well integrated into
the Jewish spirituality of the time.

Although it is never explicitly stated that John’s baptism was not meant to be repeated,
one can infer that to be the case for two reasons: first, because the baptism seems
to require an administrator, like John, as opposed to most other water rituals, which
were self-administered; and second, because John’s baptism assumes the imminent end
of the world, which would make its repetition somewhat difficult, to say the least.
See John Meier,
Marginal Jew
, vol. 2, 51.

John Meier makes a compelling case for accepting the historicity of the phrase “baptism
for the forgiveness of sins.” See
Marginal Jew
, vol. 2, 53–54. Josephus’s claim to the contrary can be found in
Antiquities
18.116. Robert L. Webb argues that John’s baptism was a “repentance-baptism which
functioned to initiate [the Jews] into the group of prepared people, the true Israel,”
meaning John did in fact form his own distinct sect; see
John the Baptizer and Prophet
, 197 and 364. Bruce Chilton completely dismantles Webb’s argument in “John the Purifier,”
203–20.

The heavenly affirmation “This is my son, the Beloved” is from Psalms 2:7, in which
God addresses David on the occasion of his enthronement as king in Jerusalem (Beloved
was David’s nickname). As John Meier rightly notes, this moment “does not mirror some
inner experience that Jesus had at the time; it mirrors the desire of the first-generation
Christian church to define Jesus as
soon as the primitive Gospel story begins—all the more so because this definition
was needed to counter the impression of Jesus’s subordination to John, implicit in
the tradition of the former being baptized by the latter.”
Marginal Jew
, vol. 2, 107.