The Life of Jesus Part 36

[Footnote 5: Tacitus (_Ann._, xv. 44) describes the death of Jesus as a political execution by Pontius Pilate. But at the epoch in which Tacitus wrote, the Roman policy toward the Christians was changed; they were held guilty of secretly conspiring against the state. It was natural that the Latin historian should believe that Pilate, in putting Jesus to death, had been actuated by a desire for the public safety. Josephus is much more exact (_Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.)]

An expedient suggested itself to the mind of the governor by which he could reconcile his own feelings with the demands of the fanatical people, whose pressure he had already so often felt. It was the custom to deliver a prisoner to the people at the time of the Pa.s.sover.

Pilate, knowing that Jesus had only been arrested in consequence of the jealousy of the priests,[1] tried to obtain for him the benefit of this custom. He appeared again upon the _bima_, and proposed to the mult.i.tude to release the "King of the Jews." The proposition made in these terms, though ironical, was characterized by a degree of liberality. The priests saw the danger of it. They acted promptly,[2]

and in order to combat the proposition of Pilate, they suggested to the crowd the name of a prisoner who enjoyed great popularity in Jerusalem. By a singular coincidence, he also was called Jesus,[3]

and bore the surname of Bar-Abba, or Bar-Rabban.[4] He was a well-known personage,[5] and had been arrested for taking part in an uproar in which murder had been committed.[6] A general clamor was raised, "Not this man; but Jesus Bar-Rabban;" and Pilate was obliged to release Jesus Bar-Rabban.

[Footnote 1: Mark xv. 10.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvii. 20; Mark xv. 11.]

[Footnote 3: The name of Jesus has disappeared in the greater part of the ma.n.u.scripts. This reading has, nevertheless, very great authorities in its favor.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvii. 16.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. St. Jerome. In Matt. xxvii. 16.]

[Footnote 6: Mark xv. 7; Luke xxiii. 19. John (xviii. 40), who makes him a robber, appears here too much further from the truth than Mark.]

His embarra.s.sment increased. He feared that too much indulgence shown to a prisoner, to whom was given the t.i.tle of "King of the Jews,"

might compromise him. Fanaticism, moreover, compels all powers to make terms with it. Pilate thought himself obliged to make some concession; but still hesitating to shed blood, in order to satisfy men whom he hated, wished to turn the thing into a jest. Affecting to laugh at the pompous t.i.tle they had given to Jesus, he caused him to be scourged.[1] Scourging was the general preliminary of crucifixion.[2]

Perhaps Pilate wished it to be believed that this sentence had already been p.r.o.nounced, hoping that the preliminary would suffice. Then took place (according to all the narratives) a revolting scene. The soldiers put a scarlet robe on his back, a crown formed of branches of thorns upon his head, and a reed in his hand. Thus attired, he was led to the tribunal in front of the people. The soldiers defiled before him, striking him in turn, and knelt to him, saying, "Hail! King of the Jews."[3] Others, it is said, spit upon him, and struck his head with the reed. It is difficult to understand how Roman dignity could stoop to acts so shameful. It is true that Pilate, in the capacity of procurator, had under his command scarcely any but auxiliary troops.[4] Roman citizens, as the legionaries were, would not have degraded themselves by such conduct.

[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 26; Mark xv. 15; John xix. 1.]

[Footnote 2: Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv. 9, V. xi. 1, VII. vi. 4; t.i.tus-Livy, x.x.xIII. 36; Quintus Curtius, VII. xi. 28.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 27, and following; Mark xv. 16, and following; Luke xxiii. 11; John xix. 2, and following.]

[Footnote 4: See _Inscript. Rom. of Algeria_, No. 5, fragm. B.]

Did Pilate think by this display that he freed himself from responsibility? Did he hope to turn aside the blow which threatened Jesus by conceding something to the hatred of the Jews,[1] and by subst.i.tuting for the tragic denouement a grotesque termination, to make it appear that the affair merited no other issue? If such were his idea, it was unsuccessful. The tumult increased, and became an open riot. The cry "Crucify him! crucify him!" resounded from all sides. The priests becoming increasingly urgent, declared the law in peril if the corrupter were not punished with death.[2] Pilate saw clearly that to save Jesus he would have to put down a terrible disturbance. He still tried, however, to gain time. He returned to the judgment-hall, and ascertained from what country Jesus came, with the hope of finding a pretext for declaring his inability to adjudicate.[3] According to one tradition, he even sent Jesus to Antipas, who, it is said, was then at Jerusalem.[4] Jesus took no part in these well-meant efforts; he maintained, as he had done before Kaapha, a grave and dignified silence, which astonished Pilate. The cries from without became more and more menacing. The people had already begun to denounce the lack of zeal in the functionary who protected an enemy of Caesar. The greatest adversaries of the Roman rule were suddenly transformed into loyal subjects of Tiberius, that they might have the right of accusing the too tolerant procurator of treason. "We have no king," said they, "but Caesar. If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar."[5] The feeble Pilate yielded; he foresaw the report that his enemies would send to Rome, in which they would accuse him of having protected a rival of Tiberius. Once before, in the matter of the votive escutcheons,[6] the Jews had written to the emperor, and had received satisfaction. He feared for his office. By a compliance, which was to deliver his name to the scorn of history, he yielded, throwing, it is said, upon the Jews all the responsibility of what was about to happen. The latter, according to the Christians, fully accepted it, by exclaiming, "His blood be on us and on our children!"[7]

[Footnote 1: Luke xxiii. 16, 22.]

[Footnote 2: John xix. 7.]

[Footnote 3: John xix. 9. Cf. Luke xxiii. 6, and following.]

[Footnote 4: It is probable that this is a first attempt at a "Harmony of the Gospels." Luke must have had before him a narrative in which the death of Jesus was erroneously attributed to Herod. In order not to sacrifice this version entirely he must have combined the two traditions. What makes this more likely is, that he probably had a vague knowledge that Jesus (as John teaches us) appeared before three authorities. In many other cases, Luke seems to have a remote idea of the facts which are peculiar to the narration of John. Moreover, the third Gospel contains in its history of the Crucifixion a series of additions which the author appears to have drawn from a more recent doc.u.ment, and which had evidently been arranged with a special view to edification.]

[Footnote 5: John xix. 12, 15. Cf. Luke xxiii. 2. In order to appreciate the exact.i.tude of the description of this scene in the evangelists, see Philo, _Leg. ad Caium_, -- 38.]

[Footnote 6: See _ante_, p. 351.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. xxvii. 24, 25.]

Were these words really uttered? We may doubt it. But they are the expression of a profound historical truth. Considering the att.i.tude which the Romans had taken in Judea, Pilate could scarcely have acted otherwise. How many sentences of death dictated by religious intolerance have been extorted from the civil power! The king of Spain, who, in order to please a fanatical clergy, delivered hundreds of his subjects to the stake, was more blameable than Pilate, for he represented a more absolute power than that of the Romans at Jerusalem. When the civil power becomes persecuting or meddlesome at the solicitation of the priesthood, it proves its weakness. But let the government that is without sin in this respect throw the first stone at Pilate. The "secular arm," behind which clerical cruelty shelters itself, is not the culprit. No one has a right to say that he has a horror of blood when he causes it to be shed by his servants.

It was, then, neither Tiberius nor Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic Law. According to our modern ideas, there is no transmission of moral demerit from father to son; no one is accountable to human or divine justice except for that which he himself has done. Consequently, every Jew who suffers to-day for the murder of Jesus has a right to complain, for he might have acted as did Simon the Cyrenean; at any rate, he might not have been with those who cried "Crucify him!" But nations, like individuals, have their responsibilities, and if ever crime was the crime of a nation, it was the death of Jesus. This death was "legal" in the sense that it was primarily caused by a law which was the very soul of the nation.

The Mosaic law, in its modern, but still in its accepted form, p.r.o.nounced the penalty of death against all attempts to change the established worship. Now, there is no doubt that Jesus attacked this worship, and aspired to destroy it. The Jews expressed this to Pilate with a truthful simplicity: "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die; because he has made himself the Son of G.o.d."[1] The law was detestable, but it was the law of ancient ferocity; and the hero who offered himself in order to abrogate it, had first of all to endure its penalty.

[Footnote 1: John xix. 7.]

Alas! it has required more than eighteen hundred years for the blood that he shed to bear its fruits. Tortures and death have been inflicted for ages in the name of Jesus, on thinkers as n.o.ble as himself. Even at the present time, in countries which call themselves Christian, penalties are p.r.o.nounced for religious offences. Jesus is not responsible for these errors. He could not foresee that people, with mistaken imaginations, would one day imagine him as a frightful Moloch, greedy of burnt flesh. Christianity has been intolerant, but intolerance is not essentially a Christian fact. It is a Jewish fact in the sense that it was Judaism which first introduced the theory of the absolute in religion, and laid down the principle that every innovator, even if he brings miracles to support his doctrine, ought to be stoned without trial.[1] The pagan world has also had its religious violences. But if it had had this law, how would it have become Christian? The Pentateuch has thus been in the world the first code of religious terrorism. Judaism has given the example of an immutable dogma armed with the sword. If, instead of pursuing the Jews with a blind hatred, Christianity had abolished the regime which killed its founder, how much more consistent would it have been!--how much better would it have deserved of the human race!

[Footnote 1: _Deut._ xiii. 1, and following.]

CHAPTER XXV.

DEATH OF JESUS.

Although the real motive for the death of Jesus was entirely religious, his enemies had succeeded, in the judgment-hall, in representing him as guilty of treason against the state; they could not have obtained from the sceptical Pilate a condemnation simply on the ground of heterodoxy. Consistently with this idea, the priests demanded, through the people, the crucifixion of Jesus. This punishment was not Jewish in its origin; if the condemnation of Jesus had been purely Mosaic, he would have been stoned.[1] Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, reserved for slaves, and for cases in which it was wished to add to death the aggravation of ignominy. In applying it to Jesus, they treated him as they treated highway robbers, brigands, bandits, or those enemies of inferior rank to whom the Romans did not grant the honor of death by the sword.[2] It was the chimerical "King of the Jews," not the heterodox dogmatist, who was punished. Following out the same idea, the execution was left to the Romans. We know that amongst the Romans, the soldiers, their profession being to kill, performed the office of executioners. Jesus was therefore delivered to a cohort of auxiliary troops, and all the most hateful features of executions introduced by the cruel habits of the new conquerors, were exhibited toward him. It was about noon.[3] They re-clothed him with the garments which they had removed for the farce enacted at the tribunal, and as the cohort had already in reserve two thieves who were to be executed, the three prisoners were taken together, and the procession set out for the place of execution.

[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 1. The Talmud, which represents the condemnation of Jesus as entirely religious, declares, in fact, that he was stoned; or, at least, that after having been hanged, he was stoned, as often happened (Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, vi. 4.) Talmud of Jerusalem, _Sanhedrim_, xiv. 16. Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 43 _a_, 67 _a_.]

[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVII. x. 10, XX. vi. 2; _B.J._, V. xi. 1; Apuleius, _Metam._, iii. 9; Suetonius, _Galba_, 9; Lampridius, _Alex.

Sev._, 23.]

[Footnote 3: John xix. 14. According to Mark xv. 25, it could scarcely have been eight o'clock in the morning, since that evangelist relates that Jesus was crucified at nine o'clock.]

The scene of the execution was at a place called Golgotha, situated outside Jerusalem, but near the walls of the city.[1] The name _Golgotha_ signifies a _skull_; it corresponds with the French word _Chaumont_, and probably designated a bare hill or rising ground, having the form of a bald skull. The situation of this hill is not precisely known. It was certainly on the north or northwest of the city, in the high, irregular plain which extends between the walls and the two valleys of Kedron and Hinnom,[2] a rather uninteresting region, and made still worse by the objectionable circ.u.mstances arising from the neighborhood of a great city. It is difficult to identify Golgotha as the precise place which, since Constantine, has been venerated by entire Christendom.[3] This place is too much in the interior of the city, and we are led to believe that, in the time of Jesus, it was comprised within the circuit of the walls.[4]

[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 33; Mark xv. 22; John xix. 20; _Heb._ xiii.

12.]

[Footnote 2: Golgotha, in fact, seems not entirely unconnected with the hill of Gareb and the locality of Goath, mentioned in Jeremiah x.x.xi. 39. Now, these two places appear to have been at the northwest of the city. I should incline to fix the place where Jesus was crucified near the extreme corner which the existing wall makes toward the west, or perhaps upon the mounds which command the valley of Hinnom, above _Birket-Mamilla_.]

[Footnote 3: The proofs by which it has been attempted to establish that the Holy Sepulchre has been displaced since Constantine are not very strong.]

[Footnote 4: M. de Vogue has discovered, about 83 yards to the east of the traditional site of Calvary, a fragment of a Jewish wall a.n.a.logous to that of Hebron, which, if it belongs to the inclosure of the time of Jesus, would leave the above-mentioned site outside the city. The existence of a sepulchral cave (that which is called "Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea"), under the wall of the cupola of the Holy Sepulchre, would also lead to the supposition that this place was outside the walls. Two historical considerations, one of which is rather strong, may, moreover, be invoked in favor of the tradition. The first is, that it would be singular if those, who, under Constantine, sought to determine the topography of the Gospels, had not hesitated in the presence of the objection which results from _John_ xix. 20, and from _Heb._ xiii. 12. Why, being free to choose, should they have wantonly exposed themselves to so grave a difficulty? The second consideration is, that they might have had to guide them, in the time of Constantine, the remains of an edifice, the temple of Venus on Golgotha, erected by Adrian. We are, then, at times led to believe that the work of the devout topographers of the time of Constantine was earnest and sincere, that they sought for indications, and that, though they might not refrain from certain pious frauds, they were guided by a.n.a.logies. If they had merely followed a vain caprice, they might have placed Golgotha in a more conspicuous situation, at the summit of some of the neighboring hills about Jerusalem, in accordance with the Christian imagination, which very early thought that the death of Christ had taken place on a mountain. But the difficulty of the inclosures is very serious. Let us add, that the erection of a temple of Venus on Golgotha proves little. Eusebius (_Vita Const._, iii. 26), Socrates (_H.E._, i. 17), Sozomen (_H.E._, ii. 1), St.

Jerome (_Epist._ xlix., ad Paulin.), say, indeed, that there was a sanctuary of Venus on the site which they imagined to be that of the holy tomb; but it is not certain that Adrian had erected it; or that he had erected it in a place which was in his time called "Golgotha"; or that he had intended to erect it at the place where Jesus had suffered death.]

He who was condemned to the cross, had himself to carry the instrument of his execution.[1] But Jesus, physically weaker than his two companions, could not carry his. The troop met a certain Simon of Cyrene, who was returning from the country, and the soldiers, with the off-hand procedure of foreign garrisons, forced him to carry the fatal tree. Perhaps they made use of a recognized right of forcing labor, the Romans not being allowed to carry the infamous wood. It seems that Simon was afterward of the Christian community. His two sons, Alexander and Rufus,[2] were well known in it. He related perhaps more than one circ.u.mstance of which he had been witness. No disciple was at this moment near to Jesus.[3]

[Footnote 1: Plutarch, _De Sera Num. Vind._, 19; Artemidorus, _Onirocrit._, ii. 56.]

[Footnote 2: Mark xv. 21.]

[Footnote 3: The circ.u.mstance, Luke xxiii. 27-31, is one of those in which we are sensible of the work of a pious and loving imagination.

The words which are there attributed to Jesus could only have been written after the siege of Jerusalem.]

The place of execution was at last reached. According to Jewish custom, the sufferers were offered a strong aromatic wine, an intoxicating drink, which, through a sentiment of pity, was given to the condemned in order to stupefy him.[1] It appears that the ladies of Jerusalem often brought this kind of wine to the unfortunates who were led to execution; when none was presented by them, it was purchased from the public treasury.[2] Jesus, after having touched the edge of the cup with his lips, refused to drink.[3] This mournful consolation of ordinary sufferers did not accord with his exalted nature. He preferred to quit life with perfect clearness of mind, and to await in full consciousness the death he had willed and brought upon himself. He was then divested of his garments,[4] and fastened to the cross. The cross was composed of two beams, tied in the form of the letter T.[5] It was not much elevated, so that the feet of the condemned almost touched the earth. They commenced by fixing it,[6]

then they fastened the sufferer to it by driving nails into his hands; the feet were often nailed, though sometimes only bound with cords.[7]

A piece of wood was fastened to the upright portion of the cross, toward the middle, and pa.s.sed between the legs of the condemned, who rested upon it.[8] Without that, the hands would have been torn and the body would have sunk down. At other times, a small horizontal rest was fixed beneath the feet, and sustained them.[9]