Murder at Golgotha Read online

  We can be sure the day of the meal was a Thursday. But the testimonies differ frustratingly concerning whether the occasion being celebrated was a full Seder, the annual Jewish family get-together on which they ate unleavened bread the night before the actual day of Passover proper, or whether it was a more ordinary preliminary meal. According to the Matthew, Mark, and Luke versions of the story, it was the Seder meal, which would mean that Jesus' killing, which definitely took place the day following the Last Supper, occurred on Passover itself. While this undoubtedly makes for some beautiful "sacrificial lamb" symbolism, Jewish scholars convincingly insist this would be very unlikely historically, in view of so many Jewish religious sensitivities associated with the Passover day proper. Furthermore, the John testimony, which appears to be particularly strong with regard to the Passion Week events in Jerusalem, differs from the other three in being quite emphatic that the day of Passover was the day immediately after Jesus' killing, the Sabbath.

  Whatever the true timing in relation to Passover, the events following the end of the meal have been clearly established. Judas was obviously unmoved by Jesus' demonstration of humility, and it was in the immediate aftermath of this occasion that he acted on his plan to help the High Priests arrest Jesus. He may have been helped by a simple matter of geography. He needed to find Caiaphas quickly, and a possible house where Caiaphas may have lived lay on the same Mount Zion hill, only a few yards from the very house in which we have theorized the Last Supper to have been held. Judas had only to slip away from the rest of the group, tell the High Priests that he knew where Jesus and his disciples would be sleeping overnight—a quiet, isolated spot where Jesus could be arrested with the least chance of resistance— lead a party of the Temple security guard to this place, identify which of the sleepers was Jesus, and then leave the rest to them.

  Exactly as Judas expected, when Jesus and his disciples left the house of the Last Supper they strolled eastward along the line of the city walls, dropping down into the Kedron Valley before a short climb to some higher ground that everyone of the time knew as Gethsemane, literally, the "place of the olive press." Located on the Mount of Olives, en route between Jerusalem and Bethany, this has long been assumed to have been just a garden, one in which the disciples slept out in the open. And certainly Mel Gibson envisaged it as such in the very haunting opening scene of his Passion movie. But was this scenario correct?

  *—Is this how Jesus partook of the Last Supper? In contradiction of Leonardo daVinci's famous painting of the Last Supper, which depicts Jesus and his disciples seated at a long table, the original Greek of the Luke testimony describes the room used by Jesus and his disciples as "furnished with couches." This indicates that Jesus and his disciples would have dined while reclining on such couches, which was a widespread custom among the peoples of the time. This is particularly clearly illustrated by the couple portrayed in the Etruscan statue (shown above), which is preserved in Rome.

  The difficulty for such an idea is that with the time of the year being around late March, and Jerusalem at an elevation of some twenty-five hundred feet, it would have been distinctly chilly for anyone to sleep overnight out in the open on cold, hard ground. The testimonies specifically mention fires being lit, even in the relatively sheltered courtyards of the High Priests' houses. And the testimonies make clear that the group that Jesus had brought to Jerusalem with him included his mother and her sister, women who can hardly have been younger than their fifties.

  Thanks to some assiduous recent research by New Zealand scholar Joan Taylor, we now know that the real Gethsemane, while it included a garden, also included shelter in the form of a large cave that has been located some seventy yards north of what today the guidebooks still call the Garden of Gethsemane. This cave would have been a busy place every autumn, when olives were brought into it for pressing after being gathered from the surrounding groves. During the spring, however, well before the olives' ripening, it would have lain empty and idle. It would therefore have provided an ideal overnight shelter for Jesus and those accompanying him. Also, of course, an ideal place for him to be cornered and arrested with the least chance of escape.

  We understand from the testimonies that Jesus did not immediately settle down in the cave for the night, but asked three of his disciples to stay awake with him outside in the garden while he prayed. Three times after his becoming absorbed in his own characteristically intense private prayers, he returned to find them fast asleep. He'd noticed earlier that Judas had slipped away, and clearly cognizant of the harrowing ordeal that awaited him, he could not hide his deep emotional distress.

  So why was he so distressed? As he was deeply aware, the culmination of his whole mission as Messiah had come. He had to fulfill the prophecies by dying the most degrading and harrowing of deaths. The testimony of Luke, thought by many to derive from a physician, describes this "agony in the garden" manifesting in some overt physical symptoms:

  In his anguish he prayed even more earnestly, and his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. (Luke 22:44)

  Is there any way that a man could indeed "sweat blood"? According to the veteran New York medical examiner Frederick Zugibe, who has taken a great deal of interest in this description, Jesus was experiencing a classic "fight or flight" reaction. After a rush of adrenalin which would have caused his heart rate to increase, his blood vessels would have first constricted, and then dilated. This would have sent blood sugar levels soaring. He would have panted to increase his oxygen intake. This would have been followed by extreme physical tiredness, then exhausted resignation. His heart rate would have slowed, accompanied by sweating. As the blood rushed back into the capillaries close to the sweat glands these would have ruptured, generating great drops of sweat mixed with blood. Medically termed haeniatodrosis, this is readily recognizable as what Jesus was experiencing. So we have no reason to doubt the Luke testimony that "his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood."

  As was soon evident in the arrival of Judas at the head of a strong force of guards, "all with lanterns and torches and weapons" (John 18:3) sent by the Temple priests, there was nothing imaginary about Jesus' fears. Even at this late hour there must have been some accompanying senior Temple functionary for Jesus reportedly to have very pointedly remarked:

  Am I a bandit that you had to set out with swords and clubs? When I was among you in the Temple day after day you never made a move to lay hands on me. But this is your hour; this is the reign of darkness. (Luke 22:53)

  Our victim made no attempt to resist arrest, and positively forbade his disciples from making any attempt to defend him. He was led meekly away.

  Do we have any idea of what Judas Iscariot expected to gain from his act of betrayal? On the face of it, thirty pieces of silver. A sizable sum, probably today equivalent to several thousand dollars. But he seems not to have thought out the consequences of his being successful, and certainly the money did him no good. There are two versions of his fate, neither of them of the "happily ever after" variety. The first, in the Acts of the Apostles, thought to have been written by Luke as a continuation of his testimony, relates that with the money he purchased a plot of land. One day he "fell forward on the ground, and burst open, so that his entrails poured out," after which the plot became known as the Akeldama, or Field of Blood. The second version, recorded by Matthew, describes him feeling so guilty over the enormity of what he had done that he returned the silver to the chief priests, then committed suicide. This left a problem for the priests, for effectively the money had become tainted as "blood money." It could no longer be returned to the coffers of the Temple, so was used to buy a plot of land which became known as the Potters Field in which foreigners were to be buried. Whichever is correct, certainly there was an area of the Hinnom Valley used for burials up until the seventeenth century.

  Meanwhile, all the terrors that had so filled our victim's mind during his prayers were about to be unleashed for real. . . .

  5


  The First Interrogation

  Our VICTIM was now firmly bound and in the custody of professional guards, his life's very last minutes of freedom at an end. While today we calculate from midnight as the start of a new day, first-century Jews calculated each day as from nightfall to nightfall. So, at whatever time of the evening Jesus was arrested, the Friday had already begun, with the Sabbath—and none other than a Passover Sabbath—due to begin with the appearance of the first star around sunset. In the interests of justice, it might therefore have been expected that Jesus would be kept in prison during the Passover festivities. As he had earlier been openly preaching in the Temple, he was hardly a dangerous terrorist. So a proper trial and sentencing could surely have waited until the festival was over. Yet, as the subsequent chain of events made clear, Jesus' captors, now that they had their quarry in their power, were insistent on moving things along in fast-track mode. They wanted him off their hands—and out of the way for good—as quickly and as secretly as possible.

  Where was our victim taken? All the testimonies agree that the guards who arrested Jesus led him to the chief priests' residence for immediate, overnight interrogation. As we have already seen, this may have stood on the very same Mount Zion also occupied by the Last Supper house, where we believe Jesus ate his last meal. An alternative is a house known as the "Burnt House," where Israeli archaeologists found the remains of much fine furniture, and ritual baths as those used by priests. This and another candidate, the Palatial Mansion, were located a couple of hundred yards closer to the Temple, and inside the city walls in the southwestern sector of the city. This would therefore have involved a shorter journey. Either way, for part of the journey Jesus would have been hustled back along the very same path that he had walked in freedom with his disciples little more than a couple of hours before.

  How was the interrogation conducted? According to the Matthew, Mark, and Luke testimonies, not only the High Priest Caiaphas, but the whole Sanhedrin, the Jews' equivalent of the Senate, were involved in the sometimes violent and abusive interrogation that ensued overnight that same night. And just such a full assembly of the Sanhedrin, hungry for Jesus' blood, has been portrayed in Mel Gibson's movie Passion of the Christ, one that has certainly not helped the anti-Semitism criticisms that the movie has received.

  However, as some very sound Jewish scholars have pointed out, the Sanhedrin comprised seventy-one members. These were respected elders of the community, including Pharisees, many of them inevitably getting on in years. Though the High Priest was certainly their chairman, it was unheard of for them to meet at night, particularly at a time when there was no special emergency. It is therefore highly unlikely that Caiaphas would ever have sent messengers around Jerusalem, getting all these individuals out of their beds to question a man who had been readily accessible in the Temple throughout the previous week.

  In respect to these events, whoever provided the John testimony again appears to have been better informed than the authors of the other three versions. John describes Jesus as being taken bound first to Annas, the former High Priest and father-in-law to the current High Priest, Caiaphas, then on to Caiaphas himself, both of these individuals seemingly living on the same premises. This same testimony makes absolutely no mention of any assembling of the Sanhedrin, and it is not impossible that such mentions in the Matthew, Mark, and Luke testimonies were anti-Semitic scribal additions to later manuscript copies of these gospels.

  Was Jesus left on his own to face his accusers? Although most of Jesus' disciples appear to have run off when he was arrested, all four testimonies describe the fisherman Simon Peter as having been one of two disciples who boldly followed the guards who hurried Jesus to the High Priest's mansion. The John testimony is particularly interesting and authoritative on this episode because it describes the second, unnamed disciple as an individual "known to the High Priest" (John 18:15) and thereby able to gain entry inside the mansion to witness the proceedings. There is quite a possibility that he was the 'John' author himself. Whoever he was, he was sufficiently "in" with the high priestly circles so that he persuaded the guards at the door to allow Peter to come inside with him to listen to the High Priests interrogating Jesus (John 18:16). From John's ongoing description, the area where this was happening would appear to have been an open courtyard, with blazing braziers providing light and warmth, and various servants and guards standing around. And it was just such accepted bystander status in "enemy" surroundings that would put Peter's nerve to a test in a manner that Jesus himself had all too poignantly predicted. As the John testimony relates:

  The girl on duty at the door said to Peter, "Aren't you another of that man's disciples?"

  Warming himself, standing only a few yards from where Jesus was on trial for his life, Peter emphatically denied any such association. "I am not."

  As the proceedings continued, Peter answered another two challenges that he was a disciple of Jesus with similarly firm denials, the final of these being at the same time that a cock crowed heralding the dawn. Consumed as Peter was by fear, for him the heart-wrenchingly uncanny aspect of this seemingly "normal" bird sound was that only hours earlier, as he and Jesus had been walking back from the house of the Last Supper, he had solemnly assured Jesus that he would never ever disown him. And Jesus had equally solemnly pronounced:

  In truth I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will have disowned me three times. (Matthew 26:34)

  Is there likely to be any truth to this scene? It is this sort of story, of Peter, the "Rock," later to be the first Pope, portrayed in such a shameful light at the very start of Jesus' sufferings, which speaks volumes for the four testimonies being closely based on true happenings. People tend not to invent stories that are against themselves unless that was really what happened. That is exactly what we have here. And we must also infer that only Peter himself, or that unnamed other disciple "known to the priest," could possibly have been in a position to be able to pass the story down to us. In the case of this part of the John testimony, we seem to have as near eyewitness reporting as possible.

  This said, the Matthew, Mark, and Luke testimonies— which also include versions of Peter's denial—actually provide more of what transpired between Jesus and his two priestly accusers than does John. Although Jesus had first been brought before veteran High Priest Annas, the key player in the drama has to have been his son-in-law Caiaphas. As noted earlier, Caiaphas had been holding the High Priest office from A.D. 18, and he would therefore have been thoroughly confident of the power that he was able to wield over this tiresome Galilean upstart who had dared challenge the way he ran things at "his" Temple.

  What do we know about this Caiaphas? Thanks to some recent Israeli archaeological findings, there has been a tantalizingly close opportunity to put a face to the man. In 1990 Israeli workmen were building a new water park, just south of Old City Jerusalem, when they came across a cave containing a series of stone ossuaries, or bone boxes that, because of their high craftsmanship, can be securely dated synchronous to Herod's Temple, that is from circa 30 B.C. to A.D. 70. One of these ossuaries clearly bore in inscribed Hebrew letters the name "Yehosef bar Qayafa," that is, Joseph son of Qayafa, the Jewish rendering of Caiaphas's name. Inside the box the archaeologists who had been called in found the bones of four children and an adult woman, together with those of a man aged about sixty.

  This latter skeleton was readily consistent with Caiaphas's age at the time that he died. Frustratingly, almost anywhere other than in Israel archaeologists would have been allowed to call upon the latest scientific techniques of making a facial reconstruction from the skull. We would thereby have been able to "see" the face of the man confronting Jesus in a totally real way, as distinct from the fictional representation in the Gibson Passion movie. But in Israel ultra-orthodox extremists insist on the immediate reburial of any ancient human remains, so no such reconstruction was possible in this instance.

  In support of the argument that Cai
aphas did not summon the full Sanhedrin to his house that night, it is surely pertinent that only his father-in-law Annas is named as having some additional say in the interrogation. The only other individuals playing an active, indeed, rather overactive, role were the priestly establishment's guards, whose duties standing in the background seem to have extended beyond mere protection. Anytime that Jesus made a pertinent point, such as protesting how openly he had taught in the Temple and the synagogues, the guards reportedly stepped in to administer a corrective beating:

  At these [Jesus'] words one of the guards standing by gave Jesus a slap in the face, saying "Is that the way that you answer the High Priest?" (John 18:22)