But we can scarcely understand the unerring purpose of the Jerusalem temple aristocracy in seeking Jesus’ crucifixion without considering the background in Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which is about the burial of those who are executed. It is presupposed that, after their execution, they will be hanged on a pole (as a warning?). The law in Deuteronomy 21:22-23 says that the bodies of those who are hanged in this way may not remain overnight but should be buried on the same day. In this context it is said that “anyone hanging on a tree is under God’s curse.” That sentence from Torah was already applied by pre-Christian Judaism to those who were crucified. As the “Temple Scroll” found at Qumran shows, the statement “anyone hanging on a tree is under God’s curse” was applied to the crucifixion of Jews who betrayed their people to a foreign nation and brought evil upon them.18 It must therefore have seemed appealing to the Council to have Jesus crucified with the help of the Roman occupying power as someone who was leading the people astray and corrupting them.
From this point of view the Passover festival with its masses of pilgrims represented an uncomfortable obstacle to having Jesus seized by the police, but on the positive side it offered the opportunity to expose Jesus publicly before assembled Israel as someone cursed by God. For once Jesus was hanging on the cross it would be obvious: God could by no means be behind a man like that.
All these strategies show that Jesus had fallen between the millstones of powers much stronger than he who (like Pilate) wanted nothing to do with any question of truth or who (like the Sanhedrin) saw it as their religious duty to expose Jesus and get rid of him. But were they really stronger than he? The Jerusalem temple aristocracy who condemned him have vanished from history. Jesus has not vanished. He started an unimaginable movement. He changed the world and goes on changing it. All those who have tried to get rid of him have been wrecked in the attempt. Their project continually turns into its opposite.
The Question of Guilt
Those who seek to reconstruct what happened on Jesus’ last day cannot avoid the question of guilt. They cannot be content to note, coolly and clinically, what took place in Jerusalem on that day. They must think about the guilt of the Council and that of Pilate but also the guilt of all those who had encountered Jesus, since his appearance in Galilee, with unbelief, skepticism, or indifference. And they must reflect on the guilt of Jesus’ disciples, who left him in the lurch and fled.
It will be clear to those who have read this book to this point that it is not intended to argue an anti-Jewish cause, certainly not to sow hatred against the Jews. Sadly, there has been such hatred in Christianity, a horrifying mass of it, throughout the centuries. But there can be no talk of any kind of collective guilt on the part of Israel, and even if there were such a thing the Christian response would have to have been completely different.
In reflecting on Jesus’ death we must also refuse to simplify things the way the old passion plays did: here the Holy One, there the evil ones! Instead, we must assume that there were many among Jesus’ opponents who desired nothing but to follow their consciences. The depth of the conflict with Jesus is not simply apparent from the fact that the general public here acted against the good—although, of course, one must always take the possibility into account. There is a kind of lust for evil, and it would be na
It appears that the Sanhedrin thought they had to defend the temple, the Torah, and the people against Jesus. But Jesus had not questioned the temple, the Torah, or the people of God. He did want to gather Israel together so that it might finally become what it was intended to be in the eyes of God. And he did not destroy the Torah but interpreted it radically in terms of God’s will. He wanted the temple to finally become what the prophets had longed for: a place of true worship of God in whose forecourt even the Gentiles could worship. Certainly, behind all that lay the claim that the fulfillment of the Torah had arrived in his own person and that where he lived out the reign of God with his followers “something greater than the temple” (Matt 12:6) was present. Israel, and with it the Sanhedrin, were faced with this tremendous claim.
This makes it clear that the question of the guilt of Jesus’ opponents is much more complex than it at first appears. For if all this is true, then it is a conflict we all face and in which we all must find ourselves guilty: we too constantly hear God’s true claim, fully evident in Jesus, but we cover it up with our own ideas, habits, and convenience and so shove it out of the world. Therefore an examination of the passion of Jesus cannot be about diluting or downplaying the guilt of Jesus’ opponents. On the contrary: it is about uncovering the depths of that guilt, because that is how we will uncover the guilt of us all.
Chapter 18
The Easter Events
This book is about Jesus’ public life: What did he do? What did he want? Who was he? Is it even permissible to introduce the Easter events into this context? Shouldn’t we stop with Jesus’ death? Doesn’t something completely different begin with his resurrection—something that can only be grasped in faith?
Such questions are urgent, and yet they only partly touch the reality of Jesus, since ultimately his activities in Galilee and later in Jerusalem can also be understood only by faith. Nevertheless, those matters have to be examined historically. In the same way, Jesus’ resurrection belongs to the realm of faith, and yet theology, insofar as it works historically, may and must ask: what really happened among Jesus’ followers after Good Friday? How can we understand the phenomenon that they first separated and then came back together again? How can we explain that, despite the catastrophe of Good Friday, they suddenly became a community? That was anything but a matter of course. It was evidently connected to the Easter faith. But how did that Easter faith come to be? And what did it look like in the concrete?
The events after Jesus’ death are certainly part of his “life.” Without those events he still could not be understood, even if we reconstructed only the external sequence. And within the imponderable history of Jesus’ actions, which still goes on, these first days and weeks are a time of special focus. It is this particular period after Good Friday that the present chapter attempts to grasp.
The Flight of the Disciples
The evangelist Mark does not make the slightest attempt to conceal the dreadful loneliness in which Jesus’ life ended. Judas Iscariot, one of the group of the Twelve, handed him over; he made Jesus’ nighttime arrest possible. Then, when Jesus was taken into custody, all the disciples left him and fled (Mark 14:50). Only Peter followed at a distance, to the court of the high priest’s house. Then he too left Jesus in the lurch—after having denied him. According to Mark, not one of the men from the group of disciples was present at the crucifixion, but some women from among Jesus’ followers watched from a distance (Mark 15:40-41).
Jesus’ burial was carried out, as we have seen, by Joseph of Arimathea, a Jesus sympathizer but not a member of the group of disciples (Mark 15:42-46). According to Mark, the Twelve took no part in the events at the empty tomb.1 The oldest tradition associates those events exclusively with the women, especially Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:1-8).