In my previous post I provided an excerpt from Jesus Before the Gospels where I summarized the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry.”  Here is the second part of that two-part post, another excerpt, where I call this tradition into question, arguing that it cannot be right historically and that it must, therefore, represent a distorted memory.

“Memory,” of course, is not simply a recollection of what we ourselves experienced (what you had for dinner last night; the name of your first-grade teacher; etc.).  Memory involves anything that you “call back to mind” (the literal meaning of “remembering”).  It can be factual information (what is the capital of France?), even of something you haven’t experienced (e.g., if you have never been to Paris); it can be a shared understanding of a person from the past (Einstein; Karl Marx), even if you never met them.  And it can be a recollection of a past event even if you were not involved, such as the Triumphal Entry, to pick one example out of countless trillions.

Christians “remember” the event every Palm Sunday. But is the event itself an accurate memory?  Was there really a Triumphal Entry?

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The very broadest gist of this memory is no doubt true.  Jesus almost certainly came from Galilee to Jerusalem the final week of his life, and he must have entered the city one way or another.  But

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