Even though the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem almost certainly could not have happened as described (see previous post), they clearly contain some elements of historical truth.  This is often the case with the Gospels and with other historical narratives that have come down to us from antiquity. The task of the historian is to determine what is invention, what exaggeration, and what is (more or less) historical.

With respect to the historical elements, the following seem reasonably secure (even some of these, of course, can be debated, but in my judgment the evidence for them is overwhelming):

• Jesus did come from Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate a Passover Feast, sometime around 30-33 CE (the year is much debated);
• While there he preached his message to anyone who would listen (it seems unlikely it was “the masses” but it could well have been small crowds);
• He offended the local Jewish authorities;
• At the end of the week they arranged to have him arrested;
• He was turned over to the governor Pontius Pilate;
• Pilate had him crucified for calling himself the King of the Jews.

I want to show how accepting this much as historical helps explain in what sense Jesus was a “revolutionary” and why Roman authorities executed him.  The fuller picture requires some background:

Jesus’ principal message during his ministry in our earliest Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is that the Kingdom of God was soon to come; this would entail a day of judgment in which a divine emissary – the Son of Man – would come from heaven to destroy all God’s enemies (Roman, Jewish, or whatever) and establish a new order here on earth.  This kingdom would be ruled by one appointed by God.  This future king was to be the “messiah,” i.e., the “anointed one” (a virtual synonym for “King of Israel”).  And – this is the key point – Jesus appears to have believed it would be he, himself.

There are compelling reasons for thinking Jesus saw himself as the future king.  Most obvious is that he was executed precisely for making that claim (attested repeatedly).  Moreover, we have multiple accounts in various sources of him either admitting or telling it to his disciples.  In addition, some of these sayings are phrased in ways that almost certainly show they were not invented by later Christian story tellers after the fact.

A good instance is the Q saying in which Jesus informs the twelve disciples that in the future kingdom “you will be seated on twelve thrones ruling the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt 19:28).  It is very difficult to imagine a later Christian inventing this prediction.  It was common knowledge that Judas Iscariot – one of the twelve – would be the betrayer.  Surely (in the later Christian view) Jesus would not have included Judas among the future twelve co-regents in the kingdom.  This saying indicates he would be, making highly likely to be something Jesus himself said (not knowing how the week in Jerusalem would play out).

If Jesus expected the kingdom to come “soon” (as he repeatedly says), and if he thought he would be the ruler of this kingdom, and if the disciples believed him and expected they would be co-rulers; then it makes sense that the trip to Jerusalem was in anticipation of the coming kingdom in which Jesus would rule.  The crowds of Jewish pilgrims would not have known this was Jesus’ view, and certainly would not have publicly acclaimed it (see previous post), but the followers of Jesus – the disciples and the group of women who came with them – did.  And they, along with Jesus himself, may well have seen his entry into Jerusalem as the arrival of the future king.

Jesus wasn’t arrested right away because he and his small band were simply part of the hundreds or thousands of people coming into town just then, and no one took any notice of them.  But as he was publicly active over the next few days, word got out.  Rumors started circulating.  After some days, the leaders of Jerusalem (who as a rule were not mingling with the hoi polloi and hearing their rumors and gossip) eventually learned about it.  And they took steps to deal with it.  Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed.  Precisely for calling himself the messiah.  But he did not mean what the rulers thought he must have meant.

For Jesus, this was (what we would call) a “religious” view.  Jesus believed that God would intervene in history to destroy his enemies and set up a new kingdom on earth over which Jesus would reign.  This would be God’s doing – not Jesus’s, his disciples’, or the Jewish masses.  Jesus did not come into the city to foment a rebellion.  He did not support insurrection.  He did not raise an army.  He came in anticipation of a divine act to end the current age as we know it and to initiate a new beginning in which he would be king.

Neither the Jewish leaders nor the Roman governor were particularly interested in this kind of apocalyptic theology.  When they heard “messiah”/“future king” they heard “insurrection.”

That indeed is how most Jews who thought about a messiah (if they thought about it at all) would have thought about it:  the future savior-king would be a descendant of David who, like his ancestor a millennium before, destroyed God’s enemies with the sword and ruled Israel as a sovereign state.

We have clear indications of this expectation in Jewish texts of the time outside the Bible.  One of the most striking is from a Jewish pseudepigraphon called the Psalms of Solomon, roughly contemporaneous with Jesus’ life: 

21 See, Lord, and raise up for them their king,
the son of David, to rule over your servant Israel
in the time known to you, O God.

22 Undergird him with the strength to destroy the unrighteous rulers,
to purge Jerusalem from gentiles
who trample her to destruction;

23 in wisdom and in righteousness to drive out
the sinners from the inheritance;
to smash the arrogance of sinners
like a potter’s jar;

24 To shatter all their substance with an iron rod;
to destroy the unlawful nations with the word of his mouth;

25 At his warning the nations will flee from his presence;
and he will condemn sinners by the thoughts of their hearts.

26 He will gather a holy people
whom he will lead in righteousness;
and he will judge the tribes of the people
that have been made holy by the Lord their God.

27 He will not tolerate unrighteousness (even) to pause among them,
and any person who knows wickedness shall not live with them.
For he shall know them
that they are all children of their God.

28 He will distribute them upon the land
according to their tribes;
the alien and the foreigner will no longer live near them.

29 He will judge peoples and nations in the wisdom of his righteousness…

30 And he will have gentile nations serving him under his yoke,
and he will glorify the Lord in (a place) prominent (above) the whole earth.
And he will purge Jerusalem
(and make it) holy as it was even from the beginning,

31 (for) nations to come from the ends of the earth to see his glory,
to bring as gifts her children who had been driven out,
and to see the glory of the Lord
with which God has glorified her.

32 And he will be a righteous king over them, taught by God.
There will be no unrighteousness among them in his days,
for all shall be holy,
and their king shall be the Lord Messiah.  (Psalms of Solomon 17:21–32);

Translation of R. B. Wright, Psalms of Solomon, in James Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, Hendrickson Publishers, 1983.)

Jesus thinks he is the messiah?  Crucify him.

In a way you could argue that this execution that transformed all of human history was in fact simply one big misunderstanding.

Not every revolutionary urges a revolution.  Jesus was a pacifist revolutionary, who believed God himself – not the future king, a Jewish army, or the Jewish masses — would bring in the kingdom.  But the niceties of apocalyptic thinking were lost on Pontius Pilate.  He executed Jesus as an enemy of the state.

The irony is that Jesus was completely indifferent to the state, for reasons not widely recognized.  Every human institution is inextricably human.  But any system not ruled by God is hopelessly flawed.  Replacing this human system with another human system therefore cannot be the goal, or even an interim step to the goal.

That is why Jesus actually didn’t care one way or the other who was ruling or how they were doing it.  I will try to show that in the next post.