Travel and Religion in Antiquity

III: Going Up to Jerusalem: Pilgrimage, Purity, the Historical Jesus

49 III Going Up to Jerusalem: Pilgrimage, Purity, and the Historical Jesus Susan Haber FORMERLY OF MCMASTER UNIVERSITY This chapter explores the importance of travel to festivals among firstcentury Galileans and Judeans, including the historical Jesus. There were important connections between pilgrimage and purity issues, which need to be highlighted to better place Jesus in his cultural context. Attention to issues of travel, then, provides a new angle of vision on the historical Jesus and his contemporaries. The degree to which Jesus observed purity laws has been the centre of some debate in recent years. While Paula Fredriksen argues that Jesus was a Jew who observed the purity laws, Roger P. Booth interprets Mark 7:15 as evidence that Jesus believed that “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”1 For the most part, however, such debates have not focused enough on the links 50 H O N O U R I N G T H E G O D S between pilgrimage and purity.2 Due attention to this issue will allow a probable picture of Jesus the pilgrim to emerge. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem Some background on the origins and nature of pilgrimage to Jerusalem is essential here. Pilgrimage can be traced to a biblical injunction found in Deuteronomy: “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose” (16:16).3 The Israelite male was thus required to bring a sacrifice on the three specified feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. The purpose of these festivals was to commemorate the Exodus and express gratitude for the harvest.4 In this sense, pilgrimage was very much a communal experience, one that enhanced group identity and affirmed the relationship between Israel and her God. Though there is no record of when pilgrimages to Jerusalem began, it seems clear that the practice increased significantly in the Second Temple period.5 By the first century a large number of pilgrims were arriving in Jerusalem on the festivals– –especially Passover, which was considered the most important festival.6 Josephus claims that on one Passover the pilgrims numbered 2.7 million (War 6.425), and on another no less than 3 million (War 2.280). One rabbinic source calculates the number to be as high as 12 million (t. Pesahim 4.15). Scholars have recognized that these numbers are inflated and have used other methods to calculate more realistic figures. Joachim Jeremias, for instance, bases his estimate on a Mishnaic tradition that the people who brought the Passover sacrifice filled the court of the Israelites three times over.7 After determining the court’s area, estimating its capacity, and taking into account that there were at least ten people per sacrifice, Jeremias comes up with a figure of about 125,000. A higher number– – 300,000 to 500,000– –is suggested by E.P. Sanders, who uses an estimate of the population in the land of Israel as his point of departure.8 Yet another approach is taken by Lee Levine, who begins with an estimate of the permanent population of Jerusalem and suggests that this number was doubled, tripled, or perhaps quadrupled during the pilgrimage festivals.9 He specifies a range of 125,000 to 300,000 people, which varied with the specific festival and political climate. Pilgrims came to Jerusalem not only from within Israel, but also from the diaspora.10 According to Philo, “countless multitudes from countless cities come, some over land, others over sea” (Spec. 1.69). The Gospel of G O I N G U P TO J E RU S A L E M / H A B E R 51 Luke claims that Pentecost was a time when Jews from every nation gathered in Jerusalem, including “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians” (Acts 2:9–11). Though only men were required by law to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the textual evidence indicates that it was common for the whole family to make the journey. At Passover, “all the people streamed from their villages to the city and celebrated the festival in a state of purity with their wives and...