Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine

7. The Crucifixion as Breakthrough

7. the crucifixion as Breakthrough At the end we come back around to what seems most certain about the historical Jesus: he was crucified by order of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Recent interpretations of Jesus, particularly those focused on his sayings, have difficulty explaining the crucifixion, especially relating it to Jesus’s teaching. Given the prevailing depoliticization, many interpreters ignore or deemphasize or reject as secondary Gospel traditions of Jesus’s condemnation of the rulers. Neither of the two most prominent lines of recent American interpretation of Jesus, for example, can explain why Jesus would have been crucified. Judging from what we know about the Roman practice of crucifixion, the governors of Judea would not have crucified either a sage who taught an itinerant individual lifestyle or an apocalyptic visionary who preached the “end of the world.” Interpreters can thus discern no direct relation between Jesus’s “ministry” and his crucifixion and the formation and expansion of his movement(s). The Gospel sources, on the other hand, Mark and the other narrative Gospels and the Q speeches present Jesus’s death as the integral result of his mission of renewal of the people in opposition to the rulers. Further analysis of the Gospels ’ presentations, following the relational approach being developed in these chapters, suggests that Jesus’s “speaking truth to power” and his crucifixion not only were the climax of his mission but also constituted the “breakthrough” that energized the rapid expansion of the movement of renewal that Jesus had begun. Discerning this integral relation of Jesus’s prophetic condemnation, his crucifixion , and the expansion of his movement requires appreciation of three relational realities not usually considered: the purpose of crucifixion in a charged situation of conflict, the effects of coercive power (exemplified by the dehumanizing crucifixion ) on subject peoples, and the role of a leader in articulating the people’s resentment and desire for dignity in the face of power. As a concluding step in a more relational and contextual approach to the historical Jesus, we again read the Gospels as sustained narratives, critically considering their obvious embellishments and critically comparing the representations in the different early sources (as discussed in chapter 1). And again we analyze the portrayals in the Gospel sources in the context of the historical crisis of the Galilean and Judean people and The CrUCifixion aS breakThroUgh 155 the Judean temple-state that resulted from the Roman conquest and imperial rule of Palestine. Clearing The Way The failure to discern the relation between Jesus’s mission and his crucifixion and his movement is partly a result of the individualism that dominates most interpretation of Jesus. It is also a result of the continuing influence of the standard theological scheme of Christian origins, in which the crucifixion is understood as a debilitating defeat for the disciples, followed by the resurrection of Jesus that inspired them to start a movement (the birth of the “church”). It is thus important to note that the Gospel sources do not suggest either that the disciples felt defeated by the crucifixion or that “the resurrection” was what inspired them to form “the church.” A few text fragments have appeared to suggest that the disciples felt defeated prior to “the resurrection” only because they were taken out of literary context. At the last supper in Mark’s narrative Jesus predicts that the disciples will all become deserters after he is arrested, which indeed they do (14:27, 50). Mark’s story, however , clearly presents their desertion as a response to his arrest, not to his crucifixion , and the motif may have been influenced by a prophecy (that we recognize as from Zech 13:7). In the broader context of Mark’s story, moreover, the disciples’ desertion, preceded by their failure to watch with Jesus in Gethsemane and followed by Peter’s denial, is the climax of the Gospel’s subplot of the disciples’ failure to understand and follow Jesus that gradually unfolds through the narrative. It thus cannot be attributed to a memory of the disciples’ desertion, as if it were rooted in a feeling of defeat in anticipation of the crucifixion. Matthew’s Gospel more or less follows Mark’s narrative. In the “Emmaus road” legend in Luke (24:13–35) two followers of Jesus express disappointment that this “prophet mighty in deed and word,” who they believed “was the one to liberate Israel,” was crucified (24:19–21). This episode, however, follows the announcement by the two men “in...