the suggestion of any political action on the part of Jesus to be outrageously, even dangerously, “off-message.” Yet it has been over fifty years since Professor Samuel Brandon of Manchester University in England drew attention to this critical theological distortion: “The crucial fact remains uncontested that the fatal sentence was pronounced by the Roman governor and its execution carried out by Roman officials.”2 Brandon continued:
It is certain that the movement connected with [Jesus] had at least sufficient semblance of sedition to cause the Roman authorities both to regard him as a possible revolutionary and, after trial, to execute him as guilty on such a charge.3
In fact, in later years Brandon became blunter, perhaps exasperated with those who continued to ignore this important fact: “All enquiry,” he wrote forcefully, allowing little room for doubt on the matter, “concerning the historical Jesus must start from the fact of his execution by the Romans for sedition.”4
We will find that we are dealing not only with the intricacies of religion but with the machinations of politics. Even today not all the mines have been cleared.
Apart from the brutal mode of execution, we are left to wonder whether there is any other suggestion in the Gospels that the Romans were ultimately in charge and that the crime involved was sedition rather than contravention of Jewish teachings.
The answer: indeed there is. Jesus was crucified between two other men, described as thieves in the English translations of the Bible. However, if we go back to the original Greek text, we find that they are not called thieves at all there but are described as lestai, which, strictly speaking, translates as “brigands” but which was, in Greek, the official name for the “Zealots,” the Judaean freedom fighters who were dedicated to ridding Judaea of its Roman occupation (Matthew 27:38).5 The Romans considered them to be terrorists.
The Zealots were not just seeking some kind of political land grab but had a less venal motive: they were concerned, above all else, with the legitimacy of the priests serving in the Temple of Solomon and, in particular, with the legitimacy of the high priest—who was, at the time, appointed by the Herodian rulers.6 They wanted priests who were “sons of Aaron,” priests of the bloodline of Aaron, the brother of Moses, of the Tribe of Levi, who founded the Israelite priesthood and was the first high priest of Israel. “The sons of Aaron” had become the term used to describe the sole legitimate line of priests in ancient Israel.
The undeniable implication of Jesus’s placement between two condemned Zealots at Golgotha is that, to the Roman authorities, Jesus was also a Zealot. As was Barabbas, the prisoner released under what is described as a feastday amnesty by Pilate. The prisoner was described in Greek as a lestes (John 18:40).7 There really seem to have been a lot of Zealots around Jesus.
This observation also extends to Jesus’s disciples: one is called Simon Zelotes (Simon xeloten)—Simon the Zealot (Luke 6:15). Furthermore, a particularly nasty group of assassins within the Zealot movement were called Sicarii after the small curved knife—a sica—that they carried to assassinate their opponents; Judas Iscariot was clearly Sicarii (whether active or former we do not know). This suggestion of Zealot militancy takes on an added significance when we recall the events preceding the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. According to Luke’s Gospel, as Jesus and his disciples were gathering, Jesus told his immediate entourage to arm themselves: “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” He was told that they had two swords. “It is enough,” replied Jesus (Luke 22:36-38). Here Jesus is described in a context defined by the strong and often violent Judaean desire for liberation from Roman rule. To see it as anything but that is to ignore too much of the texts.
It is, in some way, as a representative of this anti-Roman faction that Jesus was sent for crucifixion. Pilate reportedly washed his hands of the entire business, but his insistence that the sign King of the Jews remain on the cross reveals that he had not washed his hands of Roman law, which was very specific. By its provisions, Pilate’s task was clear: he had to crucify Jesus. By placing the sign where he did, he signaled to all people that he knew the truth about the situation.
So we are still left to ask, if Jesus survived the crucifixion, whether by substitution or rescue, who was likeliest to have helped him? Certainly not the Romans—why should they have saved someone opposed to their rule over Judaea? And certainly not the chief priests of the Temple, for Jesus was highly critical, at the least, of their authority. Help, we assume, could only have come from the Zealots.
But as we press on we shall discover that we could not be more wrong.
In 37 B.C., Herod captured Jerusalem. He was not a native of Judaea but came from a southern region called Idumaea. Although he was a competent soldier and administrator, he was also a thug. His friend Mark Antony had provided him with a large Roman army to take Jerusalem, but even with this help it still took a five-month siege to destroy the city’s resistance. Immediately upon taking power, Herod executed forty-five of the Sanhedrin, thereby destroying all of its influence. He also arrested Antigonus, the last of the Jewish kings, and dispatched him to Antioch, where Mark Antony was in residence. There the Jewish king was conveniently beheaded. Herod was installed as king in his stead, ruling as “Herod the Great” and remaining a close friend of his backers, the Romans.
Herod remained deeply hostile toward all members of the legitimate royal Jewish bloodline. Although he married a royal princess, he nevertheless had her brother, the high priest, drowned in a swimming pool at the palace in Jericho. Herod later had his own royal wife killed as well. He also had his two sons by this marriage executed. In fact, during his reign he methodically executed all remaining members of the royal dynasty of Israel. He did ultimately rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, but despite this largesse, he remained hated by most of the Jewish people in the region. When he died in 4 B.C., his final action was to order the burning to death of two Pharisees whose supporters had torn down the golden Roman Eagle that, by Herod’s orders, was fixed upon the Temple’s front wall.
The only chronicler of this period is the Jewish historian Josephus. He reports that, following the death of Herod, the “people” called for the high priest of the Temple in Jerusalem—a Herodian appointee—to be dismissed. They demanded that a high priest of “greater piety and purity” be appointed.8 This is the first indication that a significant part of the Jewish population had been deeply concerned about these matters, a point that will be of crucial importance to our understanding of the entire period. But who exactly were these “concerned people”?
Josephus describes three distinct factions in Judaism at the time: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Sadducees maintained the Temple worship and supplied the priests who performed the daily sacrifices. The high priest was also drawn from their ranks. The Pharisees were more concerned with the Jewish tradition, the collection of laws built up by sages past, and were less concerned with the Temple sacrifices. The Essenes, who lived communally, were variously and confusingly described as anti- or pro- Herod, peaceful or warlike, celibate or married, all depending upon which parts of Josephus’s works one looks at. This has led to considerable confusion among modern scholars and muddied the waters rather badly. The Essenes were typified, however, by their devotion to the Jewish law; as Josephus mentions, even under severe torture by the Romans, they refused to blaspheme Moses or break any of the law’s precepts.9 They also, Josephus writes, maintained the same doctrine as “the sons of Greece”; perhaps he has in mind the Pythagoreans
