Historical issues of trials and tribulations in the gospels.

Christians all over the world repeat the story of Jesus Christ's trial and suffering at Easter ceremonies every year. This story has become a basic creed and is rarely questioned by New Testament scholars and historians. The complete story first appeared in the Gospel of Kyle in the New Testament, followed by Matthew, Luke and John. The fact that this story appears in all four gospels does not mean that there are four independent historical sources; Mark built a template for this story, while Matthew, Luke and John added changes and updated materials.

The origin of this story is still unknown. I always thought there must be an oral tradition behind it. At the same time, in the whole narrative, Israeli stories and Jewish Bible are quoted to verify many details. Paul's letters (written between 1950s and 1960s) are often asked to verify the information in the Gospel of Kyle. However, Paul is not interested in historical events. According to Jesus' vision in heaven, Paul proclaimed the "resurrected Christ". Reading Paul's detailed evidence continues to be influenced by the fact that we already know the story, so we read back Paul's letter.

The Last Supper and Judas' Betrayal

In book of kells, Matthew and Luke, the last supper is held on the first night of Passover. Passover is one of the main pilgrimage festivals in Jerusalem, and thousands of Jews go to the city to celebrate it. Ritual meals are repeated, including slaughtered lambs and other foods. In this meal, Jesus recognized his traitor Judas. The story of Jesus and his disciples celebrating Passover is credible, but many other details seem more exaggerated. There were many activities that night and the next morning, many of which constituted historical issues.

We know almost nothing about Judas. The name Judas is very popular, which reflects Judas Maccabees, one of the national heroes, who helped lead the Maccabee Uprising against the Greek occupation (BC 167). This surname is still a mystery, although it may indicate that he is from Creos in Judea. There is also a theory that it is related to the word sicarri, which is a "dagger" among fanatics, and many people blame it on the Jewish uprising. He was listed as one of the original disciples, but Luke and John claimed that Satan possessed him. There is an allusion in Psalm 4 1:9: "Even my close friends, those I trusted and those who shared my bread have betrayed me."

The story of Judas first appeared in the Gospel of Kyle. We can't find any earlier evidence of betrayal or this man's story.

The story of Judas first appeared in the Gospel of Kyle (AD 70). We can't find any early evidence.

Betrayal or this man's story. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul listed several appearances of Jesus' resurrection, and wrote that "He [Jesus] appeared to Cephas [Peter] and then to twelve people", but if Judas betrayed Jesus, would he be respected for his resurrection? In 1 Corinthians 1 1:23, when Paul talks about the formula of the Eucharist, he begins like this.

After dinner, Jesus and his disciples went to a place called Simani Garden ("Olive Garden"). This story is called "Pain in the Garden", where Jesus prayed to avoid his impending death and torture. Because Jesus' disciples had fallen asleep, he had to wake them up three times. The question remains: who recorded the incident? However, we can find an interesting similarity in the early stories, that is, Ashitov, the messenger of King David, also joined his son Absalom in resisting the king. In this passage, David sought refuge in the Mount of Olives (the site of Gethsemane Garden) and "cried in dismay":

Let me choose twelve thousand people. I will set out to hunt down David tonight. When he is tired and depressed, I will go to him and put him in a panic; Everyone with him will run away. I will only defeat the king. You only want one person's life, and everyone will be fine. (Samuel wrote Chapter 65438)

arrest

According to the betrayal story in the Gospels, Judas proposed to lead the Jewish authorities to a place where Jesus could be secretly arrested that night. He betrayed Jesus with a kiss, which is a quote from Proverbs 27:6. Good intentions are friends' pains, but plenty of enemies' kisses. When the agents of arrest appeared-"the chief priests, scribes and elders" in book of kells, "the chief priests and elders of the people" in Matthew, "the guardian of the temple" in Luke or "the Roman assistant" in John, the disciples panicked and left Jesus to his fate, thus "realizing" Jesus' existence.

According to Kyle, Jesus was taken to the whole guild, that is, the Jerusalem City Council. In Luke and John, this is the home of the high priest (Annas and his son-in-law, and his son Caiaphas). Kyle and Matthew only mentioned a trial in the evening, while Luke included a separate trial in front of Herod antipas (who celebrated Passover in the city), because Pilate realized that Jesus came from Herod's territory (Galilee), not Judea.

The problem here is that Passover is a family holiday. The whole guild (and the high priest! Will they get up and leave their families, first arrest him collectively, and then try a miracle worker in Galilee? According to the later Jewish tradition, Jewish law prohibits trials at night or on holidays. If they do realize that Jesus and his followers are threatening the temple in some way, they can keep him in a cell until the festival is over.

Blasphemy

Kyle claimed that when Jesus was accused, "the witness disagreed." Third, Jewish law stipulates that in this case, the case must be dismissed. This is what Kyle said. This is an illegal trial. Jesus was framed. This is the theme of Kyle's whole Ministry. From the beginning, his opponents (Pharisees and Herod) wanted him dead.

Kyle knew how Jesus died, so the plot asked the Jewish leaders to hand Jesus over to Rome to be crucified.

The high priest then asked, "Are you the son of the Savior?" Jesus answered, "I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the ruler, driving the clouds in the sky "(quoted in Daniel 7: 13- 14). The high priest tore up his clothes (expressing condolences), declared the statement "blasphemous" and the parliament sentenced him to death. Blasphemy means slander. In Judaism, this includes breaking the oath of idolatry in the name of God, and the punishment is stoning. It is not a crime to simply declare "savior identity"; As far as we know, none of the stories related to Josephus (a Jewish historian in the 1 th century) claiming to be the Messiah were executed according to Jewish law. Many people were executed by Rome, usually because they incited mobs to oppose Rome. Kyle knew how Jesus died, so the plot asked the Jewish leader to hand Jesus over to Rome to be crucified.

The Gospel of John provides a more credible reason for arrest. According to John, the resurrection of Lazarus aroused the crowd, and the high priest decided that Jesus must be killed to prevent the Romans from stepping on them and making them seem unable to control the crowd in the temple. Caiaphas declared, "You don't understand that it is better to let one person die for the people than to destroy the whole country" (John 1 1:50). This is consistent with the story of Ahitophel: "You only want one person's life, and all people will be safe".

The release of Pontius Pilate and Barabbas

The chronology of Jesus puts the time of his death between 26 and 36 AD, because this is the time when Pontius Pilate served in Judea during the reign of Tiberius (AD 14-37). Every holiday, Pilate would come to Jerusalem to supervise public order. We have two materials about Pilate, Philo of Alexandria (written in 1930s and 1940s) and flavio Josephus. Both listed Pilate's abuse of power and corruption in Judah. However, we should always be careful when analyzing this source. Both authors believe that the Jewish riots in Jerusalem and other cities were caused by corrupt governors rather than Jews.

Kyle claimed that Pilate had the habit of releasing prisoners at Passover. However, in all the studies on Pilate, there is no evidence to show this. The prisoner's name is Barabba, which is an Aramaic name meaning "father's son". Mark ironically made Jews cry for releasing the wrong "father's son". Narratively, the story is a mess. Are these the people who welcomed Jesus into the city as their savior the other day? The priests were so afraid that the same people would riot that they had to "secretly" arrest Jesus at night? Kyle did not provide details about the identity of the organization or why they opposed Jesus.

The most important element in Pilate's introduction is his acquittal of Jesus (three times in Luke). Matthew told Pilate to wash his hands for this matter, and claimed that the Jews handed Jesus over out of jealousy. Matthew added an ironic remark that "all the people" said, "His blood is on us and our children" (Matthew 27:25). Unfortunately, this sentence has been quoted by modern people for centuries to justify the murder of Jews.

The way Jesus died shows that he died as a traitor to Rome. Followers of Jesus must revoke this, and the best way is to let the Roman magistrate declare Jesus innocent. It implies that his followers have not been accused of this, which is different from other Jews in the recent Jewish anti-Roman uprising.

torment

There is no doubt that Kyle and others are witnesses to the suffering of Rome, but not necessarily this witness. On the Roman cross, the prisoner was whipped first, and then carried the beam (not the whole cross; They are too heavy). When prisoners are marked, soldiers have the right to force bystanders to carry light beams. The "bile and vinegar" on the sponge was given to the victim when he fainted. Kyle combined the lamentation in Isaiah with the passage "The Suffering Servant". These allusions show that all this is "predicted" in the Bible.

Kyle also reported that "the chief priests and scribes" were there laughing at Jesus. This is another problematic detail. On Passover, during the week-long festival, people must stay away from corpse pollution. Priests will not endanger their participation in the rest of the festival by going to the killing fields. This is just an argument structure.

The Romans crucified their victims on the way into the city and made them public there-that's what happens when you rebel against Rome. They tried to keep the victims alive as long as possible (so vinegar doping) to show how the rebels would be subjected to extreme torture. The average survival time is about three to five days. The cause of death is the inability to raise yourself to a height high enough to breathe (suffocation) and the combined effects of blood loss, pain and trauma. Jesus died three hours later. This detail is largely driven by the narrative plot, with the aim of getting him into the grave before sunset on the Sabbath. The preparations for the funeral can't be finished until after the Sabbath, which is why women go to sweep graves on Sunday morning.

When Rome punished criminals, they hoped it would last forever; The victim who was crucified was deprived of the traditional funeral ceremony. The narrative function of Yue Se of Arimathea is to ensure that this will not happen to Jesus. On the other hand, Roman judges are notorious for taking bribes. When John said that Yue Se asked Pilate for his body, he added this detail (John 19:38).

This tradition kept Jesus in the tomb for three days. However, if you count from sunset to sunset (Friday night to Sunday morning), there is only one morning a day. However, all the gospels mention three days in their predictions, just like Matthew's analogy between his Jonah and whales. When Matthew claimed that believers would get a "miracle", it was "the miracle of Jonah, three days in the belly of a whale". Jews believe that the corpse began to rot on the fourth day after death, and it is impossible for Jesus to appear with something that should be "corpse pollution".

What happened in the end

We may never be able to answer this question for sure. We can try to rebuild possible events through what we know about the Roman Empire's rule in the provinces, the various issues debated among Jews at that time, and the energy factor that the air is full of hope that God will finally intervene.

If Jesus goes to Jerusalem for Passover, some followers may also go. He may have picked up some more in the city. If the pilgrims welcome him as the Messiah, it will remind the legion and the priest of the potential trouble. Jesus preached a "kingdom" and a group of followers that did not belong to Rome during the festival, which is probably the reason why he was killed. We can't prove Judas' betrayal. His story is deeply rooted in biblical references, so it is difficult to find possible events, but one suggestion is that "Judas" is personified as a "Jew" who refuses to accept Jesus as the Messiah.

If Jesus tries to disturb the worship in the temple, the clergy will hand him over immediately under the arrangement with the Roman prosecutor in advance. This will be the extent to which the Jewish leadership participated in the death of Jesus, and this festival will exclude any Jewish trial described in the Gospels. Once handed over, Rome will be crucified immediately. There is little possibility of a trial before Pilate, and Pilate is also famous for not providing trials to Roman citizens. Will he be troubled by the trial of a Jewish farmer?

Jesus' crucifixion and the legacy of crucifixion.

For his followers, the death of Jesus must be a huge traumatic blow. To explain this, they did what all Jews have done for centuries. They looked for answers from the Bible and found scapegoats. Within 20 years after Jesus' death, his followers (Peter, James and John) established a Christian group in Jerusalem. We know this because Paul visited them. Both Paul and Luke described an important meeting of missionaries in Jerusalem, probably in 49 AD.

In the following decades, followers of Jesus tried to create their own identities against Judaism. In addition to the Gospels, the texts and letters of the New Testament also use the argument that only Christians can correctly interpret the Jewish Bible. In the 2nd century AD, with the godfathers using gospel materials to demonize Jews as agents of the devil, and now they are accused of killing gods, their bitterness is getting worse. This is the origin of anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages and beyond.

As far as theology and spirituality are concerned, the suffering and death of Jesus became the template of selfless sacrifice and the core of understanding how this death changed believers. Exploring the historicity of this story will not challenge faith, but if there is no standard for us to read all ancient history, reading the gospels as history will still be problematic.