Jerusalem: The Biography

Jesus, realizing that he was in danger, escaped to the desert, but he frequently visited Jerusalem – the only founder of the three Abrahamic religions to have walked her streets. The city and the Temple were central to his vision of himself. The life of a Jew was based on study of the prophets, observance of the Laws and pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which Jesus called ‘the City of the Great King’. Although the first three decades of Jesus’ life are unknown to us, it is clear that he was steeped in knowledge of the Jewish Bible and everything he did was a meticulous fulfilment of its prophecies. As he was a Jew, the Temple was a familiar part of Jesus’ life and he was obsessional about the fate of Jerusalem. When he was twelve his parents took him to the Temple for Passover. As they left, Luke says he slipped away from them and after three worrying days ‘they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions’. When he was tempted, the devil ‘setteth him on the pinnacle of the temple’. As he unveiled his mission to his followers, he stressed that the playing-out of his own destiny had to take place in Jerusalem: ‘From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples how he must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things … and be killed and be raised again on the third day.’ But Jerusalem would pay for this: ‘And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh … Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.’

Supported by his Twelve Apostles (including his brother James), Jesus emerged again in his Galilean homeland, moving southwards as he preached what he called ‘the good news’, in his own subtle and homespun style, often using parables. But the message was direct and dramatic: ‘Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Jesus left no writings and his teachings have been endlessly analysed, but the four Gospels reveal that the essence of his ministry was his warning of the imminent Apocalypse – Judgement Day and the Kingdom of Heaven.

This was a terrifying and radical vision in which Jesus himself would play a central part as the mystical semi-messianic Son of Man, a phrase taken from Isaiah and Daniel: ‘The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.’ He foresaw the destruction of all human ties: ‘And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death … Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.’

This was not a social or nationalistic revolution: Jesus was most concerned with the world after the Last Days; he preached social justice not so much in this world as in the next: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Tax-collectors and harlots would enter God’s kingdom before grandees and priests. Jesus shockingly evoked the Apocalypse when he showed that the old laws would no longer matter: ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’ When the world ended, ‘the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory’ and all the nations would gather before him for judgement. There would be ‘everlasting punishment’ for the evil and ‘life eternal’ for the righteous.

However, Jesus was careful, in most cases, to stay within Jewish law and in fact his entire ministry emphasized that he was fulfilling biblical prophecies: ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’ Rigid adherence to the Jewish law though was not enough: ‘except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven’. Yet he did not make the mistake of directly challenging the Roman emperor, or even Herod. If the Apocalypse dominated his preaching, he offered a more direct proof of his sanctity: he was a healer, he cured cripples and raised people from the dead and ‘great multitudes were gathered together unto him’.