Jerusalem: The Biography

Yet he did not call himself the Messiah, emphasizing the Shema, the basic Jewish prayer to the one God, and the love of his fellow men: he was very much a Jew. But then he warned the excited crowds of the imminent Apocalypse that would of course take place in Jerusalem: ‘You are not far from the Kingdom of God.’ While Jews held various views on the coming of the Messiah, most agreed that God would preside over the end of the world, which would be followed by the creation of the Messiah’s kingdom in Jerusalem: ‘Sound in Zion the trumpet to summon the saints,’ declared the Psalms of Solomon, written not long after Jesus’ death, ‘announce in Jerusalem the voice of one bringing good news for the God of Israel has been merciful.’ Hence his followers asked him: ‘Tell us what shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?’ ‘Watch therefore for ye know not what hour your Lord will come,’ he answered, but then he spelt out the coming Apocalypse: ‘Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes,’ before they saw ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds of heaven with power and great glory’. Jesus’ inflammatory gambit would have seriously alarmed the Roman prefect and high priests, who, he warned, could expect no mercy in the Last Days: ‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’

Jerusalem was always tense at Passover but the authorities were even more jumpy than usual. Mark and Luke state, in a couple of neglected verses, that there had just been some sort of Galilean rebellion in Jerusalem, suppressed by Pilate, who had killed eighteen Galileans around the ‘tower of Siloam’ south of the Temple. One of the surviving rebels, Barabbas, whom Jesus would soon encounter, had ‘committed a murder in the insurrection’. The high priests decided to take no chances with another Galilean predicting their destruction in an imminent Apocalypse: Caiaphas and Annas, the influential former high priest, discussed what to do. Surely it was better, argued Caiaphas in John’s Gospel, ‘that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation perish not’. They made their plans.

The next day Jesus prepared for Passover at the Upper Room – the Cenacle, or Coenaculum – on the western hill of Jerusalem (later known as Mount Zion). At the supper, Jesus somehow learned that his Apostle, Judas Iscariot, had betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver, but he did not change his plan to walk around the city to the tranquil olive groves of the Garden of Gethsemane just across the Kidron Valley from the Temple. Judas slipped away. We do not know if he betrayed Jesus out of principle – for being too radical or not radical enough – or out of greed or envy.

Judas returned with a posse of senior priests, Temple guards and Roman legionaries. Jesus was not instantly recognizable in the dark, so Judas betrayed him by identifying him with a kiss and received his silver. In a chaotic torchlit drama, the Apostles drew their swords, Peter lopped off the ear of one of the high priest’s lackeys and a nameless boy ran off stark naked into the night, a touch so eccentric, it rings of truth. Jesus was arrested and the Apostles scattered except for two who followed at a distance.

It was now almost midnight. Jesus, guarded by Roman soldiers, was marched around the southern walls through the Siloam Gate to the palace of the city’s éminence grise Annas, in the Upper City.^*

Annas dominated Jerusalem and personified the rigid, incestuous network of Temple families. Himself a former high priest, he was the father-in-law of the present incumbent Caiaphas and no less than five of his sons would be high priests. But he and Caiaphas were despised by most Jews as venal, thuggish collaborators, whose servants, complained one Jewish text, ‘beat us with staves’; their justice was a corrupt money-making scam. Jesus, on the other hand, had struck a popular chord and had admirers even among the Sanhedrin. The trial of this popular and fearless preacher would have to be conducted shiftily, by night.

Some time after midnight, as the guards built a fire in the courtyard (and Jesus’ disciple Peter thrice denied knowing his master), Annas and his son-in-law assembled their loyal Sanhedrin members – but not all of them, because at least one, Joseph of Arimathea, was an admirer of Jesus and never approved his arrest. Jesus was cross-examined by the high priest: had he threatened to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days? Did he claim to be the Messiah? Jesus said nothing but finally admitted, ‘ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven’.

‘He hath spoken blasphemy,’ said Caiaphas.