The Crown and the Cross: The Life of Christ (7 page)

The climb from the deep rift in which the Jordan flowed to the high elevation of the hilly country around Jerusalem was laborious and the whole group traveled close together with grim-faced men bearing clubs guarding the flanks, since this area was heavily infested with robbers who preyed on travelers going to and from the Holy City. It was worth the discomfort, the thirst, and the aching feet bruised by the rocky road, however, when finally they climbed the steep incline of the Mount of Olives and saw Jerusalem lying across the Kedron Valley, with the roof of the temple shining in the sunlight like purest gold and the black smoke from the altars of sacrifice curling upward into the afternoon sky. No Jew could fail to be moved by this sight, for here was the center of his faith, a golden monument to the glory of his God.

The pilgrims from Galilee did not go into Jerusalem on the day of their arrival but busied themselves selecting a campsite and setting up their tents on the western slope of the Mount of Olives. The Passover was the most sacred of all the Jewish religious festivals and more people came to it than to any other, so that space for camping was at a premium. In fact they had left early partly to find a place near enough to the city so they could come and go daily.

Jesus helped set up the camp but His eyes were constantly drawn to the beautiful city and particularly toward the temple, the place holiest in all the world to the worship of the Most High. As darkness began to fall and lights winked into flame across the narrow Kedron Valley to the west, while hundreds of campfires began to glow on the hillsides surrounding Him, Jesus’ heart was filled with thanksgiving to the God to whose commandments and service He would soon be dedicated in the ceremony of bar mitzvah.

Seeing the glow of wonder and adoration in Jesus’ eyes, Mary was happy, too. But as she looked across to where the massive stadium built by Herod the Great loomed, she could not help being reminded of another occasion when the angel had appeared to Joseph in a dream with the warning: “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.” Remembering the desperate flight southward from Bethlehem, she could not repress a shiver of fear.

By rising before dawn, the visitors from Nazareth were able to squeeze themselves into a synagogue inside the city. When the service there was ended, Joseph took Jesus into the temple with him, while Mary went on to the Court of Women where she could see without encroaching upon the area from which women were barred.

The men of Nazareth had joined together, as was allowed by the Law, to purchase a lamb for the sacrifice. When the blast of a trumpet and the singing of the Levites, who were the lay assistants to the priests, announced the beginning of the sacrifices for the day, one of them hurried to the Gate of the Sheepfold at the northern sector of the terrace to claim his purchase.

The lamb obtained, the leader of the Nazareth delegation pushed through the Gate of the Sheepfold into the Court of Israel and the Place of Slaughter. Each placing his hands upon a lamb, thereby laying his sins upon it, the twenty men allowed to sacrifice at one time threw the animals to the floor and quickly cut their throats while the priests gathered the blood in bowls of gold and silver and dashed it against the base of the altar from which it drained away through openings in the floor. The dead lambs were quickly dressed and the fat removed and burned on the altar of sacrifice. As the Levites sang the hallel, the hymn of praise and thanksgiving, the carcasses of the animals were carried off by their buyers to be cooked and eaten at the paschal feast that evening.

All this Jesus watched with wide-eyed interest, but when it was over He did not go with the other boys to the booths where the animals for sacrifice were sold with much excited haggling over prices, or to the tables where the money-changers argued over the value of foreign coins. Instead, He hurried to the Porch of Solomon where the teachers sat, each with his back against a column, in the midst of a small circle of his disciples and students. Around them the crowds came and went, pausing to listen or ask a question before going on to hear what subjects were being discussed by other teachers who held forth here, especially during the festival season, interpreting the Law, in which they claimed to be expert. To a studious boy, this was the most exciting of the temple activities, and Jesus reluctantly left the Porch of Solomon when Joseph called to Him that they must return to the Mount of Olives so that the lamb could be prepared for the Passover feast.

At the camp on the hillside there was much bustling back and forth. While Joseph and several of the men from Nazareth dug a pit and built a fire to obtain a hot bed of coals, others prepared the lamb which had been slaughtered in the sacrifice. Early in the afternoon it was spitted upon a wooden stake, care being taken not to break any bones, and placed over the coals. The children took turns in rotating the spit so that the lamb would cook evenly, while the women prepared the unleavened cakes and dates and raisins mixed in vinegar which were an important part of the paschal meal. Meanwhile the children were rounded up and dressed in their best clothes, as were the adults, in preparation for the feast.

As darkness fell, the gleam of hundreds of cooking fires shone on the hillsides where paschal offerings were being prepared and the aroma of roasting flesh pervaded the entire area. When it was time for the ceremony to begin, each family gathered in its own tent, while the men distributed the meat of the lamb according to the number who would eat and the women arranged the children in a group around the improvised table upon which the food was placed.

In the tent of Jesus’ family the ceremony was opened by sipping a cup of wine which Joseph blessed, followed by a ceremonial washing of the hands as all spoke a prayer together. Next each ate a small amount of the bitter herbs and vinegar mixed with raisins and dates, symbolic of the clay from which Israelites had been forced to make bricks while slaves in Egypt. Now, according to custom, the youngest child asked the reason for the feast and Joseph answered with the well-known story of how the Israelites had been spared while the firstborn of Egypt were struck down. Only when this traditional tale had been told did they turn to roasted flesh of the lamb and the unleavened cakes that were the main courses of the feast.

Many of the children were asleep in the tents before the ceremony ended, just before midnight, with the singing of the beautiful hallel:

Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord!

Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore!

As He stood alone to one side of the group, Jesus’ heart swelled with pride and His eyes shone when He looked out across the glowing campfires to the great shadow of the temple.

While they were camped on the Mount of Olives, Jesus visited the temple every day, spending most of the time listening to the rabbis who taught there. Knowing His studious nature and His deep-seated love of God and religious worship, Joseph and Mary had not been surprised. But when they left Jerusalem early one morning in the group returning to Nazareth and other cities of Galilee, it did not occur to them that He was not among the boys who raced ahead, eager to be on the way.

The end of the first day’s journey brought them almost to Jericho, but Joseph and Mary did not begin to worry until Jesus failed to appear for the evening meal, which He would hardly have missed without obtaining their permission. They started looking for Him then but the camp was large; the Galileans were devout people and many came each year to Jerusalem for the Passover. It was late that evening before Joseph and Mary could be sure Jesus was not with them.

Knowing how heavily infested the area was with brigands, they were much disturbed by His absence, but reason told them robbers would hardly take a boy of twelve, especially one whose parents were not wealthy enough to pay a ransom of any size. A more likely presumption was that He had somehow failed to leave Jerusalem with them; acting upon it, they returned to the city the next day and began to search for Him.

Jerusalem was a large city in which to find a boy of twelve, and at first their efforts were fruitless. Mary could not see how the threat of Herod, which had sent them into Egypt, could hang over Jesus now, for Herod was dead and none of his offspring ruled here. Yet she could not help feeling that the two happenings were somehow closely allied. The strange events which had accompanied Jesus’ birth came back to her now with renewed force and, as she and Joseph continued their efforts without avail, she was seized with more and more dread.

Distraught and almost convinced that Jesus had been destroyed for reasons which they could not at the moment understand, Joseph and Mary came finally to the temple on the afternoon of the third day of their search. And there they found Him where, had fear not distorted their thinking, they would have known He would be—listening to the doctors of Law.

Members of the Great Sanhedrin sat ordinarily as a court of law from the close of the morning sacrifice until the beginning of the evening ceremony. At this time they heard cases and pronounced sentence or settled civil disputes. On the Sabbath and on feast days, however, it was their custom to appear upon the terrace of the temple to teach and expound the Law to any who listened. Since this was not done on the first and holiest days of the Passover ceremony, but only on the
moed katon
, the minor festive days between the second and final days of the paschal season, they had not been teaching during the first days of Jesus’ stay but only on the day before Joseph and Mary had departed with the Galilean group for the homeward journey. Crowds always thronged the terrace to hear them then, for complete liberty of questioning was allowed, even from boys of Jesus’ age. It was this magnet, irresistible to a boy of His interest and concern with religious affairs that had drawn Jesus back to hear those considered to be among the finest minds in all of Israel.

“Son, why have you dealt with us thus?” Mary asked reproachfully when they found Him.

Jesus had been listening to a teacher, one of the principal followers of the great Shammai. When He turned to look at her, it was for a moment as if she were a stranger and He were seeing her for the first time.

“Why did you seek Me?” He asked, as if genuinely surprised that they should do so. “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”

Neither Joseph nor Mary understood what He meant but they did not question Him concerning it; their relief at finding Him was too great for further reproof. As soon as they told Him how they had searched in the camp and had returned to Jerusalem, Jesus went with them willingly.

Mary, who was closer to Him than any others of the family, recognized that Jesus was changed after the visit to Jerusalem. There seemed to be a new purpose in His studies, an eagerness for knowledge that could hardly be satiated. But since sons almost always took up the occupation of their father, Jesus now began to work in the carpenter shop more actively, under Joseph’s quiet direction. There was much to learn here too, and He devoted Himself to it with all the intensity that He put into everything He did.

Although Joseph fully realized that Jesus was not His son, He had always treated Him as His own flesh and blood, taking as much pride in the signs of His becoming a scholar as in His undoubted skill in working with tools on wood and stone. Between the two, the youth and the now elderly man, there was a warm relationship of mutual respect and love that grew as Jesus increased in stature and wisdom with the passing of the years. And when finally seized by a grave illness, Joseph went to join his God secure in the knowledge that in the capacity of eldest son, Jesus would care for the family as lovingly and as capably as he himself had always done.

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea.

Matthew 3:1

During the period when the Hasmonean king-priests were destroying themselves, with considerable assistance from Antipater and his son Herod, the Pharisees, successors of the early “pious ones,” the Chassidim, had turned away from material considerations and moved closer in their own way to God. The Pharisees saw much of Israel’s troubles as a punishment for the sins of its leaders and those who followed them; the only approach to God and eternal life, they felt, was through close attendance to the laws of God. Logically then, a man became increasingly righteous to the extent that he knew and obeyed the Law.

Laws, even those of God, required interpretation, however, and so there grew up a large group of pious men within the Pharisees called scribes whose concern for the details of the Law of Moses and for seeing that it was obeyed, steadily narrowed their concept of the eternal wisdom and understanding which characterized the God of Abraham and of Moses. Despondent over the human frailties of the Hasmoneans which had kept them from bringing about in Israel anything resembling the kingdom of God on earth for which pious Jews longed, the Pharisees and scribes turned more and more to the hope of a Messiah.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, numbering many of the noblest families in Israel and often highly placed in the priestly hierarchy, had regarded the collapse of the Hasmoneans and the final subjection of the nation under Rome as a purely political outcome of the world events taking place around them. Liberal in their approach to God and utterly realistic, they often played lackey to Rome for the obvious material benefits such a policy brought. In addition, they denied the resurrection of the body upon which the Pharisees based their hope of taking part in the glorious kingdom of God on earth that they confidently expected one day to take place.

Between these two points of view were the great mass of the people, the
am ha-arets
, who obeyed the Law when they could and who were the butt of contempt from the Pharisees when they did not. They admired and envied the splendor and the high places of the priests and other Sadducees. They listened with awe to the learned debates between various groups of Pharisees and scribes as these indulged in endless hairsplitting on technical points of the Law. Meanwhile they went their way, living each according to his own concept of his purpose and duty in life.

In Judea after the banishment of Archelaus, the rule of the procurators was not a heavy burden and most of the actual political control of the country was vested in the Sanhedrin. Composed of seventy members—sometimes more, sometimes less—it was largely a gathering of nobles and therefore controlled by the Sadducees, although containing a substantial representation from among the Pharisees and some artisans. Limited only by the necessity to gain the approval of the Roman governor for the sentence of death, the Sanhedrin was supreme in the administration of justice, whether religious or temporal. Actually there was no difference, for the Law of Moses was the law of the land and no other was needed or desired.

Being Roman and alien, the procurators made mistakes. The fifth in the series, Pontius Pilate, almost precipitated a rebellion when he brought the imperial standards of Rome into Jerusalem where no graven image could enter. He had withdrawn that order only when thousands of Jews plodded over the mountain roads to Caesarea and bared their necks to the sword in protest. Pilate’s action somewhat later in using temple money to build a great aqueduct into Jerusalem created another stir, but the abundance of good water was tangible evidence of its benefit to the people in general, and the priests were known to be rich, so their protests were largely disregarded.

Thus there grew up in Judea the sort of complacency that comes with peace and prosperity. The Pharisees concerned themselves with the Law of Moses and the promise of the Messiah in the Psalms and other prophetic writings. The Sadducees administered the temple functions and grew rich. The common people groaned under the burden of taxes and hated the publicans, or tax gatherers, to whom the task of collecting the various tributes was farmed out. Nobody in a position of authority looked with any degree of longing toward the old bloody, if sometimes glorious, days of the Hasmonean dynasty, and no one wished to bring down the wrath of Rome by allowing anything to occur that might appear to be a rebellion. Thus Sadducees and Pharisees alike sought to prevent any disturbance among the vast crowds which thronged the Holy City for the daily sacrifices and the religious festivals.

In Galilee things were somewhat different. Dwelling in villages and smaller cities, the Galileans were a strong and turbulent people having for the most part only a few generations of identification as Jews behind them. While Judea had been freed from the rule of the hated Herods, Galilee had not, and soon a group of men came into being who hated both Rome and Herod, and were already beginning to call themselves Zealots.

The Zealots believed the expected kingdom of God in Israel could be established only by the sword. During Jesus’ boyhood, they went to war behind one Judas, the Gaulonite, confident that God would give their tiny forces victory as He had given it to Judas Maccabaeus centuries before. Long experienced in such affairs, however, Rome had moved rapidly. The revolt was put down and hundreds of Galileans were crucified. Since then the activities of the Zealots had been sporadic, but the threat of an outbreak was always present and both Herod in Galilee and Pontius Pilate in Judea watched carefully for any sign of recurring strength among this faction.

One large group of pious men in Israel chose to retire from the world and live strictly within the original statements of the Law given to Moses, making no concession to any interpretations or adaptations to present situations. These were the Essenes, a band of ascetics whose interpretation and concepts of the Torah grew narrower while they preached that if the rest of Israel did not follow their ways, it was doomed to destruction.

Although small groups of Essenes were to be found throughout Israel, the greatest center for them was in the desert wilderness along the northwest shore of the Sea of Judgment where they had first dwelt m caves. Far enough removed from the priestly centers of Jerusalem and Jericho to afford them the feeling of withdrawal they so fervently desired, the thriving community was at the same time near enough for the voices of Essenes to be heard often in the Holy City and their teachings to be listened to by the crowds that thronged there.

Deeply committed to the essence of the Torah, these intensely dedicated men regarded themselves as having inherited the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets of a great kingdom one day to be re-established on earth. To the pious Essene, man was in the midst of a constant struggle between good and evil, represented as Light and Darkness. Since the final days of the struggle, with the triumph of Light and the coming of the true kingdom of God on earth, was almost momentarily expected, their activities were accompanied by a deep sense of urgency and intensity of feeling.

In organization, an Essene community was very strict. A probationary period of two years was required of anyone wishing to become a member. During this time the applicant devoted himself to study, meditation, and the strictest of ascetic living. At the end of the period, if he were accepted, he turned all his property into the common fund and became a member of a group of ten, led by a priest. A council of twelve, with three priests among them, governed each Essene community, of which that on the shores of the Sea of Judgment was by far the largest unit. One among the group, descendant in authority from a martyred “Teacher of Righteousness” who had founded the order nearly two hundred years before, served as the leader.

The Essenes observed a ritual communal meal representing the great banquet of the righteous when at last God’s task for men on earth was finished and His kingdom came in all its final glory. They were cleanly in their habit and used baptism with water as a sign that those baptized repented of their sins and sought ever afterwards to live according to the Law.

Like the Pharisees, the Essenes looked to the day when a new leader, perhaps a new “Teacher of Righteousness” like the martyred founder of their own order, would appear to usher in the kingdom of God on earth. Moses, they taught, had predicted this very thing when he said: “The Lord said to me, ‘I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brothers, and will put My words in His mouth, and He will speak to them all that I command Him.’”

For men to receive, understand, and obey the Torah, the Essenes believed they must receive a certain enlightenment. This state of enlightenment members of the various communities sought for themselves through meditation, study, withdrawal from the world, and self-denial. In this way they hoped to move upon higher planes of understanding and experience, secure in the knowledge that there was hope for even ordinary human beings to enjoy a communion with the Divine.

To the community of the Essenes near the Sea of Judgment came the youth named John, son of the priest Zacharias and Elisabeth who was the kinswoman of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Shortly after his thirteenth year, when he became a “Son of the Commandment” and took on the status of a young man, John had withdrawn into the desert and the community of the Essenes. There, while living the simple life of the community and denying himself the pleasures of ordinary men in order to make himself pure, he had studied the Law and the promises of God’s kingdom to be brought about on earth.

Zacharias had told John about the strange circumstances surrounding both his birth and that of Jesus. In his quavering voice the old priest had described how he had been struck dumb when the angel of the Lord had revealed to him that Elisabeth, though well past the age of childbearing, would give him a son who would “be called the prophet of the Highest.”

John had pondered upon these words while he went about the quiet life of the Essene community and sought the enlightenment which would prepare him for the coming kingdom of God. The intense, dedicated youth, convinced as he grew older that he had been singled out for a great purpose, became a fiery man whose spirit could not long be contained by the rigid rules and the intense preoccupation with the Torah characterizing the life of the Essenes. As time passed, John became more and more convinced that his mission was not, as the brethren of the Essene community held, to achieve his own salvation, but to bring to all men a warning of the impending coming of God’s kingdom on earth and the necessity to repent of their sins in preparation for it.

Soon word began to spread that a prophet was teaching in the wilderness country at the northern end of the Sea of Judgment. A region of steep hills and black basalt boulders and caves, and of robbers who preyed on travelers, the region around what was called the “Fords of the Jordan” east of Jericho was admirably suited for the appearance of a prophet. Gaunt and fiery-eyed, John was like one of the volcanoes which had rumbled beneath this very area long ago; his turbulent spirit resembled the fires of God which had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah when the whole vast rift in which the Sea of Judgment lay had rumbled and exploded as if in agony.

One of the most frequently traveled roads between Jerusalem and Galilee ran through this region. Near where it crossed the river, at a place called Bethabara, John began to preach from a natural pulpit among the rocks overlooking a grove of sycamores that sheltered his listeners from the burning sun of midday pouring down upon John’s own unprotected head. Although still practicing the asceticism of the nearby Essene community where he had lived, John had put aside the white garments an Essene usually wore and, like Elijah of old, wrapped his body in a roughly-woven robe of camel hair with a leather girdle about his waist. Lodging in the villages when he did not sleep beneath the open sky, he ate the food of the poor, often locusts and wild honey.

Locusts were much liked by the villagers. Sometimes the insects, which swarmed everywhere, were simply roasted in an oven and eaten with salt. But often they were prepared more elaborately by first drying them in the sun, then grinding them into a slightly bitter powder which was mixed with honey and a little flour to make a highly prized cake.

As word of John’s fiery preaching in the wilderness began to spread, more and more people stopped on the way to and from Jerusalem to hear him. There had not been a real prophet in Israel for hundreds of years, and word spread quickly concerning the angel who had appeared to his father at the very altar of the temple, announcing John as a prophet of God in the tradition of Elijah.

And John did not fail to live up to that tradition. From his rocky pulpit, he preached to ever larger crowds of people, thundering at them the necessity to repent and be forgiven of their sins through the symbolic Essene rite of baptism before it was too late. Nicknamed “the Baptist,” John’s desperate urgency communicated itself to those who heard him and soon many began to say that he was indeed the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low. The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.’”