Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (13 page)

For those Jews who survived the bloodbath—those huddled naked and starved beyond the
collapsed city walls, watching in horror as the Roman soldiers urinated on the smoldering
ashes of the House of God—it was perfectly clear who was to blame for the death and
devastation. Surely it was not the Lord of Hosts who had
brought such destruction upon the sacred city. No. It was the
lestai
, the bandits and the rebels, the Zealots and the Sicarii, the nationalist revolutionaries
who had preached independence from Rome, the so-called prophets and false messiahs
who had promised salvation from God in return for their fealty and zeal. They were
the ones responsible for the Roman onslaught. They were the ones whom God had abandoned.

In the years to come, the Jews would begin to distance themselves as much as possible
from the revolutionary idealism that had led to the war with Rome. They would not
altogether abandon their apocalyptic expectations. On the contrary, a flourish of
apocalyptic writings would emerge over the next century reflecting the continued longing
for divine deliverance from Roman rule. The lingering effects of this messianic fervor
would even lead to the outbreak of a brief second Jewish war against Rome in 132
C.E
., this one led by the messiah known as Simon son of Kochba. For the most part, however,
the rabbis of the second century would be compelled by circumstance and by fear of
Roman reprisal to develop an interpretation of Judaism that eschewed nationalism.
They would come to view the Holy Land in more transcendental terms, fostering a messianic
theology that rejected overt political ambitions, as acts of piety and the study of
the law took the place of Temple sacrifices in the life of the observant Jew.

But that was all many years away. On this day—the day in which the beaten and bloodied
remnants of the ancient Jewish nation were wrenched from their homes, their Temple,
their God, and forcibly marched out of the Promised Land to the land of the heathens
and idolaters—all that seemed certain was that the world as they knew it had come
to an end.

Meanwhile, in triumphant Rome, a short while after the Temple of the Lord had been
desecrated, the Jewish nation scattered to the winds, and the religion made a pariah,
tradition says a Jew named John Mark took up his quill and composed the first words
to the first gospel written about the messiah known as Jesus of Nazareth—not in Hebrew,
the language of God, nor in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, but in Greek, the language
of the heathens. The language of the impure. The language of the victors.

This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Christ
.

PART II

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me

because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the meek;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted
,

to proclaim liberty to the captives
,

and release to the prisoners who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
,

and the day of vengeance for our God
.

I
SAIAH 61:1–2

Zeal for Your House

Of all the stories told about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, there is one—depicted
in countless plays, films, paintings, and Sunday sermons—that, more than any other
word or deed, helps reveal who Jesus was and what Jesus meant. It is one of only a
handful of events in Jesus’s ministry attested to by all four canonized gospels—Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John—adding some measure of weight to its historicity. Yet all four
evangelists present this monumental moment in a casual, almost fleeting manner, as
though they were either oblivious to its meaning or, more likely, deliberately downplaying
an episode whose radical implications would have been immediately recognized by all
who witnessed it. So revelatory is this single moment in Jesus’s brief life that it
alone can be used to clarify his mission, his theology, his politics, his relationship
to the Jewish authorities, his relationship to Judaism in general, and his attitude
toward the Roman occupation. Above all, this singular event explains why a simple
peasant from the low hills of Galilee was seen as such a threat to the established
system that he was hunted down, arrested, tortured, and executed.

The year is approximately 30
C.E
. Jesus has just entered Jerusalem, riding a donkey and flanked by a frenzied multitude
shouting,
“
Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed be the coming kingdom of
our father David!” The ecstatic crowd sings hymns of praise to God. Some spread cloaks
on the road for Jesus to ride over, just as the Israelites did for Jehu when he was
declared king (2 Kings 9:12–13). Others saw off palm branches and wave them in the
air, in remembrance of the heroic Maccabees who liberated Israel from foreign rule
two centuries earlier (1 Maccabees 13:49–53). The entire pageant has been meticulously
orchestrated by Jesus and his followers in fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy: “Rejoice
greatly, daughter of Zion! Cry out, daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming
to you; righteous and victorious is he, humble and riding upon an ass, upon a colt,
the son of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).

The message conveyed to the city’s inhabitants is unmistakable: the long-awaited messiah—the
true
King of the Jews—has come to free Israel from its bondage.

As provocative as his entrance into Jerusalem may be, it pales in comparison to what
Jesus does the following day. With his disciples and, one assumes, the praiseful multitude
in tow, Jesus enters the Temple’s public courtyard—the Court of Gentiles—and sets
about “cleansing” it. In a rage, he overturns the tables of the money changers and
drives out the vendors hawking cheap food and souvenirs. He releases the sheep and
cattle ready to be sold for sacrifice and breaks open the cages of the doves and pigeons,
setting the birds to flight. “Take these things out of here!” he shouts.

With the help of his disciples he blocks the entrance to the courtyard, forbidding
anyone carrying goods for sale or trade from entering the Temple. Then, as the crowd
of vendors, worshippers, priests, and curious onlookers scramble over the scattered
detritus, as a stampede of frightened animals, chased by their panicked owners, rushes
headlong out of the Temple gates and into the choked streets of Jerusalem, as a corps
of Roman guards and heavily armed Temple police blitz through the courtyard looking
to arrest whoever is responsible for the mayhem, there stands Jesus, according to
the gospels, aloof, seemingly unperturbed, crying out over the din: “It is written:
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. But you have made it a
den of thieves.”

The authorities are irate, and with good reason. There is no law that forbids the
presence of vendors in the Court of Gentiles. Other parts of the Temple may have been
sacrosanct and off-limits to the lame, the sick, the impure, and, most especially,
to the gentile masses. But the outer court was a free-for-all arena that served both
as a bustling bazaar and as the administrative headquarters of the Sanhedrin, the
supreme Jewish council. The merchants and money changers, those selling beasts for
sacrifice, the impure, the heathen, and the heretic, all had a right to enter the
Court of Gentiles as they pleased and do business there. It is not surprising, therefore,
that the Temple priests demand to know just who this rabble-rouser thinks he is. By
what authority does he presume to cleanse the Temple? What sign can he provide to
justify such a blatantly criminal act?

Jesus, as is his wont, ignores these questions altogether and instead answers with
his own enigmatic prophecy. “Destroy this Temple,” he says, “and in three days I will
raise it up.”

The crowd is dumbstruck, so much so that they apparently do not notice Jesus and his
disciples calmly exiting the Temple and walking out of the city, having just taken
part in what the Roman authorities would have deemed a capital offense: sedition,
punishable by crucifixion. After all, an attack on the business of the Temple is akin
to an attack on the priestly nobility, which, considering the Temple’s tangled relationship
with Rome, is tantamount to an attack on Rome itself.

Put aside for a moment the centuries of exegetical acrobatics that have been thrust
upon this bewildering episode in Jesus’s ministry; examine the event from a purely
historical perspective, and the scene simply boggles the mind. It is not the accuracy
of Jesus’s prediction about the Temple that concerns us. The gospels were all written
after the Temple’s destruction in 70
C.E
.; Jesus’s warning to
Jerusalem that “the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts
around you and surround you and crush you to the ground—you and your children—and
they will not leave within you one stone upon another” (Luke 19:43–44) was put into
his mouth by the evangelists after the fact. Rather, what is significant about this
episode—what is impossible to ignore—is how blatant and inescapably
zealous
Jesus’s actions at the Temple appear.

The disciples certainly recognize this. Watching Jesus break open the cages and kick
over tables on a rampage, the gospel of John says the disciples were reminded of the
words of King David, who cried, “Zeal for your house has consumed me” (John 2:17;
Psalms 69:9).

The Temple authorities also recognize Jesus’s zeal and hatch a clever plot to trap
him into implicating himself as a zealot revolutionary. Striding up to Jesus in full
view of everyone present, they ask, “Teacher, we know that you are true, that you
teach the way of God in truth, and that you show deference for no man. Tell us: Is
it lawful to pay the tribute to Caesar or not?”

This is no simple question, of course. It is the essential test of zealotry. Ever
since the uprising of Judas the Galilean, the question of whether the Law of Moses
permitted paying tribute to Rome had become the distinguishing characteristic of those
who adhered to zealot principles. The argument was simple and understood by all: Rome’s
demand for tribute signaled nothing less than a claim of ownership over the land and
its inhabitants. But the land did not belong to Rome. The land belonged to God. Caesar
had no right to receive tribute, because he had no right to the land. In asking Jesus
about the legality of paying tribute to Rome, the religious authorities were asking
him an altogether different question: Are you or are you not a zealot?

“Show me a denarius,” Jesus says, referring to the Roman coin used to pay the tribute.
“Whose image is this and whose inscription?”

“It is Caesar’s,” the authorities reply.

“Well, then, give back to Caesar the property that belongs to Caesar, and give back
to God the property that belongs to God.”

It is astonishing that centuries of biblical scholarship have miscast these words
as an appeal by Jesus to put aside “the things of this world”—taxes and tributes—and
focus one’s heart instead on the only things that matter: worship and obedience to
God. Such an interpretation perfectly accommodates the perception of Jesus as a detached,
celestial spirit wholly unconcerned with material matters, a curious assertion about
a man who not only lived in one of the most politically charged periods in Israel’s
history, but who claimed to be the promised messiah sent to liberate the Jews from
Roman occupation. At best, Jesus’s response has been viewed as a milquetoast compromise
between the priestly and zealot positions—between those who thought it lawful to pay
the tribute to Rome and those who did not.

The truth is that Jesus’s answer is as clear a statement as one can find in the gospels
on where exactly he fell in the debate between the priests and the zealots—not over
the issue of the tribute, but over the far more significant question of God’s sovereignty
over the land. Jesus’s words speak for themselves: “Give back (
apodidomi
) to Caesar the property that belongs to Caesar …” The verb
apodidomi
, often translated as “render unto,” is actually a compound word:
apo
is a preposition that in this case means “back again”;
didomi
is a verb meaning “to give.”
Apodidomi
is used specifically when paying someone back property to which he is entitled; the
word implies that the person receiving payment is the rightful owner of the thing
being paid. In other words, according to Jesus, Caesar is entitled to be “given back”
the denarius coin, not because he deserves tribute, but because it is
his
coin: his name and picture are stamped on it. God has nothing to do with it. By extension,
God is entitled to be “given back” the land the Romans have seized for themselves
because it is
God’s
land: “The Land is mine,” says the Lord (Leviticus 25:23). Caesar has nothing to
do with it.