On a Friday, Bloody Friday

Pilate, having passed sentence, handed Jesus over to be crucified. On this all the evangelists agree, although they disagree on the details. Matthew stays close to Mark, only adding the story of Pilate posting a guard at the tomb. Luke, as usual, goes off in his own direction and John focuses on aspects of the story that fits his theology.

The Way of the Cross

Mark/Matthew mention that after Jesus is scourged the soldiers mock him as King of the Jews, much as he was mocked as a false prophet after his Sanhedrin trial. The soldiers placed a cloak around him and crown of thorns on his head and pressed Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross, presumably because Jesus was too weak to carry it.

Luke (23:26-32) keeps the mention of Simon but eliminates all reference to Jesus being scourged, mocked, or crowned with thorns. Only Luke relates the scene of a large crowd of people following Jesus with the women mourning and lamenting him. Jesus tells them to weep for themselves and their children. What does Jesus mean with his proverb about the green wood and the dry? Perhaps that is his way of saying that if he can be treated this way by the Jewish leaders now, how much worse will the Romans treat them during the Jewish revolt that results in the destruction of Jerusalem.

The Johannine Jesus, scourged and crowned earlier as part of Pilate’s attempt to avoid the sentence of crucifixion, carries his own cross to Golgotha.

The Crucifixion

Mark/Matthew mentions it was 9 am when Jesus was crucified on Golgotha (translated as “Place of the Skull”) with two bandits to either side of him. He is offered, and refuses a drugged wine, and his clothes are divided among the soldiers. The charge – “King of the Jews” – is inscribed above his head. Jesus is reviled by three groups: passersby, the chief priests and scribes, and those crucified alongside him.

Luke typically avoids Hebrew-sounding names like Golgotha, only referring to it as “the place called the Skull.” As he is being crucified, the Lucan Jesus says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). This verse is not found in the oldest and most important copies of Luke, so there is question as to whether they were original or added by a later copyist in imitation of Stephen’s words in Acts 7:60. Luke preserves Jesus being taunted by the rulers (but not the people in general), the soldiers, and one of those crucified alongside him.

John expounds upon the details of the charge above his head and the division of clothes. Pilate’s choice of words causes a controversy with the Jewish leaders and John sees the untorn tunic as either symbolic of the garment of a high priest or as a symbol of unity, we can’t be sure. John eliminates the taunts. He is also the only evangelist to feature the Mother of Jesus at the foot of the cross alongside Mary Magdalene and the Beloved Disciple. This scene is loaded with symbolic and theological importance that will have to be discussed in more detail at a later time.

Christ Crucified (1632) by Diego Velazquez

The Death of Jesus

According to Mark/Matthew, at noon darkness covered the land until 3 pm when Jesus said his only words (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). “My God” in Hebrew is “Eli”, so it is understandable that a bystander would think Jesus is calling on Elijah, but it doesn’t make much sense that a natural response would be to lift a vinegary wine-soaked sponge up on reed to Jesus’ lips.

Luke also mentions the darkness over the land (attributing it to an eclipse) but moves up the offer of vinegary wine to the mocking by the soldiers. There’s no confusion of a call on Elijah because, instead of quoting Psalm 22, Jesus’ last words are from Ps 31:6: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

John does not mention the darkness at noon; in John's timeline, it was noon when Pilate condemned Jesus to death. John is the only evangelist to state that Jesus specifically said, “I thirst,” so the wine would was not offered in mockery, but in response to his request. But just to confuse things, instead of offering the sponge on a reed, John has it stuck on the fernlike hyssop, totally unsuitable for that purpose. This is undoubtedly a reference to Exod 12:22 where hyssop is to be used to sprinkle the blood of the paschal lamb on the doorposts of the Israelite home at Passover. After taking the wine, Jesus says his final words in John, “It is finished,” and dies.

The Aftermath

The Synoptic evangelists make a point to mention that at the moment of Jesus’ death on Golgotha, the veil in the Temple was torn. (Matthew further adds that the earth quaked, tombs were opened, and the dead were raised.) There’s symbolism here, but exactly what is debatable. A common interpretation is that since the veil separates God’s presence in the Holy of Holies from the people, Jesus’ death removes that barrier.

In both Mark and Matthew, the centurion overseeing the crucifixion, seeing how Jesus died, declared, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” It is the first time in the entire Gospel of Mark that a human being testified to Jesus’ true identity. In Luke, the centurion says, “This man was innocent beyond doubt.”

John has no Roman centurion or torn veils. Only John mentions that towards sundown Pilate gave orders to break the legs of the crucified to hasten their deaths. Since Jesus was already dead, that was not necessary and so he is the Passover lamb whose bones were not broken. But he was stabbed in the side to make sure he was dead and blood and water came forth, possibly symbolizing baptism and Eucharist.

The Burial

Meanwhile, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body. Mark said Joseph was a respected member of the Sanhedrin who was waiting for the kingdom of God. Matthew specifies that Joseph was a rich man and also a disciple of Jesus – but not a member of the Sanhedrin. Luke clarifies that although Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin, he was a good and just man and had not consented to the council’s decision and actions.

Women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee watched at a distance while Joseph wrapped Jesus’ body in a linen cloth and laid him in a nearby tomb. Luke also specifies that, watching where and how Jesus was buried, the women went off to prepare spices and oils to bury him properly. This is the evangelists’ way of preparing the reader for the return of the women to the tomb on Easter Sunday to anoint the body.

In John, Joseph of Arimathea is a secret disciple of Jesus who asks Pilate for the body. The Johannine-only character of Nicodemus arrives with a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to give Jesus a burial fit for a king, following appropriate Jewish burial customs, not the quick wrapping as in the Synoptic gospels. 

With Jesus now in the tomb, we close the Passion Narrative and the close alignment of the evangelists. The Resurrection Narratives veer off in wildly different directions with almost no parallels.

Trial History

While the evangelists disagree as to whether Jesus had a trial before the Sanhedrin or merely an interrogation before the high priest, at night or in the morning or both, they all agree that the Jewish authorities brought him before Pontius Pilate. Another point of agreement is that the charges against Jesus before the Jewish authorities were religious in nature: threats against the Temple, claims of messiahship, questions about his disciples and teachings. But Pilate is only concerned with the answer to a political question: “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Pilate’s question seems to come out of the blue in each of the gospels. Jesus never referred to himself that way. Yet “King of the Jews” is the charge all four evangelists tell us was written on the titulus that hung above Jesus’ head on the cross. Since it is highly unlikely there were any eyewitnesses at the trial before Pilate, the Passion tradition may have simply projected the charge on the cross back into the Roman trial as a question Pilate posed to Jesus.

How Involved Were the Jewish Authorities?

And thus we come to the delicate question of what role did the Jewish authorities of the time play in the crucifixion of Jesus. There are four basic views:

1. The Jewish authorities were the prime movers in Jesus’ arrest, trial and sentencing.
2. Although the Jewish authorities were involved, all main legal formalities were carried out by the Romans.
3. The Romans were the prime movers and were assisted by collaborators among the Jewish authorities.
4. The Jewish authorities were not involved in any way and references to such in the NT were due to anti-Jewish polemics.

There is certainly anti-Jewish polemic at work in the gospels (Matthew and John, especially), but in 1 Thess 2:14-15 Paul refers to “the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets.” Written about 20 years after Jesus’ death, it attests to an early belief in the complicity of the Jewish authorities. Involvement by the Jewish authorities cannot be a complete fabrication.

The opposite extreme that the Jewish authorities were solely to blame must also be excluded. While the evidence suggests that there was some Jewish involvement, Matthew intensified this by having Pilate theatrically wash his hands of the matter with the crowd shouting, “His blood be on us an on our children!” (Mt 27-24-25) That single line of Scripture has done more to embitter relations between Jews and Christians than any other.

This leaves us with the second and third views as historical possibilities. The difference between them comes down to the degree of Jewish involvement and motive. Were the Jewish authorities anxious to eliminate Jesus or were they tools of the Romans? Were the charges against Jesus religiously or politically motivated?

Historical Possibilities

There does seem to be evidence of collaboration between the high priests and the Romans. Joseph Caiaphas, for example, held the office of high priest for eighteen years, the longest term of office in the century between Herod the Great and the fall of Jerusalem. For ten of those years, he served under Pontius Pilate, so they were obviously able to work together for an extended period of time. And, when Pilate was finally removed from office, Caiaphas was deposed as well.

With respect to motive, there may not have been much difference between a religious charge that Jesus claimed to be the messiah and a political charge that he claimed to be the King of the Jews. Either Pilate or the chief priests could have seen Jesus as a disturbance to the peace during the important religious festival of Passover when Jerusalem was thronged with pilgrims. Actions such as a triumphal entry into Jerusalem or halting activities in the Temple could have been viewed as politically provocative.

My personal feeling is that Jesus’ appearance before the high priest was a preliminary interrogation (as in John) rather than a full-blown trial before the Sanhedrin (as in Mark/Matthew). It seems a foregone conclusion that he would be delivered to Pilate. Whether Pilate thought Jesus was a dangerous revolutionary who needed to be crucified or simply someone he wanted out of the way until after Passover, we can’t really say, but the most plausible explanation to me is that Pilate asked Caiaphas to see to it that Jesus was handed over to his custody. Caiaphas then leaned on Judas to arrange a time and place when Jesus could be arrested away from the crowds.

The Innocence Project

The four gospels tell us that Pilate found Jesus innocent and was pressured into the death sentence by the chief priests. Such a forthright and weak-kneed Pilate does not sound like the obstinate and harsh figure described by historians Josephus and Philo. The evangelists had more reason to portray Pilate in a favorable light than the historians had to blacken his reputation because the evangelists wanted Christians to know that even though Jesus was convicted of a Roman capital crime, he was blameless of such a charge. Having the Roman governor state that he though Jesus was innocent furthered that goal.

Ecce Homo (1871) by religious artist Antonio Ciseri portrays the moment in John's Gospel when Pilate presents Jesus to the crowd saying, "Behold the man!" Unlike the other gospels when Jesus is only scourged after his sentence to be crucified, John's Pilate orders him flogged first thinking that would be enough to satisfy the crowd and win him sympathy.

One aspect of the trial that all four evangelists agree upon is that Pilate recognized a custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover. He offers to free either Jesus or Barabbas, a man who had – according to Mark – committed murder during an insurrection, and the crowd chose Barabbas. (The Gospel of John simply refers to him as a “bandit.”)

Many scholars have questioned the historicity of the account. Certainly, it is highly unlikely that Pilate would have released a known murderer or insurrectionist, but it is possible that he would be willing to release a simple robber before Passover if there was a custom of a paschal pardon. Had this occurred immediately prior to Jesus’ crucifixion, the two events could have been conflated at an early date in the Passion tradition into a dramatic scene where Pilate presents the guilty Barabbas and the innocent Jesus and the crowd chooses Barabbas.

Other scenes are pure creation of the evangelists to emphasize the innocence of Jesus. Through his passion narrative, Matthew has a running theme of “innocent blood.” In addition to the aforementioned episode of Pilate washing his hands, after betraying Jesus, Judas returns the thirty pieces of silver he was paid, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Mt 27:4). While Pilate deliberates on what to do with Jesus, his wife sends word, “Have nothing to do with that innocent man” (Mt 27:19).

Luke adds a scene (23:6-12) where, upon learning that Jesus is from Galilee, Pilate sends him to Herod Antipas only to have Herod send him back. But the net effect was that Herod and Pilate became friends from that day on; Jesus has a healing influence even over his enemies.

All sides agree that the cause of Jesus’ death was Roman crucifixion, which means that highest Roman authority in Judea found Jesus guilty of a capital crime and had him executed in the most brutal and shameful way possible, a form of death reserved for only the very worst criminals. The first Christians had to explain to their fellow Jews and Roman citizens that this disgraced figure was actually the messiah and the Son of God. It took decades before the first Christians were able to find meaning in death on a cross. It would have been counterproductive for the apostles to invent such a story if it didn’t really happen.

Incidents and Accidents, Hints and Allegations

With the Last Supper now over, the passion narrative in the Gospel of John begins to align with the Synoptic Gospels as Jesus takes his disciples to a spot on the Mount of Olives. Mark (14:32) identifies the location as Gethsemane (from the Hebrew name for “oil-press”) and John (18:1) calls it a garden, but Luke (22:39) identifies it as their customary place on the Mount of Olives. Most likely it was an olive garden. John (18:2) agrees that the spot was well-known to Judas as a place where Jesus often met with his disciples.

The Agony in the Garden

While the Fourth Gospel proceeds directly to the arrest, the Synoptic Gospels have Jesus retreat a distance from his disciples to pray to his Father to “remove the cup” of suffering he is about to undergo. After this, according to Mark and Matthew, Jesus returns to the disciples three separate times only to find them sleeping. Luke puts the disciples in a better light by having Jesus return only once to find the disciples sleeping. Not only that, but he provides “sorrow” (22:45) as the reason for their slumber, although insomnia would seem to be a more common condition for someone in that state.

Christ in Gethsemane (1886) by Heinrich Hofmann. This painting has been reproduced countless times in kitschy religious art.

The familiar term “agony in the garden” comes from Luke 22:43-44 in which God answers Jesus’ prayer by sending an angel to strengthen him and “in his agony” his sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood. These verses are missing from several of the oldest manuscripts of Luke and are bracketed in many modern English translations. NT scholars are divided on whether these verse are original to Luke or were added later.

In this context, “agony” does not have the connotation of extreme pain. Instead it refers to the moment of tension of an athlete poised at the starting line, sweat beginning to break out. In this case, Jesus is tense as he is about to begin his trial. Although a common understanding is that Jesus’ sweated blood, the verse only says that his sweat dripped like blood.

The Arrest

At this point in Mark (14:43-52), Judas arrives with a crowd to arrest Jesus. Judas tells them that they are to arrest the man that he identifies with a kiss. Someone draws and sword and severs the ear of the high priest’s slave and all the disciples flee, including a lightly-clad young man who left his linen cloth behind to run away naked.

Matthew (26:47-56) is mostly faithful to Mark. He clarifies that the person who severed the ear of the slave was one of the disciples and Jesus urged him to sheathe his sword “for all who take up the sword will perish by it.” The call to sheathe the sword matches John (18:10-11) and John identifies the sword wielder as Peter and the servant as Malchus.

The Taking of Christ (c. 1602) by Caravaggio

Luke’s account of the arrest (22:47-53) abbreviates Mark so much that his narrative is close to being nonsensical. Judas approaches Jesus to kiss him without any explanation. The disciples ask if they are to use the swords in their possession and, before Jesus can answer, attack the high priest’s slave. Only in Luke, however, does Jesus heal the ear of the slave. Along with Matthew, Luke deletes the strange reference to the naked young man. Indeed, because of the high esteem in which he holds the disciples, Luke eliminates any reference to them fleeing.

In John’s brief account of the arrest (18:2-12), Jesus identifies himself (“I am”) rather than have Judas identify him and submits to arrest as long as the other disciples are free to go. The Johannine Jesus is in complete control of events.

Interrogation and Denials

After the arrest, the evangelists differ on the details of what happened next. According to Mark (14:53-65), Jesus was led to the high priest and assembled members of the Jewish council (Sanhedrin) for a night trial where witnesses were presented and Jesus was convicted of blasphemy and condemned to death. This is followed by abuse and mockery. While this is going on, Peter is in the courtyard denying and cursing Jesus (14:66-72). Matthew (26:57-75) agrees with Mark, but notes the name of the high priest was Caiaphas.

In John (18:13-27), Jesus is brought to a high priest, but in this case it is Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas. John has Annas interrogate Jesus before sending him on to Caiaphas for transfer to Pilate. The abuse is limited to Jesus being struck by a guard for being less than deferential to the high priest. While Jesus is being passed back and forth, the Beloved Disciple was able to get Peter into the courtyard where he three times denied that he was either a disciple or present at Jesus’ arrest.

Christ before Caiaphas (c. 1630) by Matthias Stom. Great use of light in this one.

Luke (22:54-71) splits the difference. Just as in the other gospels, Peter follows Jesus to the courtyard of the high priest, but the Sanhedrin doesn’t gather until morning. Sitting around the fire with others, Peter denies he knows Jesus, denies he is one of the disciples, and even denies being a Galilean. As the cock crows, Jesus – who apparently was also in the courtyard all this time – turns to look at him and Peter remembers the prophecy. Jesus is also mocked and beaten before any sort of hearing. Luke’s account of the Sanhedrin hearing is different in that no witnesses are presented and there was no mention of the charge of blasphemy or passing of a death sentence. It is more like Annas' interrogation in John.

The differing details have caused NT scholars to debate which version of events are most likely to be historical. Was Jesus convicted by the Sanhedrin after a trial or did he only have a preliminary interrogation before being delivered to Pilate? In other words, how big a role did the Jewish authorities play in the execution of Jesus? We’ll discuss this more next week when we get to Jesus’ trial before Pilate.

These three scenes would have had special importance for the early Christians. Although Mark has Jesus prostrate on the ground praying that “the hour might pass” from him, he did accede to the Father’s will. Some of the disciples tried to resist his arrest with a sword, but Jesus accepted his fate “so that Scripture might be fulfilled.” Peter may have committed the worst sin in the early Church, that of renouncing Jesus, but he would regain his faith and become the head of the Church. The example of Jesus taught the early Christians the proper way to respond when faced with persecutions and death. Peter taught them that even if they failed, redemption was still possible.

The New Passover

All four gospels recall Jesus’ last meal with his disciples as one with special significance. For the synoptic gospels it was a Passover meal and, during it, Jesus intoned a special blessing over the bread and wine. John differs from the synoptics in that his last supper was not a Passover meal and the symbolic act was one of foot washing. I’ll leave a discussion of John’s last supper to a later time. In this article, I will just focus on what the synoptic evangelists have to say about the last supper.

Passover Preparations

After describing how Judas offered to betray Jesus, Mark then proceeds to the preparations for Passover (14:12-17). Matthew (26:17-19) abbreviates the story, but Luke (22:7-13) stays fairly close to Mark. It is Passover eve, or the Preparation Day in which lambs begin to be slaughtered in the Temple court for use at the Passover supper. Upon being asked where they would celebrate the Passover, Jesus provides some odd instructions. 

He sends two disciples – Luke names them Peter and John – into the city where they will follow a man carrying a water jar. The man will lead them to a house with a furnished upper room where the disciples will prepare for the supper. Since it was typically the woman’s job to carry water, perhaps this particular man was part of a community, such as the Essenes, that did not admit women. It seems that Jesus had already made prior arrangements.

Growing up, I think just about every Catholic home had a framed Last Supper print similar to this. No, it's not da Vinci's famous mural, but a painting done in his style by Austrian artist H. Zabateri (1859-1945).

Reinterpreting Passover

As the supper begins in Mark and Matthew (Mk 14:18-21; Mt 26:21-25), Jesus foretells his betrayal before he blesses the bread and wine. In Luke, he does this after the blessing, most likely in order to add it to his lengthy discourse after the meal.

For the supper itself, Mark (14:22-25) and Matthew (26:26-29) describe the blessing and breaking of the bread, followed by Jesus giving thanks and sharing the cup. In Luke (22:15-20), Jesus shares the cup, breaks the bread, and then shares a second cup. Luke’s longer account deviates from Mark in other respects and can be broken down into two parts. 

In the first part (vv. 15-18), Jesus more clearly ties his supper to the Passover meal, twice asserting (“for I tell you”) his belief that the fulfillment of Passover will occur in the messianic banquet (Is 25:6) of the Kingdom of God:

He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer;
for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”
Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves;
for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

In the second part (vv. 19-20), Jesus reinterprets the signature foods of the meal. In a traditional Passover meal, the head of the house would say, “This is the bread of affliction which our fathers had to eat as they came out of Egypt.” Jesus, instead, identifies the bread with himself:

Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

There is a clear connection between the mentions of Jesus’ imminent suffering and death in the first part of the unit and his body and blood in the second part. His death is salvific because his body is “given for you” and his blood is “poured out for you.” Exodus 24:3-8 described one covenant sealed with blood between God and his people. This will be a “new covenant” confirmed with “my blood.” Being “poured out” is an allusion to the Suffering Servant passage of Isaiah 53:12.

In Memory of Me

The Lucan Jesus instructs his disciples to repeat his actions “in remembrance” of him, just like the yearly Passover meal was repeated in order to make present God’s saving act in the past. Jesus’ own body and blood will replace the Passover lamb as the sign for how the Kingdom of God will be realized from now on.

In light of how important Jesus’ words instituting the Lord’s Supper are, there is disagreement over exactly what those words were. Mark/Matthew present one version and Luke/Paul present another. Luke’s wording is very similar to what Paul hands on in 1 Cor 11:24-25:

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

In contrast, the Marcan Jesus says of the bread, “Take; this is my body.” And, for the cup, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” Mark lacks the explanation that Jesus’ body is “for you” and the command to “do this in remembrance of me.” Mark also misses the allusion to the “new covenant” in Jer 31:31, but does capture that Jesus’ blood is to be “poured out,” something that is missing in Paul. The reference to “many” is another allusion to Is 53:12 where the Suffering Servant “bore the sin of many.” It really means “for all,” not just one or a few.

Matthew slightly alters Mark’s words. The Matthean Jesus doesn’t just tell the disciples to “take” the break but to “take, eat.” Similarly, when it comes to the cup, the Matthean Jesus asks the disciples to “drink of it, all of you.” The cup isn’t simply “poured out” but is poured out “for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew is attempting to explain that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross forgives sins in the way that the blood of sacrificial animals in the OT forgave sins.

When Jesus tells his disciples that the bread is his body (Greek, soma), he is referring to his entire “self.” As biblical scholar Rudoph Bultmann once wrote, “A man does not have a soma; he is soma.” Jesus is not sacrificing his physical human body, but his entire life, everything he is. When Jesus says “do this,” he is not simply urging his disciples to relive the supper. He is asking them to give of their entire being.

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar

The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are referred to as the synoptic gospels (from synopsis, “seeing together”) because they present many of the same stories, frequently in the same sequence, and many times with the same words. This is not unexpected since most biblical scholars believe that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of the sources for their gospels. By way of contrast, however, even a casual reader of the NT will notice that the Gospel of John is markedly different. For example, in John’s Gospel there are no narrative parables, no exorcisms and few relatively miracles, and extended discourses instead of proverbial “sound bites.”

General Comments on the Passion Narratives

That said, the Fourth Gospel does start to track more closely with events in the synoptic gospels beginning with the arrest in the garden and continuing to Jesus’ burial. This suggests that a common tradition of Jesus’ passion (from the Greek, “to suffer”) was known separately to both Mark and John. This passion tradition probably was not a full-fledged narrative source, but more likely a collection of individual episodes that Mark and John each shaped to their purposes. A certain sequence – arrest before trial, trial before crucifixion, etc. – is inherent in the events being described and that is why the chronology is the same.

In the Revised Common Lectionary used by many Christian denominations, Passion (Palm) Sunday gospel reading rotates between Matthew, Mark, or Luke in a three-year cycle. The Good Friday gospel reading always comes from John. The reading from John starts with the arrest in the garden, but the readings from the synoptic gospels begin with the Last Supper. This is partly due to the fact that passages from John’s Last Supper are read on Holy Thursday, but also because the Last Supper is a more intrinsic part of the passion narrative in the synoptics than it is in John.

While each evangelist shows Jesus coming into conflict with religious authorities, it is in the days just prior to the Passover festival that a conspiracy to eliminate Jesus develops. According to Mark (14:1-2), the “chief priests and scribes” sought to arrest and execute him “by stealth” to avoid igniting a riot during the festival.

From Head to Toes

At this point, Mark turns to the story (14:3-9) of an unnamed woman anointing the head of Jesus with an alabaster jar of expensive ointment (made from real nard!) at the home of Simon the leper in Bethany. Upon hearing complaints that the money spent on the ointment – 300 denarii, equivalent to 300 days’ wages – could have been given to the poor instead, Jesus admonished them, saying the woman performed a good service in anointing his body prior to burial. (Words in italics are common to more than one version of the story.)

Jesus Anointed at Bethany by contemporary artist Anthony Falbo 

Matthew (26:6-13) also reports the story of the anointing in Bethany, but Luke does not because he already recounted a similar story earlier in his gospel (7:36-50). In Luke’s version, Jesus was at the house of Simon the Pharisee in Galilee, when an unnamed sinful woman washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and then anointed his feet with an alabaster jar of ointment. When the Pharisee complained that the woman was a sinner, Jesus tells a parable of two debtors, compares the reception he received from Simon with that of the woman, and then forgives her sins.

Luke seems to have conflated two separate stories involving Jesus and unnamed women. In one story from his private “L” tradition, a sinful woman washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. In the second story from Mark, the unnamed woman anoints Jesus’ head with expensive ointment just prior to his crucifixion.

What’s odd about Luke’s conflation of two stories is that John does the same thing! In his telling of the story (12:1-8), six days before Passover Jesus is at the home of Lazarus in Bethany. While Lazarus’ sister Martha served dinner, his other sister Mary anointed the feet of Jesus with a pound of expensive ointment (made from real nard!) and then wiped it off with her hair. Judas objects to the extravagance saying the perfume could have been sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor.

The tendency to blur the stories together continued in Christian preaching. The virtuous Mary of Bethany in John became muddled with the sinful woman of Luke and confused with Mary of Magdala. What is the most likely sin of a woman? Prostitution, of course. And so we end up with a tradition of Mary Magdalene as a reformed prostitute! (For more on what we know from the gospels of Mary of Magdala, check out my later article.)

Enter Judas

Returning to Mark’s chronology (14:10-11), after the anointing in Bethany, Judas approached the chief priests and offers to betray Jesus; they offer him money. Because Luke omitted the anointing scene, Judas’ offer of betrayal is part of the same unit with the plotting of the chief priests (Lk 22:1-6). Some scholars think Mark intentionally inserted the anointing at Bethany to separate this unit since that is his rhetorical style, sometimes referred to as Mark’s “sandwich technique.” He will start an episode, cut away to something else, and then return to conclude the episode.

Mark calls the betrayer “Judas Iscariot” and re-introduces him as “one of the Twelve.” Scholars have debated the meaning of “Iscariot” without any resolution as to whether it refers to a nickname, his place of birth, or something else. We really just don’t know. That he was one of Jesus’ inner circle was truly scandalous to the early Christians.

Mark provides no motive for Judas’ act of betrayal. Matthew said he did it for the money (thirty pieces of silver). In the story of the anointing in Bethany, John tells us (12:6) that Judas was the treasurer and would take from the purse. While Judas was simply greedy in Matthew, in John he was a greedy thief.

Luke provides a different motivation: “Satan entered into Judas.” This is an allusion to the end of the temptation episode (4:13) where the devil “departed from [Jesus] until an opportune time.” Well, he’s back! Curiously, John uses almost the same words in 13:27: “Satan entered into him.” So not only does John provide the mundane motivation of greed, but he also adds the Lucan motivation of demonic possession.

Next week we will continue our journey through the passion narrative with the Last Supper and the institution of the eucharist.

Our Homeboy Jesus

If you have ever watched one of those movies “based on a true story,” you may have noticed a disclaimer in the end credits that goes something like this:

This is a dramatization inspired by certain actual events. Some of the names have been changed and some of the events, dialogue and chronology have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

It’s a fact of life that the motion picture medium is different from the written word. An author can explain background at length on the printed page in ways not available to the director in a two-hour movie. So the script writer will reshuffle events and combine characters to tell the story in a fashion that will be intelligible to an audience who has little or no familiarity with the original events.

Inspired by Actual Events

Luke takes that approach with the Third Gospel. It opens (1:1-4) with an acknowledgement of the existence of other gospels (“many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events”) and explains “I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account.” He will incorporate the pre-existing material into his own work, but Luke feels he has a free-hand to shape the material to suit his theological needs because his sources did the same.

Biblical scholars know that one of Luke’s sources was the gospel of Mark. We’ve seen how Luke follows Mark’s structure in beginning his account of the public ministry with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism, followed by Jesus being tempted in the desert. Here is where Luke departs from Mark’s chronology. After the temptation in the desert, Mark announces the arrest of John the Baptist and Jesus’ return to Galilee (Mk 1:14). Over the course of the next few chapters, Mark documents the calling of the first disciples and various healings and parables. It is not until chapter 6 that Mark recounts Jesus’ return to Nazareth where he is rejected (6:1-6). Matthew follows Mark’s chronology and doesn’t report Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth until halfway through his gospel (13:54-58).

In contrast, Luke goes his own way in placing Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth (4:16-30) as the kickoff of his public ministry. Why? One reason seems to be that Luke wants to use this scene to highlight two themes of his gospel: Jesus as fulfillment of the OT and Jesus as the “sign to be contradicted” promised in Simeon’s prophecy (Lk 2:34). A second reason is that it portrays Jesus as “teacher,” another favorite theme for Luke (Jesus is described as “teacher” 13 times in the gospel).

Fictionalized for Dramatic Purposes

Luke takes the barebones of the Marcan account (“he began to teach in the synagogue and many who heard him were astonished”) and fleshes it out with details: Jesus stood up to read, was given the book of Isaiah, reads the passage (a composite of Isaiah 61:1-2 and 58:6), gave the book to the attendant, and sat down with all eyes fixed upon him. ). In the synagogue, the reading of Scripture would be done standing while the interpretation would be done while seated. Luke builds the tension as the audience – both in the synagogue and readers of the gospel – wait to hear Jesus say, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Initially, his audience seemed impressed and ask, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” One gets the impression of “hometown boy makes good.” After this, though, the episode gets a little incoherent.

In the Marcan source, the reaction of the Nazarenes is more along the lines of “who does he think he is?” They call him “the carpenter, the son of Mary” and take offense with him. That’s when Jesus says, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.” The implication is that his immediate and extended family also rejected him (in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ family thought he had lost his mind) and Jesus marveled at the lack of belief in Nazareth.

The rejection in Nazareth makes sense in the context of Mark (and Matthew) because this occurs after Jesus has already spent considerable time touring Galilee preaching and healing. But in Luke, no miracles or healings have yet been reported. His initial reception in Nazareth seems quite receptive.

“Well, that escalated quickly.” Jesus is Rejected in his Hometown, woodcut from Images of Scriptural History (1593) planned by Jerome Nadal, S.J. 

Things Get Ugly

That’s when we see material that only appears in Luke’s version of the story. Jesus cites a proverb (“Physician, heal thyself!) and discerns the crowd desires to see him perform miracles like he did at Capernaum. But Luke has not reported any miracles performed in Capernaum! This is a giveaway that this passage originally occurred later in the ministry and, although Luke moved it to the beginning of the ministry, he didn’t bother to eliminate the inconsistency.

It’s at this point (v. 24) that Jesus delivers the “no prophet without honor” line from Mark except Luke leaves off the part (in italics in the quote above) about the prophet being rejected by his kin since, in Luke’s gospel, the family of Jesus were believers. Vv. 25-27 are also lines only found in Luke as Jesus compares himself to the prophets Elijah and Elisha who were sent to help non-Israelites.

In the final verses (28-30) we finally see those in the synagogue filled with rage, determined to throw him off a cliff. Because Nazareth wasn’t built on a cliff, this may be an example of Luke’s fuzzy geography, or he may have wanted to foreshadow the crucifixion. Luke’s vague description of Jesus’ escape (“he passed through the midst of them and went on his way”) should not be considered a miracle because that would have given the Nazarenes the miracle they were hoping to see.

Looking back on how Jesus’ message was received over the course of forty years, Luke summarizes the gospel message in this passage. Jesus was rejected by his own but found acceptance among Gentiles. Jesus proclaimed himself as the fulfillment of OT promises, but provoked the fury of his co-religionists. Initially drawing crowds eager for the next miracle, the same crowds turned against him and sought to destroy him. Jesus escaped with his life this time because his hour had not come, but the clock is ticking.

The Real Temptations of Christ

Temptations are funny things. Some things that are irresistible enticements for one person don’t even merit a second thought for another. For an ordinary mortal, turning a stone into bread isn’t a temptation, it’s an impossibility. Yet it is these sort of “temptations” that confront Jesus immediately after his baptism in Matthew and Luke.

The Synoptic Temptations

Mark’s account of the temptation in the desert is terse:

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. (Mk 1:12-13)

Both Matthew (4:1-11) and Luke (4:1-13) expand upon this brief statement with three specific temptations of the devil, and Jesus dismisses each temptation with a quote from Deuteronomy:

1. Turn stones into bread. – “one does not live by bread alone” (Deut 8:3)
2. Throw yourself from the pinnacle of the Temple. – “you shall not tempt the Lord” (Deut 6:16)
3. Worship me and gain the kingdoms of the world. – “you shall worship the Lord” (Deut 6:13)

The fact that Matthew and Luke cite both the same temptations and OT quotes is strong evidence that each drew from a common tradition that was unknown to Mark. Biblical scholars call this hypothetical collection of sayings the Q document.

The major difference between Matthew and Luke in this episode is that Luke reverses the order of temptations #2 and #3 so that the climax occurs at the pinnacle of the Temple. So which order was original in Q? Most commentators think Matthew retains the original order as the devil raises the stakes – as well as the altitude – throughout and the Deuteronomy quotes appear in reverse order. As we have seen in the discussion on the infancy narrative, Luke has a fascination with the Temple and Jerusalem, beginning and ending his gospel in the Temple. A significant chunk of his gospel (9:51-19:27) is dedicating to describing Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, a feature unique to Luke.

If Matthew is closer to the Q source, Luke modifies it in an effort to make the temptations more believable. In Matthew, the devil asks the hungry Jesus to turn all the stones into bread. Not wishing to turn the desert into a bakery, Luke’s devil suggests he only transform one stone. Similarly, Matthew’s devil takes Jesus to a “very high mountain” to show him all the kingdoms of the world. Perhaps knowing that no mountain is tall enough to see the entire world, Luke’s devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in an instant.

The variation on the order of the temptations is a good sign that we’re not dealing on the level of history, but of theology. The point of the desert temptation scene seems to be that Jesus is recapitulating the history of Israel with his forty days representing Israel’s forty years wandering in the desert. In the context of the citations from Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the Israelites of how, during those forty years, they were humbled by hunger, tested God, and tempted to follow foreign gods. But, unlike Israel, Jesus did not succumb to these temptations.

Opting more for Iago or Emperor Palpatine, contemporary liturgical painter Eric Armusik foregoes a more devilish look for Satan in his The Temptation of Christ (2011).

Temptations in the Fourth Gospel

Both Matthew and Luke retain Mark’s chronology with the temptation in the desert serving as the conclusion of Jesus’ preparation for his public ministry. The Fourth Gospel does not present a similar episode. In John’s gospel, as we previously saw, there is no explicit baptism by John and Jesus gathers his first disciples on his return to Galilee before returning to Judea to begin his own brief baptizing ministry. Although there is no dramatic scene of the devil tempting Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, we do see echoes of the temptation episode scattered in chapters 6 and 7 of John.

1. John 6:1-15 is John’s version of the feeding of the multitude, the only miracle of Jesus that appears in all four gospels. Mk 6:45 (paralleled by Mt 14: 22) says that immediately after the miracle, Jesus made his disciples leave in a boat while he dismissed the crowd. John provides the reason: When Jesus realized that the crowd was about to “take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself” (v. 15). This attempt to make Jesus a political leader is thematically similar to temptation #3 above where the devil offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world.

2. The feeding of the multitude in Mark, Matthew and John – but not Luke – is immediately followed by the miracle of Jesus walking on water. The next day, the crowds follow Jesus to the other side of the sea. Thus begins (6:26-34) the Bread of Life discourse in John. The crowd asks Jesus for a sign, saying that Moses gave them manna in the desert. Jesus in the Fourth Gospel does not quote Deut 8:3, but his response is similar to his dismissal of temptation #1 that it is not earthly bread that gives life, but that which comes down from heaven.

3. After completion of the Bread of Life discourse in John 6, the brothers of Jesus suggest that he travel to Jerusalem for the festival of Tabernacles to work his signs and show himself to the world (7:1-9). Jesus rebuffs their suggestion because his “time has not yet come.” The similarity here is the enticement in temptation #2 to become a spectacle by performing a public act of power in Jerusalem.

The parallels between the three Q temptations and those presented in John are quite interesting. For the modern reader, the temptations as presented in John are more believable than the dramatic temptations presented in Matthew and Luke. But the gospels were not written as biographies of Jesus. They were written to present Jesus’ message of salvation. In such a document, presenting a confrontation between the devil and Jesus gets the theological point across more efficiently than describing three separate occasions in the life of Jesus wherein he was tempted to perform miracles for his own benefit or to gain political power.

Or, as I learned from Spider-Man: “With great power there must also come great responsibility.”

Beginning from the Baptism of John

[As I wrote up this week’s article, it quickly grew to be twice the length of a normal article, so I will divide it into two posts. The second half will be posted in a day or two.]

In Acts of the Apostles 1:15-26, the disciples had to choose a replacement for Judas. Peter lays out the qualifications: “one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us” (vv. 21-22a). Indeed, all four gospels start the public ministry of Jesus with John baptizing in the wilderness. But in so doing, they expose an awkward fact: John baptized Jesus.

Damage Control

In being baptized by John, Jesus assumed an inferior position as a disciple of John. This was an embarrassment to the early Church, particularly in its dealings with the followers of John the Baptist during the spread of the ministry. Jesus accepting John’s baptism for the repentance of sins also raised awkward questions about the sinlessness of Jesus. This inconvenient truth of Jesus being baptized by John required some “damage control” on the part of the evangelists.

Mark (1:9-11) gets the baptism of Jesus out of the way as quickly as possible and uses the occasion to reveal Jesus’ vision of God declaring, “You are my Son…I am well pleased.” Matthew (3:13-17) presents John humbling himself before Jesus, saying, “I need to be baptized by you.” In true Matthean style, Jesus intones that John must baptize him “to fulfill all righteousness.” The Gospel of John (1:29-34) avoids the subject altogether. In the Fourth Gospel, the evangelist has the Baptist recount how he saw the Spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove – the same language used in the synoptic accounts of Jesus’ baptism – but the evangelist avoids saying this occurred at the moment of Jesus’ baptism.

Luke (3:21-22) has one of the oddest approaches to the story. He doesn’t deny that Jesus was baptized, but he does avoid stating that John did the baptizing. Like Matthew, he recounts some of John’s preaching and adds some ethical teaching, but then he ushers John off the stage with his arrest by Herod Antipas. In the gospels of Mark and Matthew, John’s imprisonment is announced right after Jesus’ baptism, but Luke contorts the chronology (and logic of the story) by placing the baptism of Jesus after John is out of the picture. It’s not a goof because in several speeches in Acts of the Apostles, the speaker (like in the example above) recalls how the gospel story began with John’s baptism of repentance, but in every case Luke avoids mentioning that Jesus was also baptized by John.

“The Baptism of Christ” (1515) by Joachim Patinir

The Historical John the Baptist

What do we really know about John the Baptist? Just as with Jesus, the gospels provide most of the information we have of the Baptist, but the Jewish historian Josephus also mentioned John in Antiquities (18.5.2). Josephus’ description of John’s ministry of baptism, his popularity and his execution by Herod Antipas is consistent with what the gospels tell us.

Both the synoptic gospels and the Fourth Gospel cite Isaiah 40:3 as the rallying cry of the Baptist: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” The Qumran community – from whose library we got the Dead Sea Scrolls – also used this quote from Isaiah to explain why they formed their community in the desert.

Mark provides only a small sample of John’s preaching (Mk 1:7-8) describing “a mightier one” who is coming after him, one whose sandals John is not fit to untie (the role of a slave was to untie the master’s sandals and wash his feet). John’s water baptism is a promise of the baptism in the Holy Spirit that will come with his successor. This saying is repeated in Matthew and Luke who both used Mark as their source material, but also in the Fourth Gospel (John 1:26-27), suggesting that this tradition is very old.

Both Matthew and Luke have more to say about John’s preaching, using almost the same words. Biblical scholars hypothesize that the two evangelists used a lost collection of sayings – dubbed Q, from the German word Quelle (“source”) – that Mark did not know about. Two “Baptist blocks” of material from Q related to John can be found in Mt 3:7-12 (which matches Lk 3:7-9 and Lk 3:15-18) and Mt 11:2-19 (which matches Lk 7:18-35).

The First Baptist Block of Sayings

The beginning of the first Baptist block portrays John as a fiery preacher of the imminent wrath of God: “The axe is laid to the root of the trees and every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Lk 3:9). The second half of the first Baptist block continues the fiery theme with the “mightier one” clearing out the threshing floor, gathering the wheat into the granary and burning the chaff. The implication is that to avoid the coming judgment one needs to repent and bear the fruit of repentance; simply being a “child of Abraham” will not save you.

Luke interrupts the first Baptist block of material from Q with vv. 10-14, verses which have no parallel in Matthew. In Luke, John offers ethical advice on how one can act to show repentance. He tailors his advice to reflect his audience. For the multitudes, share your coat or food. For the tax collectors, collect no more than is required. For soldiers, no extortion or intimidations; be content with your pay. This ethical advice has an echo in Josephus who wrote that the Baptist preached “cultivating virtue and practicing justice toward one another and piety toward God.”

Josephus provides a political reason for Herod’s arrest and execution of the Baptist: “Herod began to fear that John’s powerful ability to persuade people might lead to some sort of revolt.” Herod considered it wiser to arrest John before the situation got out of control and imprisoned him in the mountain fortress of Machaerus on the east side of the Dead Sea. Mark (6:17-29) and Matthew (14:3-12) provide more details on the reasons behind the imprisonment and death of the Baptist, but Luke is satisfied in only the briefest note (3:19-20).

The Second Baptist Block of Sayings

The second “Baptist block” can be divided into three units. In the first unit (Lk 7:18-23), the imprisoned John sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he is “the one to come.” Jesus tells them to report what they see – the blind see, the lame walk, etc.

The second unit (Lk 7:24-28) is a carefully crafted composition consisting of Jesus’ rhetorical question (and three different answers) to the crowds concerning John: “What did you go out to see?” The final answer emphatically praises John as more than a prophet, saying none born of women is greater than him, yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than John.

In the third unit (Lk 7:31-34) Jesus compares the current generation to children in the marketplace. Like the children who refused to dance to the flute, John fasted and avoided strong drink. Like the children who refused to mourn, the Son of Man (Jesus’s term for himself) did not fast and drank wine. John was called a mad man and Jesus was called “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”

[In part two, we will look at a tradition buried in the Fourth Gospel that seems to have been suppressed in the synoptic gospels and put the pieces together to give us a picture of how John influenced Jesus.]

Samson the Nazorean?

One aspect of Matthew’s style is to quote a passage from the OT prefixed with words to the effect: “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet who said...” Matthew does this more than any of the other evangelists, some 10 to 14 times (depending on what qualifies as a citation). In most cases, it breaks up the narrative flow and the passage reads better without the citation.

Almost certainly, these OT quotes were added by Matthew and were not part of the tradition he received. For example, Mark 1:14 records the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee after John the Baptist’s arrest. This verse is paralleled in Luke 4:14, also without a Scripture citation. But when Matthew records the same incident in his gospel at 4:12-16, he states this was done to fulfill what Isaiah prophesied in Is 8:23-9:1 (9:1-2 in some translations).

In a previous article, I covered Mt 1:22-23, the first of his 10-14 fulfillment citations. Mt 2 offers three or maybe four more prophetic citations. Let me briefly discuss each one.

1. From you will come forth a ruler who will shepherd my people (2:6)

This is an oddball passage. First, it does cite the OT but lacks the “all this took place to fulfill…” formula. This is one of those cases scholars are not sure should count as a prophetic fulfillment.

Second, the citation references two separate verses from the OT:

• “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.” (Micah 5:1; 5:2 in some translations)
• “You shall be shepherd of my people Israel” (2 Samuel 5:2)

Matthew made some minor changes like replacing Ephrathah with “land of Judah” for the better understanding of his readers, but nothing substantial.

This passage is one piece of evidence that there was an expectation in the 1st century CE that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem. John 7:41-42 provides independent evidence of the same expectation. Matthew and Luke wrote their infancy narratives in part to affirm that Jesus was in fact born in Bethlehem, although he was better-known as a resident of Nazareth. 

2. Out of Egypt I have called my son (2:15b)

An almost verbatim citation of Hosea 11:1. The only thing worth mentioning is that the “son” in the original is a reference to Israel and its exodus from Egypt. Matthew, like his contemporaries, was not overly concerned with interpreting a verse in its original context. 

3. Rachel crying for her children (2:18)

Again, we have a fairly accurate citation of Jeremiah 31:15. In the original context, Jeremiah is possibly referring to Judah’s defeat by the Babylonians; Ramah was a staging point for the deportations from Jerusalem (Jer 40:1). Also, in the original context, the figurative Rachel is being told to stop weeping because her children will return from the enemy’s land (vv. 16-17). There is no such hope in Matthew’s situation.

4. He will be called a Nazorean (2:23b)

The evangelists use the terms “Jesus the Nazarane” and “Jesus the Nazorean” interchangeably. Matthew, however, only uses the Nazorean form. And he only uses it here at the beginning of his gospel and again towards the end (26:71).

This is the oddest fulfillment citation yet because there is no clear OT verse that Matthew is citing. Did Matthew just make it up? The best guesses for his OT sources are:

• “He will be called holy.” (Isaiah 4:3)
• “I have been a Nazirite of God.” (Judges 16:17)

Now, if those two OT verses don’t seem anything at all like Matthew’s citation, you’re not alone. This will require a bit of explanation.

Nazirite comes from the Hebrew word nazir, meaning “set apart as sacred.” (It should definitely not be confused with the German Nazi Party!) The Nazirite vow is explained in Numbers 6:1-21 and involves abstaining from the products of grapes, cutting of the hair, and contact with the dead. The vow was usually taken for a short period of time, but there were some (like Samson and Samuel) who were life-long Nazirites. The quote above from Judges is Samson’s statement to Delilah as to why he does not cut his hair.

World’s worst haircut. Samson was a Nazirite and Matthew saw this as foretelling Jesus would be a Nazorean? Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr (inventor of spread-spectrum technologies) in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah.

When this verse was translated into Greek, some manuscripts took a literal approach and translated nazir as Naziraios, while other manuscripts freely translated it as hagios (“holy one”). Keeping in mind the interchangeability in the Greek versions of hagios/Naziraios, when Matthew looked at Is 4:3, he could read it as “He will be called a Naziraios.” This is very close to what Matthew wrote down: “He will be called a Nazoraios.” 

Essentially, Matthew is getting a two-fer as the word Nazoraios both describes Jesus as coming from Nazareth, and it also depicts him as the “Holy One of God.” Some explanation of Jesus coming from Nazareth was necessary because, unlike Bethlehem, Nazareth is never mentioned in the OT at all. If the prophets foresaw the virginal conception, birth in Bethlehem, the massacre of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt, then they must certainly have foretold that Jesus would come from Nazareth. The “Holy One of God” title is a very unusual one for Jesus, appearing only in Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34; and John 6:69.

This convoluted way of interpreting Scripture was common in Matthew’s day. It was based on the idea that all of Scripture had God as the one author and spoke with one voice, although in many accents. As a scribe, Matthew would see himself as discerning a pattern in the Scriptures that pointed to God’s plan for the birth and ministry of his Son.

An Epiphany of Sorts

The word epiphany comes from the Greek word meaning “appearance” or “manifestation.” In the Church calendar, the feast of Epiphany is traditionally celebrated on January 6 in commemoration of the coming of the magi to the Christ Child and marks the end of the 12 days of Christmas. Called “Three Kings Day” in some countries, the festival celebrates the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. In conversational usage, “epiphany” means a sudden flash of understanding or insight through a simple or commonplace experience.

Visit of the Astrologers

Mt 2:1-23 provides the story of the visit of the magi, the flight to Egypt and the massacre of the innocent. The evangelist jumps straight from Joseph naming Jesus after his birth in 1:25 to the magi arriving in Jerusalem in 2:1. The magi, or wise men, were most likely astrologers, not kings. Matthew doesn’t say how many there were or their point of origin other than that they were “from the east.” The popular idea that there were three wise men is based on the three gifts the magi brought: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Later traditions (from the 6th century CE) provide them with names such as Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthasar, different ethnicities and ages (old man with a white beard, young beardless man, and man with black skin).

The Adoration of the Magi, tapestry (designed by Edward Burne-Jones 1888, woven 1894)

Noting the rising of a particular star, the magi determined that it signified the birth of the “king of the Jews.” Thus, it was observations of the natural world that led the Gentile astrologers to the messiah. But, the natural world reveals only so much; the magi must inquire of King Herod the Great in Jerusalem as to the exact location of the child. God’s revelation in Scripture is needed for them to complete their journey.

Herod calls together his “chief priests and scribes” – the same antagonists that the adult Jesus will face in his ministry – and is told that Bethlehem is the birth place based on Micah 5:2. Although Herod and his scribes have the Scriptures, they do not believe and hence cannot use that information themselves. Herod learns the exact time of the star’s appearance – presumably the date of the child’s birth – from the magi and asks them to report back to him once they have found the newborn king.

The magi set out towards Bethlehem and the star led them to the exact location (2:9). Many have speculated if the “star” was a supernova, comet, or planetary conjunction. None of these could be used to pinpoint a particular house in Bethlehem. And it is a house in Bethlehem, according to v. 11. In Matthew’s telling, Mary and Joseph were residents of Bethlehem.

About those gifts...Matthew is not explicitly citing Isaiah, but may have him in mind: “all those from Sheba shall come bearing gold and frankincense and proclaiming the salvation of the Lord” (Is 60:6, LXX). We’re all familiar with gold. Frankincense was usually burnt as incense in religious ceremonies. Myrrh, an aromatic spice, was used as incense, as perfume, and as a cosmetic. Mixed with wine, it was offered as a painkiller to Jesus on the cross (Mark 15:23) and, with aloes, was used to embalm Jesus (John 19:39). Certainly, they were gifts befitting a king.

Refugees in Egypt

After the magi failed to return to Herod, he ordered the death of all boys two years of age or younger in the vicinity of Bethlehem. If the population of Bethlehem was about 1000, the number would be less than 20 boys. There are no records of Herod ordering this, but he was notoriously paranoid and it sounds like something he could have done. Matthew tells us that Herod decided on two years based on the time of the star’s first appearance (v. 16). The clues in the story tell us that Jesus would have been one or two years old, not the newborn babe in the traditional nativity story.

Joseph was warned of the danger by an angel in a dream and told to take his family and flee to Egypt until further notice. Only after the death of Herod (in 4 BCE) does the angel re-appear to Joseph in a dream and instruct him to return to Israel “for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead” (v. 20). This is a clear echo of Exodus 4:19 when Moses is told the same thing while he is an exile in Midian.

Joseph planned to return to Bethlehem until he learned that Herod’s son Archelaus was ruling over Judea. An angel had to instruct Joseph in one more dream that he should go instead to Galilee, whereupon he made his home in Nazareth. Why didn’t the angel simply tell Joseph in one dream to go directly to Galilee from Egypt? The awkwardness probably stems from Matthew adding vv. 22-23 to material that he inherited. Matthew is taking pains to explain to his audience how Jesus could have been born in Bethlehem – because that’s was Joseph’s home – yet was known to have come from Nazareth. (Luke uses the census to explain how Joseph and Mary, residents of Nazareth, found themselves in Bethlehem for Jesus’ birth.)

Mosaic Pattern

The imagery in Matthew’s narrative is reminiscent of stories surrounding Moses. It is not mentioned in the OT, but the Jewish historian Josephus, writing around the time of Matthew (80-90 CE), told the story of an Egyptian pharaoh who was informed by one of his fortune-tellers that a child born of the Israelites would be the downfall of the Egyptians. This caused the pharaoh to order the deaths of the male babies. But Moses’ father Amram was visited by God in a dream and told that his unborn child would be the one feared in the Egyptian prophecy. Later, as an adult, Moses fled to Midian to save his life, only returning to Egypt once he was told that those seeking his life were dead.

Much later still, when Moses was leading the Israelites to the promised land, Balak the king of Moab, called upon Balaam, a practitioner of the magical arts (the NT would call him a magus), to curse Israel (Numbers 22-24). Instead of cursing the Israelites, Balaam blessed them, predicting that “a star shall rise out of Jacob and a scepter shall come forth from Israel” (Num 24:17). This was understood as referring to the Davidic monarchy, but later was re-interpreted as a prophecy of a messianic king in the line of David.

Gospel in Miniature

Having reviewed Mt 1-2, we can see why the infancy narrative is called “a gospel in miniature.” In these two short chapters, Matthew explains various christological titles ascribed to Jesus: Christ, Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of God, and King of the Jews. He also shows the reactions to this revelation, both good (the magi) and bad (Herod). Despite having the guide of the Scriptures, Herod (representing the Jews) rejects the messiah and tries to kill him, but he is accepted and paid homage by the magi (representing the Gentiles). This reflects the situation in Matthew’s community, which is predominantly Gentile. Although his opponents tried to kill Jesus, God protected him and later brought him back.

Studying the infancy narrative here and in Luke more than 30 years ago, was sort of an epiphany for me. I began to see that the imagery and symbolism had layers of meaning far deeper than I could have imagined. They were no longer background stories for nativity plays and Christmas specials. Understanding their true purpose helped me put the adult Christ back into Christmas.

Dreams of a Father

It is no secret that in Matthew’s infancy story Joseph plays the starring role. Mary is barely mentioned. Therefore, it is not surprising that Matthew has an angel announce the birth of Jesus to Joseph, instead of Mary.

The genealogy in 1:1-17 sets the stage. Throughout, the pattern is “A was the father of B, B was the father of C.” But at the very end, v. 16 reads: “Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born”. Someone reading Matthew for the first time would have to wonder why he didn’t just write, “Joseph was the father of Jesus.” Also, the mention of Mary would call to mind the mention of the four other women (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba) in the genealogy. As we have seen in my previous article, in each case where the mother was mentioned there was something irregular or scandalous about those unions. The presence of these four women in the genealogy prepares the reader to expect something unusual about Jesus’ birth when Mary's name appears.

Marriage Customs

V. 18 lays out the crux of the problem: “His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, but before they began to live together she was found to be with child – through the Holy Spirit.”

To understand the irregularity of Jesus’ birth, it is important to understand the marriage customs at the time. Marriage occurred in two steps. First, there was the formal exchange of consent before witnesses. This was followed some time later by the bride moving into the groom’s home. This gave the husband time to prepare a dwelling for his bride. 

Translations of v. 18 may say “betrothed” or “engaged” but neither Greek nor English has the adequate terminology to explain that according to Jewish law, Mary and Joseph were married from the time that they exchanged consent, even though they had not yet moved to the second stage of living together.

The explanation that Mary was pregnant “through the Holy Spirit” is for the benefit of the reader. In the story, Joseph was not privy to that information. As far as he knew, his wife was pregnant by another man. Matthew informs us that Joseph was both “an upright man” and “was unwilling to shame her.” In other words, he did not want to publicly accuse her of adultery, but neither could he accept the child as his own and sweep Mary’s supposed transgression under the rug.

Joseph the Dreamer

So Joseph’s compromise was to divorce her “quietly,” whatever that meant. Neither the divorce nor Mary’s pregnancy could be kept secret. But before he could proceed with his plan, he was visited in a dream by an angel who told him that the child was begotten through the Holy Spirit. Joseph was instructed to take Mary into his home and name the child Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sins.”

The story has echoes in the OT. The genealogy already told us that Jacob was the father Joseph, just as the patriarch Jacob in Genesis was the father of a different Joseph. In Genesis, Joseph had a series of dreams foretelling the future which he was able to use to his advantage to save his people in a time of famine. So, too, this Joseph will have dreams that occur at crucial moments.

Joseph’s Dream by Gaetano Gandolfi (1734-1802)

By naming the child, Joseph will become the legal father of Jesus. It was obvious who the mother of a child was, but to establish paternity, Jewish law required a man to give testimony since most men would be reluctant to claim to be the father of a child that was not theirs. Thus Matthew explains how Jesus became son of David (through Joseph’s acknowledgement of paternity) and son of God (through the Holy Spirit).

The name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is a shortened version of Yehoshua (Joshua), which means “YHWH helps.” Yeshua is very similar to the Hebrew word for “salvation.”

Prophetic Fulfillment

Joseph did exactly as instructed and Matthew gives us the first of several formulaic citations of prophetic fulfillment. All that he had just described had been done to fulfill what a prophet – in this case, Isaiah – said long ago:

“Behold, the virgin [parthenos] shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” (Mt 1:23)

Matthew appears to be quoting Isaiah 7:14, but it is not an exact quotation from the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text:

“Behold, the young woman [‘almah] is with child and shall bear a son, and she shall name him Emmanuel.” (Is 7:14, MT)

In language, the quotation is closer to the Greek translation of the OT:

“Behold, the virgin [parthenos] shall conceive, and shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel.” (LXX)

The main differences are that Matthew, following the Septuagint (LXX), uses the word “virgin” and says “they shall name him” instead of “she” (MT) or “you” (LXX).

In the context of Isaiah, the prophet is giving a sign of reassurance to King Ahaz of Judah who feared a coalition of Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel. Isaiah announces the birth of a child – presumably a child of the king’s – who will not have reached the age of reason before both attacking kingdoms will be in ruins. The name Emmanuel means “with us is God.”

This is not a prophetic prediction of the messiah, nor of a virgin birth. The Hebrew ‘almah means “young woman” and the Greek translates it as parthenos. While parthenos does have a technical meaning of virgin, it is also a term used to describe a young woman. Matthew definitely understands it in its technical sense because he clarifies in v. 25 that Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary after taking her into his home.

Matthew stresses that “they” shall refer to Jesus as Emmanuel, “God with us.” The “they” to which he refers is “his people” whom he will save from their sins. Moses was also a savior of his people, the Hebrews. But for Jesus, “his people” will be all the nations of the world. But whereas Moses saved his people from bondage to Pharaoh, Jesus will save his people from bondage to sin.

This episode foreshadows the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel which closes with the words of the post-resurrection Jesus to his disciples, “I am with you always to the end of the age” (28:20). Thus the enduring presence of God’s spirit in Jesus which was made known by an angel to Joseph, would be spread to all the nations until the end of time through the preaching of the apostles.

The Crooked Line of Descent

Matthew’s gospel is the first book of the NT and the very beginning of Matthew (1:1-17) is one of those boring genealogies that we’re used to seeing in Genesis. Just as the use of genealogies in Genesis served the purpose of linking Abraham to Noah and to Adam, Matthew uses a genealogy to link Jesus to Abraham. In v. 17 Matthew explicitly divides his list into three parts:

1. From Abraham to David
2. From David to the Babylonian Exile
3. From the Babylonian Exile to Jesus

The words Matthew uses (“book of the genesis”) to introduce his genealogy in v. 1 hearken back to the toledot formula we saw at the beginning of each of the genealogies in Genesis. He also specifies that Jesus Christ (= messiah) is both son of David and son of Abraham. By tracing Jesus’ descent through the Davidic line of kings, Matthew emphasizes the sonship of David, an important theme in the first chapter of his infancy narrative. By tracing descent back to Abraham, Matthew is also stressing his second theme that Jesus is the realization of God’s promise to Abraham by whom “all nations of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gen 22:18). This promise will be fulfilled when the magi come to pay homage to the Christ child.

Artificial Tree

Matthew’s construction is highly artificial. Luke (3:23-38) also provides a genealogy of Jesus. Unlike Matthew who works forward from Abraham, Luke works backwards from Jesus all the way to “Adam, son of God.” A quick comparison of the two genealogies show them diverging after David, with Matthew tracing Jesus’ descent through Solomon and Luke through a non-regal son, Nathan. This poses a problem for biblical inerrantists. A popular explanation is that Matthew cites Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph while Luke documents Mary’s genealogy. It is true that Matthew is focused on Joseph while Luke focuses on Mary, but Luke writes “Joseph, the son of Heli” and Matthew says “Jacob the father of Joseph.” They are both clearly describing Joseph's line of descent.

Matthew says that there were fourteen generations in each of his three parts, but that’s only true of the second section. In both the first and last parts there are fourteen names, but only thirteen generations. Oops! And to get fourteen generations in the second part, he had to skip over several kings. According to the OT Joram was not the father of Uzziah; there were three additional generations between these two kings. More problems for inerrantists.

Jesus' family tree. The genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew lists an assortment of known and unknown names and links Jesus to Abraham and the rest of the OT.

From Abraham to David

The first section has some familiar names, beginning with the patriarchs of Genesis: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. Anyone familiar with the OT stories would know of the covenant made with Abraham and his act of faith in being willing to sacrifice Isaac. But the patriarchs also behaved badly at times. Jacob cheated his elder brother out of his birthright and Judah and his brothers sold Joseph into slavery. Perhaps Matthew wants to remind the reader of that by specifically mentioning “Judah and his brothers.” Matthew also said that Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. It’s very odd in a genealogy to mention the mother. We’ll return to this later.

From David to the Babylonian Exile

Starting at the high point in Israel’s history with David and Solomon, we pass through a series of kings that ends with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the end of the monarchy. David gets mentioned more than anyone else in the OT. Yet he sinned by taking Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and then arranging for Uriah’s death when Bathsheba became pregnant. Matthew alludes to that incident in citing David as “the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” With the exception of Hezekiah and Josiah, all the other kings in the list were corrupt, incompetent or idolators. Although they were God’s representatives on earth, the kings listed in the second section were hardly exemplars of faith.

From the Babylonian Exile to Jesus

The final section covers the period from the exile in Babylon to the return and occupation by first the Greeks and then the Romans. It lists mostly unknown names. We don’t know where Matthew got these names and they don’t match the few post-exilic names that are documented in 1 Chronicles 3:19-24. Just as the line of Jesus’ descent goes through rich and powerful kings, it also wends its way through poor and powerless unknowns. If the names and stories we know in the other section are any judge, then the final section has its mix of saints and sinners – mostly sinners – as well.

What about the Women?

Scattered through Matthew’s genealogy are a few names of the mothers who made their contribution to the line of descent. From Genesis, we know of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, but those are not names Matthew cites. Instead, he gives us Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah” (Bathsheba). Why mention these women and not the others?

The one thing these women seem to have in common is that there was something irregular or scandalous about them. For example, Tamar’s husbands died before she had a child. As father-in-law, it was Judah’s duty to give her children. When he shirked his duty, Tamar took matters into her own hands and disguised herself as a prostitute. Rahab actually was a prostitute who aided the spies sent into Jericho. Ruth was a Moabite who literally threw herself at the feet of Boaz to get him to marry her. Bathsheba’s story has already been mentioned. Matthew is using these case studies in scandalous relationships to prepare us for the similarly irregular nature of the birth of Jesus.

The Big Picture

The big picture Matthew is drawing indicates that God has a plan, but that plan does not proceed apace without some twists and turns. God has to work with fallible human beings. We are not simply subject to fate, but retain our free will. Similarly, God is free to choose whom he will. It is not always the oldest son or the favored son who appears in the line of succession. Sometimes, the actions of women carry great import in moving the plan forward. 

The genealogy is Matthew’s way of saying that God writes straight with crooked lines, acting through a collection of saints and sinners, the powerful and the powerless to bring about the fulfillment of his promise to Abraham in Jesus Christ.