(7 of 9)
And then there were radical free-lancers like Jesus. Up until 20 years ago, it was left to Jewish analysts to present Jesus' various messages--of inner purity over legal adherence; of baptism; of messianism; of the expectation of God's kingdom on earth--as growing out of various 1st century Jewish beliefs. But lately, says Chilton, more Christian scholars have scuttled the idea that Jesus' Judaism was mere "ethnic happenstance." He argues, "If you were to take the elements of Jesus' position in isolation, each would [recall] the practice of a certain type of Judaism. He is distinctive in the way in which he brings the elements together and is able to mediate the spirit of God to his followers so that they can be part of the revelation."
In any case, Jesus' radical new synthesis--and his dramatic preaching of it--was dangerous, especially in an atmosphere that Schwartz says had turned into "a tinderbox." Herod had managed to keep a lid on anti-Roman sentiment for most of his reign. But starting with his fatal illness in 4 B.C. and continuing over the careers of several less effective successors, a series of bloodily suppressed revolts erupted.
In 4 B.C., angry Jews, protesting the execution of students who had tried to remove a Roman eagle from the Temple decorations, threw stones down on their occupiers from the mount's porches and set off a citywide riot; eventually 2,000 rebels were crucified. In A.D. 26, the Roman governor provocatively ordered his troops to raise flags with Caesar's face within a few hundred feet of the central shrine. A mob marched to his house in Caesarea. His soldiers drew their swords. The Jews, in an extraordinary act of passive resistance, laid bare their necks and said they would rather die than see their religious laws flouted. The governor, a normally hot-tempered newcomer named Pontius Pilate, recalled the flags.
The situations now and then are not analogous. Israel's current Jewish government, unlike the Roman Empire, is not alien to Jerusalem. The Palestinians are not as defenseless as the ancient Jews. And Israeli opposition leader (now Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon's unwelcome stroll last September around the two Islamic shrines that now occupy the Temple platform--a provocation that may have sparked the Holy Land's current strife when Muslims responded by throwing rocks down on Jews at prayer below--has no precise 1st century cognate. Still, the intertwined dynamic of military occupation and religious clash is shockingly familiar.
Two thousand years ago, the man in the middle of this potentially deadly tug-of-war was the high priest. The position, ritually paramount at the Temple, had been politically hobbled by Herod. Nonetheless, as head of the Sanhedrin, a Jewish religious and civic body, and a key participant at city council meetings, the officeholder still had great power and responsibility.