pilateswife.net>>appendix>>the evidence>>a man with connections

pilateswife.net>>appendix>>the evidence>>a man with connections

9. A MAN WITH CONNECTIONS

Clearly Pilate could not simply have demanded that the Caiaphas and his Temple treasurers give up several hundred talents, even on the pretext of spending the money for capital improvements in Judea; the aqueduct riots, and we have seen, illustrate the difficulty of that approach. However, if Pilate wanted to enlist Caiaphas' enemies in an extortion scheme, he probably would have found that their anti-Roman sentiments were no obstacle to cooperation. First we have the case of Antonius Felix, procurator of Judea (the title Prefect was changed to Procurator, the term used in the New Testament, in 44 A.D.) from 52 A.D. to 60 A.D. "Felix bore an ill will to Jonathan, the High Priest, because Jonathan frequently admonished him to govern Jewish affairs better than he did, lest he have complaints made of him by the multitude.... Wherefore Felix persuaded one of Jonathan's most faithful friends... to bring bandits upon Jonathan, in order to kill him; and this he did by promising to give him a great deal of money..." (Ant 20 162-163). Jonathan was murdered by knife-wielding urban terrorists called sicarii, who leapt from the crowd and stabbed the priest; no-one was ever punished for the crime.

Felix's successor was Lucceius Albinus, procurator from 62 A.D. to 64 A.D.; evidently he preferred to deal more directly with bandits. Albinus accepted ransoms to release bandits from prison, and "nobody remained in prison except malefactors who paid him nothing" (War 2.273). For anyone with money, staying out of Albinus' prisons was as easy as getting out. "At this time the enterprises of the seditious at Jerusalem were very formidable; the principal men among them purchasing leave of Albinus to go on with their seditious practices; while that part of the people who delighted in disturbances joined themselves to those who had fellowship with Albinus" (War 2.274).

Albinus' successor, Gessius Florus, was even more entrepreneurial. Josephus describes him as "a partner with the bandits themselves," (Ant 20.255), who "almost publicly proclaimed to the entire country that they could become bandits, upon the condition that he might share with them the spoils" (War 2.278). The bottom line: Even on the brink of the 66 A.D. revolution, with relations between Jewish dissidents and Roman authority certainly much more poisonous than they were under Pilate, the two parties had no difficulty doing business with one another.

But if Pilate might reasonably have sought out and found Jewish dissidents, we have no direct evidence that Jesus or any of his followers had contact with Pilate or his agents. However, we have seen a Jesus who meets secretly, at night, with a member of the Sanhedrin (John 3.1.2). The gospels also portray Jesus' contact with a Roman centurion, whose paralyzed servant Jesus heals (Mt 8.5-13, Lk 7.1-10); this is one of the few narratives found in the Q, the collection of Jesus' sayings which predates the New Testament gospels. These are perhaps echoes of an historical Jesus: A man, as we have seen, in and out of the houses of wealthy men, some of whom are his intimate disciples; a man with powerful opponents calling at night; a man with contacts among Jewish and Roman officials. A man with connections.

Perhaps we can also glimpse something of the kind of dealings Jesus might have been involved in by looking closely at the activities of the movement that Jesus left behind. For this we must rely on the New Testament book of Acts, the history of the early church written by the author of Luke, for whatever we can glean. But Acts, freed from the narrative challenges presented by the gospels' supernal protagonist, offers in several crucial areas a more authentic look at Judean politics at the time of Jesus.

Acts begins with Jesus' ascension into heaven, forty days after his resurrection. Acts 1.15 gives us the figure of 120 "brothers" -- which evidently meant committed disciples like the seventy who carried Jesus message into the towns and villages -- at the core of Jesus' movement immediately following his ascension. They went on performing and preaching. They also seem to have added a new activity, or at least one the gospels neglect to tell us about: formal fundraising. According to Chapter 2 of Acts, the eleven apostles were present at the Pentecost festival in Jerusalem, where "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues...." The demonstration of speaking in tongues astonished the crowd of foreign Jews -- each man heard a voice in his own native language -- and brought the movement three thousand new converts. Evidently these converts were expected to contribute their property to the church community: "And all that believed were together, and held all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and shared them with any man who had need" (Acts 2.44-45).

In chapter 3 of Acts, the apostles Peter and John heal a congenitally lame beggar at the main gate to the Temple, which filled the crowd inside with "wonder and amazement" when they saw the lame man enter. Peter took the opportunity to start preaching, but was interrupted by the captain of the Temple Guard (that would have been Jonathan, Caiaphas' brother-in-law and Ananus' son), who clapped the two apostles into prison overnight (Acts 4.1-3). In the morning Peter and John were brought before an assembly of the Sanhedrin presided over by Ananus (Annas), Caiaphas, Jonathan, and various other priests and relatives of Ananus. The dialogue is concocted -- the big-shots want to know with what power the apostles healed the lame man, giving Peter and John the opportunity to boast about the power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom the Sanhedrin crucified and God raised from the dead. But the result of the interview is probably historical. The Sanhedrin issued a warning -- don't teach in the name of Jesus again. Peter and John wouldn't agree to this condition, but they were released anyway: "So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing [about] how they might punish them, because of the people: for all men glorified God for that which was done" (Acts 4.21).

Meanwhile, the followers of Jesus continued to sell their property: "For as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet..." (Acts 4.34-35). The apostles continued to preach and heal in Jerusalem; Peter's popularity was such that the sick were laid out in the street so that his shadow would fall on them as he passed (Acts 5.15). And this proselytizing so enraged Caiaphas that he arrested the apostles again, but an angel came and released them from prison during the night (Acts 5.19). Given the ease with which criminals seem to have bought their freedom in first century Judea, we are not unduly skeptical to wonder if some of the proceeds from the property sales might have persuaded a corrupt terrestrial authority to open the prison door.

After their escape, the apostles were arrested yet again by the Temple Guard, but "without violence: for [the guards] feared the people, lest they should have been stoned" (Acts 5.26). Again the apostles refused to stop preaching, and now the Sanhedrin "took counsel to slay them." But a Pharisaic scribe named Gamaliel stood and persuaded the Sanhedrin to release the apostles, comparing their "work" and teaching to that of revolutionaries like Judas the Galilean (founder of the nationalistic "fourth philosophy"); this work would fail if it were a human plan, and they would not be able to overthrow it if it were God's plan. The apostles were sent off with only a beating, and went back to preaching in the Temple (Acts 5.33-42).

Finally an apostle didn't escape. Stephen, accused of blasphemy by rivals in his own synagogue, was hauled before the Sanhedrin. His diatribe against the Sanhedrin -- "You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?" -- enraged them, and Stephan was taken outside the city and stoned (Acts 6.8-7.60).

One of those who watched the stoning of Stephan and (we are conspicuously told) approved of it, was a young man named Saul, later known as the apostle Paul. According to Acts 8.1-3, "at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem.... Saul... made havoc of the church, entering into every house, dragging out both men and women and committing them to prison." Not long after this persecution, Saul was on the road Damascus, intent on ferreting out any followers of the "way" he could find in the synagogues there. And on that road Saul encountered the risen Christ as a great light from heaven, and heard his voice. So began a new era in the evolution of the Christian church.

What we have here in the first nine chapters of Acts is a cornucopia of information about the church as Jesus left it -- before it was transformed by the extraordinary intellect and passion of Paul. We see that Jesus' discipleship was not diminished by his death; his "broadcasters" went on healing, preaching, and making converts as before. They were able to raise what may have been a considerable amount of money; certainly the proselytes selling their houses and land were not impoverished. They waged a see-saw battle with the Sanhedrin: Arrested, they were protected by favorable public opinion; arrested again, they probably dipped into the common legal defense fund to buy their way out of prison. Finally, unable to challenge the Jesus movement directly, the Sanhedrin seems to have resorted to a clandestine terror campaign, sending goons like Saul to drag Jesus' followers out of their homes.

We also have an independent look at the political connections of the Jerusalem church, albeit three decades after the events recalled in Acts. The year is 62 A.D.; again Josephus is our source (Ant. 20.197-203). This passage describes the actions of the High Priest Ananus, son of the same Ananus (the New Testament's Annas) whose four sons and son-in-law Caiaphas had held the office previously. Josephus describes the younger Ananus as "a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders." In the interval between the death of the Roman procurator Festus and the arrival of the new procurator Albinus in Jerusalem, Ananus the younger decided to get rid of a political opponent. He "assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned." This action provoked an outcry among "the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king [Agrippa, the Tetrach appointed by the emperor Claudius in 53 A.D.], desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrin without his consent; whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him..."

Jesus' brother James (one of four brothers of Jesus, along with several unnamed sisters, mentioned in Mk 6.3 and Mt 13.55) was the leader of the conservative wing of early Christianity, which believed in strict adherence to Jewish law. This view was at odds with the more liberal and ultimately victorious position of Paul's church, which spread the word throughout the Gentile world and did not insist on Jewish legalisms (although in Acts 21.26 Paul undergoes a purification ritual in the Temple at the behest of James, a tacit acknowledgement of James' preeminent position in the early church -- and perhaps the settling of an internecine dispute). Josephus' account of James' death shows dramatically the significant political clout of his Jerusalem church, little more than thirty years after his brother's death. The Sanhedrin, unable to act directly against James, was forced to wait for a temporary lapse of Roman authority following the unexpected death of the Procurator; even then the people protested vehemently. So great was the protest that even a High Priest as powerful as Ananus' son and namesake couldn't keep his office in the face of it. (We also see how the Jewish Tetrarch, Agrippa, had become a vehicle to enforce Roman personnel decisions.)

Despite the popular of image of the first Christians as an almost literally subterranean band of outcasts, the evidence is consistent: Jesus bequeathed to his followers a politically astute and powerful organization that continued to wield significant power, under his brother's aegis, long after his death. It is unlikely that Jesus could have bequeathed such a powerful church without having laid its foundation, politically as well as spiritually. Jesus, like his church, was connected. And it is hardly inconceivable that one of Jesus' connections might also have been connected to Pontius Pilate.

But the history of the early church also reveals an important aspect in which Jesus differed from the men who pursued his mission in the Jerusalem church after his death. Those disciples preached in the Temple like Jesus, healed like him, were popular like him -- except among the Jewish ruling elite, whom, like Jesus, they persistently antagonized. Many of Jesus' followers were arrested by Jewish authorities; some were tried before the Sanhedrin; some were threatened with stoning; two, including Jesus' brother, were stoned. But none of them were remanded to the Roman authorities by the Sanhedrin, as Jesus allegedly was, and none of them were crucified. Why was Jesus so different in those final, fatal particulars from the men who were otherwise so much like him?

Next: ACCUSED OF MANY THINGS

Contents Commentarii Appendix Contents Abbreviations Glossary How to Use this Site Contact the Editors