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pilateswife.net>>appendix>>the evidence>>falling upon them unexpectedly

13. FALLING UPON THEM UNEXPECTEDLY

On the eve of the Passover, Pontius Pilate probably did not make any fine distinctions about Jesus' true understanding of the kingdom of heaven. He saw a Jew with a large following playing on a common anti-Roman theme; he had to consider that Jew dangerous. Pilate probably assumed that Jesus' following included many innocent farmers and workers, with a small core of dedicated dissidents inclined to violence. But most Jews -- even the devout Essenes -- carried daggers to protect themselves, and even unarmed women and children could throw deadly stones. Respecting the capacity of the crowd for spontaneous violence, Pilate would have used sufficient force -- everything he had in Jerusalem -- and made certain that he attacked the crowd where they were most defenseless. That meant when the crowd was outside the city; above all Pilate could not risk the error of Sabinus, the procurator of Judea at the outbreak the 4 B.C. uprising, who had allowed the Jewish revolutionaries to become encamped in the Temple and the Hippodrome -- from these bases they had been able to force Sabinus to withdraw his troops to Herod's Palace, where the Romans had remained under siege from the revolutionaries (Ant 17.252-268, War 2.41-54).

So Pilate probably employed the same tactic he used a few years later against the Samaritans at Mt. Gerizim, striking by surprise, most likely with a combined force of cavalry and infantry. This tactic seems to have been remembered and used effectively by Pilate's successors. We see it employed by the procurator Cuspius Fadus around 45 A.D., against "a certain magician, whose name was Theudas." This Theudas "persuaded a great part of the people to... follow him to the river Jordan; for he told them he was a prophet, and that he would, by his own command, divide the river, and afford them easy passage over it; and many were deluded by his words. However, Fadus did not permit them to take any advantage... but sent a cohort of horsemen out against them; who, falling upon them unexpectedly, slew many of them and took many of them alive. They also took Theudas alive, and cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem" (Ant 20.97-98).

During the 50's A.D, Antonius Felix used this tactic more than once against "such men as deceived and deluded the people under the pretense of divine inspiration, but were for procuring innovations and changes of the government, and... prevailed on the multitude to act like madmen, and went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signs to their freedom; but Felix thought this procedure the beginning of a revolt; so he sent some horsemen and footmen, both armed, who destroyed a great number of them" (War 2.259-260).

One of Felix's victims was "the Egyptian false prophet," mentioned in Ant 20.169-172 and War 2.261-263. The Egyptian led a crowd of perhaps thousands (Josephus says thirty thousand in Antiquities) to the Mount of Olives, where he intended to "show them... how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down," allowing them to enter and take over the city. Felix "came against them with a great number of horsemen and infantry, from Jerusalem, and... slew four hundred of them and took two hundred alive. But the Egyptian himself escaped out of the fight, but did not appear any more" (War 2.170-172). Interestingly, the tribune who rescued the apostle Paul from the mob asked Paul if he was "that Egyptian, which before these days made an uproar, and led out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers?" (Acts 21.38).

Pilate, then, most likely brought a force consisting of an entire cohort of five hundred men, supported by a hundred or so cavalry, against the unemployed workers and farmers at their camp outside Jerusalem. To ensure the element of surprise -- and because the festival was quickly approaching -- they proceeded under cover of darkness. Perhaps, after an initial skirmish, Pilate offered the "multitude" an opportunity to flee, on the condition that they surrendered their leaders. Certainly Pilate had with him an informer -- perhaps the same Judas who had disagreed with Jesus on policy regarding the poor -- who could identify Jesus and his closest associates.

Yet we can be almost certain that none of Jesus' closest disciples died with him. If so, the gospels would have celebrated their martyrdom. Instead we have the bald assertion of Mark and Matthew, describing the immediate aftermath of Jesus' arrest: "Then all the disciples deserted him and fled" (Mt 26.56). The gospels make no attempt to excuse this defection, but instead cast it as the fulfillment of a scriptural prophecy. Thus immediately before his arrest, Jesus tells his disciples, quoting from the Old Testament book of Zechariah (13.7): "All of you will stumble because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered" (Mk 14.27). To this Peter protests that even if everyone else deserts, he will not. Jesus replies: "Truly I say to you, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, You will deny me thrice" (Mk 14.30). Just as Jesus foretold and calmly accepted his betrayal by one disciple -- "Truly I say unto you, One of you which eats with me shall betray me" (Mk 14.18) -- he predicted and accepted his abandonment by the rest.

As told in the New Testament, Jesus' prophetic acceptance of his fate restores his control of a sequence of events that certainly must have been as overwhelming to him as they were to his followers. The crisis that the historical Jesus may actually have experienced on his final night provides interesting speculation for both the novelist and the theologian. Had he envisioned, in the euphoria of the day, toppling a High Priest, casting himself in the role of the people's priest, and reforming the entire institution of the Temple? Did his true temptation take place that night, when he had the opportunity to abandon his crowd and flee with his disciples, perhaps to raise another army of the poor on another day, perhaps only to seek the sanctuary of rich friends? Was it only on that night that he at last decided to give up the kingdoms of the world for another kind of kingdom?

Whatever the case, Jesus came into Pilate's hands, along with perhaps several hundred of his most militant or most devoted followers. This group was quickly and perhaps arbitrarily triaged into those who be released, those who would die quickly, and those who would die as an example to community. No doubt there were men among them who were, or had been at one time, bandits -- enough to justify the crucifixion of perhaps twenty or thirty of them. Enough to justify the designation on Jesus' cross "King of the Jews," the mocking honorific given to a bandit king.

Consistent with the extralegal nature of the punishment, Pilate most likely conducted the crucifixions as expediently as possible, putting up the crosses that night, in the place where the skirmish had occurred. Of course anyone remotely familiar with the venerable shrines of theological tourism in modern Jerusalem -- in particular the journey along the Via Dolorosa, with its meticulously plotted "stations of the cross" proceeding from the site of Antonia fortress to the denouement on the hill of Golgotha -- will question that Jesus could have been summarily crucified in the city dump, as he is in Pilate's Wife. And of course any sensible Christian will wonder how Good Friday could have been on a Tuesday.

Next: THE MOVABLE SABBATH

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