We are at Mark 14:66. Jesus has been condemned to death by the leaders of the Jews, for blasphemy. While Jesus's "trial" is going on, Peter is hanging around in the courtyard. A servant girl sees him and recognizes him as a follower of Jesus. Peter told her he didn't know what she was talking about and moved to another spot. The girl saw him again and told the other people standing around her suspicions. Peter denied it again. Later, some more people standing around could somehow tell he was a Galilean and again suggested he must be one of Jesus's followers. A third time, Peter swore he did not know Jesus. (There's that number three again) Immediately the rooster crowed a second time. (We were never told when the first crow was.) That reminded Peter of Jesus's prophecy about these very events. He began to weep.
We are now at chapter 15. All this stuff has been happening in the night, on Passover, if the story is happening in real linear time and not skipping days.. Nobody has had any sleep, as far as I can tell. Very early in the morning, still Passover, all the Jewish leaders decide to hand Jesus over to Pontius Pilate. Pilate asks Jesus if he is the king of the Jews. Jesus says yes he is. Why would Pilate ask Jesus that? Could it be that the messiah was supposed to be a Jewish king? Why does Jesus say yes?
It should be noted that there was no "king of the Jews" at that time. After Herod the great died in 4BCE, the kingdom was split among his three sons, who were called tetrarchs. The tetrarch of Judea, Archelaeus, was ousted by the Romans in 6CE and Judea became a province of Rome with an appointed governor. Pilate was governor of Judea from 26-36 CE. I imagine Jesus's claim would have either angered or amused him. Pilate tells Jesus to answer the many charges against himself, but he does not reply.
The text tells us it was the custom to release a prisoner at the request of the people, during the feast (passover). A crowd had gathered to make this request. Pilate asked if they wanted Jesus (the king of the Jews) released to them, but the chief priests influenced the crowd to release a man named Barabbas. Barabbas had been in prison with some insurrectionists who had committed murder in an uprising. We do not know which uprising this was, because there were many. Some were caused by the actions of Pontius Pilate himself, who set up Roman standards on the temple grounds and used temple money, naturally angering many Jews. It should also be noted that Barabbas means "son of the father." He could have been another contender for the son of god title.
The crowd asked for Barabbas to be released and shouted for Jesus to be crucified, in spite of Pilate's weak attempt to figure out why they wanted him dead. So Pilate had Jesus beaten (surely not necessary) and handed him over to be crucified. The soldiers took Jesus to the praetorium, gave him a purple robe, and a crown of thorns. They mocked him, pretending he was a king, struck him on the head with a staff, and spit on him. Then they took off the robe, put his clothes back on and led him out to be crucified. So, how does the narrator know this? It was not done in public. Only the soldiers who participated would have known about it. This is another case of omniscient narrator. The same could be said of Jesus's passover night trial by the Sanhedrin. Where did the author of Mark get his information?
Notice that the crowd Pilate spoke to also rejected Jesus three times. In spite of what I have heard preached many times, there is no reason to believe the same people who sang his praises when he rode in to town on a donkey are the same people who yelled, "crucify him!"
No comments:
Post a Comment