[Before I begin, I would like to say that the following
article might make sense only to those who are familiar with the story of Jesus
and Christian history; it might be advisable for others to miss reading it].
Only
now, when religion has lost its stranglehold on us and we are free to examine
things, can we see that much of the world, and the West especially, has been
misled and deceived by organized religion for 2,000 years. Regrettably, only a
small minority avail themselves of this opportunity; many more still accept and
cling to the propaganda they have been fed for so long, and rejoice in wearing
their chains as if they were garlands. On the other hand, there are even more
who have no interest in religion at all, and who dismiss it as old rubbish, but
by doing so, they completely miss the positive side and deprive themselves of
much benefit.
The ancient Egyptians are long gone, leaving pyramids, temples, tombs,
desiccated mummies and fragments of papyrus to fascinate and cause us to wonder
and speculate about what kind of people they were. They had a brilliant
civilization, of which the West still stands in awe today.
The idea that most Westerners have
of the ancient Egyptians, however (I was no exception, until I began to think
about it), comes, firstly, from the Jewish-Christian Bible, where they are
depicted by the Hebrews as cruel tyrants who enslaved them for 400 years and
forced them to build pyramids, pylons, sphinxes and other awesome monuments, and
secondly, by the movies. But have we ever tried looking at this story from the
point-of-view of the Egyptians? Wouldn’t it be only fair to do so, especially
as their civilization was so advanced? They kept slaves, it is true, and worked
them hard, no doubt, but in this they were no different from other civilizations
of that time or much later—the Sumerians, Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians,
Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Indians and Arabs; in those days there was no concept
of human rights, and the institution of slavery was accepted and taken for
granted; no-one questioned it except maybe the slaves themselves, and then only
because they were slaves; had their situation been reversed, they would probably
have kept slaves, too.
What I will look at here, however, are the Hebrews who, while they were slaves
in Egypt, complained—understandably, of course—about their ill-treatment at
the hands of the Egyptians. Were they in any way superior to the Egyptians? (We
should not place too much importance on Cecil B. de Mills’ sensational movie,
The Ten Commandments; that is fiction). Were the Hebrews more cultured and
refined, more humane and compassionate than the Egyptians? Did they learn
anything from all their suffering to make them morally superior or more
spiritual?
Before anyone accuses me of racism
or anti-semitism, let me say that I’m not speaking here of present-day Jews,
who I have nothing at all against as a race; they are also human beings, even if
Hitler and his gang did not think so. I am speaking of people who lived
thousands of years ago; it has nothing to do with the Jews of our time. I do not
subscribe to the biblical notion that the descendants of a man will be punished
for his sins; people cannot be held responsible for what their ancestors did,
unless they choose to be responsible and insist on taking the burden upon
themselves. And if reincarnation is true (I am neither saying it is nor is not;
I’m only saying if it is true), any or all of us, regardless of our race at
present, could have been a Hebrew, an Egyptian, or a member of any other race in
the past; who knows? (Should it be that we are born every time as a member of
the same race or nation? The idea, which I accept, leaves no room at all for
narrow ideas such as racialism or nationalism). The early Hebrews—as portrayed
in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible, also known as the books of
Moses, and revered by the Jews as the Torah) had no concept of an after-life,
whether in heaven, hell or elsewhere; this life was all there was for them. In
order, therefore, to persuade them to live cohesively and obey the laws of their
tribe, their leaders convinced them that their sins would be inherited and paid
for by their descendants. It was only much later that they got hold of the idea
of an after-life—borrowed, in all probability, from the Babylonians during
their exile in Babylon.
I am talking here about history,
or what goes under that term. We have only to read the first five books of the
Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy)—whoever
has enough time and patience to do so, (it’s very hard going and repulsive, so
be warned!)—to see that the Hebrews, or the ‘Children of Israel’, were a
savage and blood-thirsty horde! One thing we have to concede is that the Hebrews (who only much later came to be known as Jews; the name ‘Jew’ comes
from Judah, the eldest of the 12 sons of Jacob, who the 12 tribes of Israel were
named after) were quite objective—if not always accurate—in recording their
history as they saw it, as they included all the debits as well as the credits,
and what a lot of debits there were! (They
were much more honest than the Christian writers of the New Testament, who had
no qualms about deliberately falsifying their reports). They burst out of Egypt,
rejoicing in their freedom after centuries of bondage, and spent some time
wandering around the Sinai desert until they got their bearings (40 years is
just too incredible!) Then, arriving at the land of Canaan (known to us now as
the troubled ‘West Bank’ of the Jordan), they proceeded to slaughter and
exterminate the inhabitants there (down to and including their animals, in some
cases!), and justified this by claiming that their tribal god, Jehovah, had
ordered them to do so! ((While I was writing this, in Nov. 1995, news of the
assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel had just come through;
the young Jewish killer said he was acting on God’s orders!)) Accounts of
these atrocities and crimes like murder, rape, incest, etc., are there in the
Bible for all to read. The Hebrews most definitely were not a cultured and
humane people! But characters from the Old Testament—some of them murderers,
thieves, rapists and liars—were presented to us as role models in our
childhood! What a basis for morality! Abraham was about to sacrifice his only
son to please his blood-thirsty God, but changed his mind at the last moment and
slaughtered a ram instead; he also told his wife to agree to have sex with the
Pharoah of Egypt in order to save his own life, and then his God punished the
Pharoah with terrible diseases, when he was not the one to blame! Joshua was
Moses’ right-hand man—his star-general—and perpetrated the butchery in
Canaan. King David was a murderer and adulterer, subject to fits of madness and
depression. And we were taught and expected to respect such people? How
incongruous and strange! Stranger still is a God that demands blood-sacrifice!
Why do people—how can they—continue to believe such stuff and make it the
basis of their living? The fact that they can and do, when they really don’t
have to, is simply fantastic, and indicates a kind of schizophrenia! Are they
not aware that there are far-superior alternatives?
But, so much for the ancient
Hebrews. Let us move ahead some centuries to the time of Emperor Tiberius of
Rome, and his governor of Palestine, Pontius Pilate.
Following the story of Jesus that
can be pieced together from the four gospels (let’s not question their
authenticity for the moment; we do not have a great deal more to go on right
now, though there is much doubt and speculation concerning it, fueled by the
numerous discrepancies and errors in the New Testament), I wish to raise several
questions concerning his trial and imagine what might have happened or how it
happened. No doubt these questions have been raised before, but I do not recall
hearing them, so I’m sure there must be many others who have never heard them.
Because Jesus had created quite a
stir in Jerusalem since arriving several days earlier with his disciples, the
priests of the temple had met and decided that he must be arrested and tried.
Late one Thursday night, therefore, when Jesus and his disciples were praying in
the Garden of Gethsemane, the temple-guards and servants of the priests came and
captured him and hauled him off to the palace of Caiaphas, the High Priest,
where the priests were already waiting to try him for blasphemy, the punishment
for which—according to the savage law of the Jews—was death. It was a
foregone conclusion. They had earlier bribed Judas, one of Jesus’ chosen
disciples, to betray him; they feared his growing popularity would result in an
uprising against the Romans, who would then retaliate by massacring the Jews;
they also feared and hated the kind of things Jesus was saying about them and
their corruption, and were determined to get him put to death by one means or
another. However, the Romans had suspended their authority to condemn people to
death.
Caiaphas asked Jesus if it were
true what people had been saying about him: that he was the King of the Jews,
the awaited Messiah. Jesus answered, non-commitally: “You say that I am”.
The priests who were already wound up, went into a fury, and forthwith
pronounced him guilty. Unable, however, to order him to be stoned to death
(their preferred method; moreover, the stoning was carried out by the public
rather than by a single executioner, and thus became not just a public spectacle
but a public act, making everyone responsible and serving to deter others from
committing the same faults), they had to appeal to the Roman governor for a
final judgment. The Gospels are not very clear on what time all this took place,
but we can assume it was sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning. Now,
Pilate was probably an early riser, being a military man, but he would not have
made haste to receive a delegation of priests (whom he despised and had little
patience with anyway), until finishing his ablutions and breaking his fast at
his usual leisurely pace, so it would have been well-past sunrise when they
were finally shown into his presence.
Pilate would have been
well-educated and urbane by the standards of his time. He had been sent from
Rome to keep order in that troublesome province, and had his headquarters in
Jerusalem. He probably had no religious bias, but we can imagine that he had
little sympathy with the Jewish priests, who were generally self-righteous
bigots (at least, this is the impression we get of them from the Bible, which is
the account we are following here). But protocol required that he hear their
complaints, as they had quite a lot of power in their community and could cause
trouble. He could no doubt see that they were worked-up about the person they
had brought bound into his presence, but must have been somewhat amused to hear
the charges made against him: that he claimed to be the Son of God, which was
blasphemy under Jewish law and carried the death-penalty. The term ‘Son of
God’, would have meant little to Pilate, and he would see it as insufficient
reason to put a man to death, and though he was concerned with maintaining order
in the province, he was not a cruel man. (The Romans ruled with a firm hand, it
is true, but they were generally more cultured and just than the peoples they
ruled). Questioning Jesus, Pilate was convinced he was innocent of the charges
made against him; probably he thought he was just another religious nut, a
little soft in the head, perhaps, but otherwise harmless. Maybe, at this stage,
Pilate did not take the matter seriously and wanted to be finished with it, so,
upon learning that Jesus was from that part of Palestine called Galilee, over
which King Herod had jurisdiction, he saw a way out. “Take him to Herod!” he
said; “He’s his responsibility, not mine! Let him decide what to do with
this fellow!”
So, Jesus was brought to Herod,
Judea’s puppet-king, who was residing in his Jerusalem palace at that time. He
had heard of this ‘miracle-worker’ and was curious about him, but likewise
did not regard him as dangerous. When he inquired about his miracles Jesus
refused to answer, and Herod, unimpressed, sent him back to Pilate without a
verdict.
This put Pilate into a deeper
dilemma than before. The tempo of the drama was increasing, the priests
insisting on Jesus’ crucifixion. Pilate questioned him again, and asked him if
he were a king. Jesus answered: “You say I am. I came here to bear witness to
the truth”. Pilate said: “What is truth? Is it some unchanging law? We all
have truths; is mine the same as yours?” Jesus remained silent on this. Pilate
again found him innocent of any offense. In an attempt to appease the priests
and the people outside who were howling for the death of Jesus, however, Pilate
ordered Jesus to be flogged, thinking that they might then agree to let him go.
It did not work; although Jesus was savagely flogged, the priests would not
give up their prey. No doubt they could see that Pilate wanted to release Jesus,
and to prevent this, they resorted to blackmail, turning what had been until
then a religious affair into a political matter—something very serious in the
eyes of the Romans. The priests probably knew that Pilate had obtained his
office through the influence of Sejanus, the commander of the Praetorian Guard,
who had since been executed for treason in Rome. Pilate was therefore in a
rather precarious position and could not afford any adverse reports about him to
reach the ears of the Emperor. The priests understood this and exploited it,
saying that he would not be considered a friend of Rome if he did not order the
execution of Jesus on grounds of sedition. Cunning priests! Pilate was cornered!
But he still had one last hope of
saving Jesus: that day marked the beginning of the Feast of the Passover—the
Jewish celebration of the liberation from bondage in Egypt—and as a
conciliatory gesture, it was a custom of the Romans to release a prisoner that
day on the choice of the people. Now, at that time, there was a notorious
criminal named Barabbas in jail, and Pilate thought they would not want him to
be released, but when he asked the crowd outside who they wished to be
freed—Jesus or Barabbas—they called for Barabbas as they had been told (or
bribed) to do (the priests had assembled the crowd and instructed them to shout
loudly for the execution of Jesus and drown out any calls for his release).
Exasperated by the intransigence of the priests, and realizing there was nothing
more he could do for Jesus (especially as he showed little interest in defending
himself against the charges), Pilate called for water to wash his hands, saying:
“I am innocent of this man’s blood”, and turned Jesus over to be
crucified. Things had moved quickly; all this had taken place within a few hours
in the morning; it was still only about noon.
It would take a whole book to tell and examine this story in detail, and even
then it would not be conclusive; so many books have been written about it and
still there is confusion and dispute; little has been resolved. My purpose in
telling it like this here is to show how Pilate tried hard to save Jesus, and to
raise a few questions about things that many people have overlooked or maybe
have not even thought about.
You see, we have been so
influenced by Hollywood that it seldom occurs to us to ask what language the
trial might have been held in. All the movie-characters speak the same language,
but the reality would have been quite different. Jesus and Pilate probably could
not communicate directly with each other. It is hardly likely that Pilate spoke
Hebrew or Aramaic, or Jesus Latin or Greek. Obviously, a translator would have
been used, and translation—as many of us know—is often inaccurate. This is
the point at which I would like to ask my questions, which I consider quite
relevant: Who reported the procedure of the trial? How did the writers of the
gospels get their ‘information’ about it? None of the disciples were
present, as they had all abandoned him and fled. The priests who had accused
Jesus were also not present, but were waiting outside in an anteroom, afraid of
becoming defiled—the bigots—from being in a Roman house. Were the
proceedings of the trial recorded by a scribe? If so, might he, or the
translator, have later reported what went on, and did he do it accurately? Jesus
himself had no time to tell his followers about it, as he was led away for
execution immediately afterwards. And Pilate, as far as we know, did not write
about it (what if there turned out to be a ‘Gospel according to Pilate’—a
report from his point-of-view? It would make interesting reading, no?) We will
probably never know the answers, but I feel satisfied in having been able to
raise these questions; they might cause a few people to think a bit more about
something that is very doubtful. It has long been in my mind to write about
Pilate, and I am happy that I have finally done so. But my line of inquiry
concerning him does not end here. There is a little more.
Jesus was taken from Pilate’s palace to be crucified outside the city-walls,
dragging his cross as he was led along. By this time, it must have been
well-past noon, and it was Friday, the last working day of the Jewish week.
Sabbath began at sunset that day, and all work then had to cease for 24 hours;
it was considered a serious crime deserving severe punishment to work on the
Sabbath Day. All business had to be settled before sunset.
Jesus was crucified, together with
two criminals. Normally, death by crucifixion was a lingering and painful
affair—and meant to be—lasting for several days; victims died from
exhaustion rather than loss of blood. While hanging there, nailed through his
wrists and feet, Jesus called out that he was thirsty. Someone stepped forward
with a sponge atop a long stick and held it up to Jesus’ lips so that he might
drink from it. The gospel-writers say the sponge was soaked in vinegar or bitter
wine, but it might have contained a drug that caused Jesus soon after to fall
into a state so resembling death that it was thought he had died.
Quickly, some of his followers
went to ask Pilate to allow the body to be taken down for burial before sunset.
Pilate was astonished, and cried: “What! Is he dead so soon?! How can it
be?” Calling the captain of the execution-squad, he was told that it was
really so. He then ordered the body to be taken down and given to his followers
for burial. Maybe he suspected that Jesus was not dead, and at this late stage,
still hoped to save him. “He’s a deluded but harmless fool”, he might have
thought, “Let him go, if he still lives. The priests can’t complain he
wasn’t crucified; they got what they wanted on that score. Let him escape, if
he can; hopefully he’ll just disappear and won’t be heard of again”. He
also ordered that the legs of the criminals crucified along with Jesus be
broken, so they would die faster and could also be taken down before the Sabbath
began; because Jesus was thought to be dead already, his legs were not ordered
broken.
Before taking Jesus down from the
cross, however, a soldier pierced his right side with a spear, though why he did
so we can only guess. If he had wanted to make sure that Jesus was dead, he
would have thrust the spear through his heart; Roman soldiers were trained to
kill; they knew very well which side of the body the heart was on; it was not a
mistake, and was not intended to be a fatal blow.
What really happened to Jesus,
no-one knows, and because of this, he is without doubt, the most controversial
person the world has ever known, and the uncertainty regarding him has caused
so much trouble that a little bit of honest doubt might have prevented. There
are no grounds at all for the implausible notion that he ‘rose from the
dead’. It is likely that he wasn’t dead when he was taken down from the
cross, and was revived later, as he is said to have appeared to his disciples
several times afterwards, and they did not recognize him at first—their
master! They did not recognize him for the simple reason that he had disguised
himself to avoid detection by the priests, who were certainly skeptical of the
report of his early death. If he had ‘risen from the dead’, he would have
been beyond death and have no reason to fear it or disguise himself. We have
not been told the truth—no, more: we have been deliberately deceived and
misled!—for two thousand years. Why? To perpetuate a myth concocted by deluded
and power-hungry people; it was all a matter of politics. We have not been shown
the real Jesus, but have been left to discover him for ourselves, if this is at
all possible.
There is now a rumor circulating
that the Shroud of Turin was not a fake, as it was pronounced to be several
years ago, but exactly what it was first claimed to be: the shroud that Jesus
was wrapped in after he was taken down from the cross. The Vatican was in a very
difficult situation and preferred to have it labeled a fake—was most anxious
to have it declared a fake—because of what it revealed: that the person
wrapped in it wasn’t dead, but still living and bleeding! Dead bodies don’t
bleed; the blood clots upon death and ceases to flow.
Moreover, at the time when this
shroud and the stains on it was supposed to have been ‘manufactured’, about
800 years ago, crucifixion had long gone out of style, and people believed that
victims were nailed to the cross through their palms. That, however, wouldn’t
have been the case, as the flesh of the palms would not have borne the
victim’s weight for long and would soon have torn through. The Shroud shows
that the victim had been nailed through the wrists, something that forgers of
the 12th century would not have been aware of, as the Church had taught for
centuries that Jesus was nailed through the palms (the paintings of that period
and later all show the prevailing belief), and there are cases recorded of
fervent Christians developing ‘holy stigmata’ like the wounds of Jesus,
through long contemplation of the nail-marks on his palms and feet; the belief
that he was nailed through the palms was so strong!
But if this second and
more-objective claim for the authenticity of the Shroud is true, how do we
account for the carbon-dating tests that were carried out on it that proved it
was a forgery? Simple: the Vatican was not going to allow its very foundations
to be undermined by the discovery that the body the shroud had contained was
that of a living man rather than a dead one; there are clever and ruthless
people in the Vatican who must have known this; they are not so stupid as to
turn over evidence that would destroy them. A piece of another relic—the
Vatican is full of relics—was given to the scientists, who must have
momentarily lost their healthy skepticism and took it to be the genuine article;
the whole precious shroud would not have been given into the hands of such
sacrilegious people, who more than likely had doubts about its authenticity from
the start. Were the scientists who carried out the tests on the fragment of
cloth they had been given absolutely sure that it was from the Shroud and not
from another old piece of cloth? Again, I must reiterate here that this is just
a rumor that might or might not be true; I do not know. As far as I am
concerned, though, the very basis of Christianity rests upon a rumor, and one
that is not at all convincing! Resurrection from the dead: hard to disprove, but
the onus of proof rests with those who claim it to be so, not with those who
don’t. Even though it is only a rumor in place of another rumor, if it causes
us to doubt the first rumor—which is far more implausible than the second—it
will have served some purpose. If I had to choose between the word of a
scientist and the word of the Vatican, however, I would not long hesitate, as
the scientist, true to the methods of his discipline, would support his thesis
with evidence, whereas the Vatican relies upon belief and threats of punishment.
Galileo was a scientist, and the Vatican has finally had to back down over the
stand it took against him; very hard for the ‘infallible’ Vatican to admit
to making mistakes! There is room for honest doubt; belief must be put to the
test.
History—which was Christian history, of course—has not
been kind to Pilate and held him to be a tyrant, when this was not so. Convinced
that Jesus was not guilty of the charges against him, he tried hard to save him,
but did not succeed. Since then, Pilate has been on trial, but he also was
innocent of the charges made against him. I cannot imagine Jesus holding any
hard feelings towards Pilate, when on the cross, he forgave his executioners.
Pilate was the most just of all the people involved with Jesus’ last days.
