Holy Blood, Holy Grail (53 page)

Barabbas is said to be (in the Greek) a les tai (John 18:40) This can be translated as either “robber’ or “bandit’. In its historical context, however, it meant something quite different. Lestes was in

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fact the term habitually applied by the Romans to the Zealots23 the militant nationalistic revolutionaries who for some time had been fomenting social upheaval. Since Mark and Luke agree that Barabbas is guilty of insurrection, and since Matthew does not contradict this assertion, it is safe to conclude that Barabbas was a Zealot.

But this is not the only information available on Barabbas. According to

Luke, he had been involved in a recent “disturbance’, “sedition’ or “riot’ in the city. History makes no mention of any such turmoil in Jerusalem at the time. The Gospels, however, do. According to the Gospels, there had been a civic disturbance in Jerusalem, only a few days before when Jesus and his followers overturned the tables of the money-lenders at the Temple.

Was this the disturbance in which Barabbas was involved, and for which he was imprisoned? It certainly seems likely. And in that case there is one obvious conclusion that Barabbas was one of Jesus’s entourage.

According to modern scholars, the “custom’ of releasing a prisoner on the

Passover did not exist. But even if it did, the choice of Barabbas over

Jesus would make no sense. If Barabbas were indeed a common criminal, guilty of murder, why would the people choose to have his life spared?

And if he were indeed a Zealot or a revolutionary, it is hardly likely that

Pilate would have released so potentially dangerous a character, rather than a harmless visionary who was quite prepared, ostensibly, to “render unto Caesar’. Of all the discrepancies, inconsistencies and improbabilities in the Gospels, the choice of Barabbas is among the most striking and most inexplicable. Something would clearly seem to lie behind so clumsy and confusing a fabrication.

One modern writer has proposed an intriguing and plausible explanation.

He suggests that Barabbas was the son of Jesus and Jesus a legitimate king.z4

If this were the case, the choice of Barabbas would suddenly make sense.

One must imagine an oppressed populace confronted with the imminent extermination of their spiritual and political ruler the Messiah, whose advent had formerly promised so much. In such circumstances, would not the dynasty be more important than the individual? Would not the preservation of the bloodline be paramount, taking precedence over everything else?

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Would not a people, faced with the dreadful choice, prefer to see their king sacrificed in order that his offspring and his line might survive? If the line survived, there would at least be hope for the future.

It is certainly not impossible that Barabbas was Jesus’s son. Jesus is generally believed to have been born around 6 sc. The Crucifixion occurred no later than A.D. 36, which would make Jesus, at most, forty-two years of age. But even if he was only thirty-three when he died, he might still have fathered a son. In accordance with the customs of the time, he might have married as early as sixteen or seventeen. Yet even if he did not marry until aged twenty, he might still have had a son aged thirteen who, by

Judaic custom, would have been considered a man. And, of course, there may well have been other children too. Such children could have been conceived at any point up to within a day or so of the Crucifixion.

The Crucifixion in Detail

7) Jesus could well have sired a number of children prior to the Crucifjxion. If he survived the Crucifixion, however, the likelihood of offspring would be still further increased. Is there any evidence that Jesus did indeed survive the Crucifixion or that the Crucifixion was in some way a fraud?

Given the portrait of him in the Gospels, it is inexplicable that Jesus was crucified at all.

According to the Gospels, his enemies were the established Jewish interests in Jerusalem. But such enemies, if they in fact existed, could have stoned him to death of their own accord and on their own authority, without involving Rome in the matter.

According to the

Gospels, Jesus had no particular quarrel with Rome and did not violate

Roman law. And yet he was punished by the Romans, in accordance with Roman law and Roman procedures. And he was punished by crucifixion a penalty exclusively reserved for those guilty of crimes against the empire. If

Jesus was indeed crucified, he cannot have been as apolitical as the Gospels depict him. On the contrary, he must, of necessity, have done something to provoke Roman as opposed to Jewish -wrath.

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Whatever the trespasses for which Jesus was crucified, his apparent death on the cross is fraught with inconsistencies. There is, quite simply, no reason why his Crucifixion, as the Gospels depict it, should have been. fatal. The contention that it was warrants closer scrutiny.

The Roman practice of crucifixion adhered to very precise

procedures.zs

After sentence a victim would be flogged and consequently weakened by loss of blood.

His outstretched arms would then be fastened usually by thongs but sometimes by nails to a heavy wooden beam placed horizontally across his neck and shoulders. Bearing this beam, he would then be led to the place of execution. Here, with the victim hanging from it, the beam would be raised and attached to a vertical post or stake.

Hanging thus from his hands, it would be impossible for the victim to breathe unless his feet were also fixed to the cross, thus enabling him to press down on them and relieve the pressure on his chest. But, despite the agony, a man suspended with his feet fixed and especially a fit and healthy man would usually survive for at least a day or two. Indeed, the victim would often take as much as a week to die from exhaustion, from thirst, or, if nails were used, from blood poisoning. The attenuated agony could be terminated more quickly by breaking the victim’s legs or knees which, in the Gospels, Jesus’s executioners are about to do before they are forestalled. Breaking of the legs or knees was not an additional sadistic torment. On the contrary, it was an act of mercy a coup de grace which caused a very rapid death. With nothing to support him, the pressure on the victim’s chest would become intolerable, and he would quickly asphyxiate.

There is consensus among modern scholars that only the Fourth Gospel rests on an eyewitness account of the Crucifixion. According to the Fourth

Gospel, Jesus’s feet were affixed to the cross thus relieving the pressure on his chest muscles and his legs were not broken. He should therefore, in theory at least, have survived for a good two or three days.

And yet he is on the cross for no more than a few hours before being pronounced dead.

In the Gospel of Mark, even Pilate is astonished by the rapidity with which death occurs (Mark 15:44).

What can have constituted the cause of death? Not the spear in his side, for the Fourth Gospel maintains that

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Jesus was already dead when this wound was inflicted on him. (John There is only one explanation a combination of exhaustion, fatigue, general debilitation and the trauma of the scourging. But not even these factors should have proved fatal so soon. It is possible, of course, that they did despite the laws of physiology, a man will sometimes die from a single relatively innocuous blow. But there would still seem to be something suspicious about the affair. According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’s executioners are on the verge of breaking his legs, thus accelerating his death. Why bother, if he was already moribund? There would, in short, be no point in breaking Jesus’s legs unless death were not in fact imminent.

In the Gospels Jesus’s death occurs at a moment that is almost too convenient, too felicitously opportune. It occurs just in time to prevent his executioners breaking his legs. And by doing so, it permits him to fulfill an Old Testament prophecy. Modern authorities agree that Jesus, quite unabashedly, modelled and perhaps contrived his life in accordance with such prophecies, which heralded the coming of a Messiah. It was for this reason that an ass had to be procured from Bethany on which he could make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And the details of the Crucifixion seem likewise engineered to enact the prophecies of the Old Testament .26

In short Jesus’s apparent and opportune demise’ which in the nick of time, saves him from certain death and enables him to fulfill a prophecy is, to say the least, suspect. It is too perfect, too precise to be coincidence. It must either be a later interpolation after the fact, or part of a carefully contrived plan. There is much additional evidence to suggest the latter.

In the Fourth Gospel Jesus, hanging on the cross, declares that he thirsts.

In reply to this complaint he is proffered a sponge allegedly soaked in vinegar an incident that also occurs in the other Gospels. This sponge is generally interpreted as another act of sadistic derision. But was it really? Vinegar or soured wine is a temporary stimulant, with effects not unlike smelling salts. It was often used at the time to resuscitate flagging slaves on galleys. For a wounded and exhausted

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man, a sniff or taste of vinegar would induce a restorative effect, a momentary surge of energy. And yet in Jesus’s case the effect is just the contrary. No sooner does he inhale or taste the sponge then he pronounces his final words and “gives up the ghost’. Such a reaction to vinegar is physiologically inexplicable. On the other hand such a reaction would be perfectly compatible with a sponge soaked not in vinegar, but in some type of soporific drug a compound of opium and/or belladonna, for instance, commonly employed in the Middle East at the time. But why proffer a soporific drug? Unless the act of doing so, along with all the other components of the Crucifixion, were elements of a complex and ingenious stratagem a stratagem designed to produce a semblance of death when the victim, in fact, was still alive. Such a stratagem would not oily have saved

Jesus’s life, but also have realised the Old Testament prophecies of a

Messiah.

There are other anomalous aspects of the Crucifixion which point to precisely such a stratagem. According to the Gospels Jesus is crucified at a place called Golgotha, “the place of the skull’. Later tradition attempts to identify Golgotha as a barren, more or less skull-shaped hill to the north-west of Jerusalem. And yet the Gospels themselves make it clear that the site of the Crucifixion is very different from a barren skull-shaped hill. The Fourth Gospel is most explicit on the matter: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.”

(John 19:41) Jesus, then, was crucified not on a barren skull-shaped hill, nor, for that matter, in any “public place of execution’. He was crucified in or immediately adjacent to a garden containing a private tomb. According to Matthew (27:60) this tomb and garden were the personal property of Joseph of Arimathea who, according to all four Gospels, was both a man of wealth and a secret disciple of Jesus.

Popular tradition depicts the Crucifixion as a large scale public affair, accessible to the multitude and attended by a cast of thousands. And yet the Gospels themselves suggest very different circumstances. According to

Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Crucifixion is witnessed by most people, including the women, from “afar off’ (Luke 23:49). It would thus seem clear that Jesus’s death was not a public event, but a private one a

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private crucifixion performed on private property. A number of modern scholars argue that the actual site was probably the Garden of Gethsemane.

If Gethsemane were indeed the private land of one of Jesus’s secret disciples, this would explain why Jesus, prior to the Crucifixion, could make such free use of the place.”

Needless to say a private crucifixion on private property leaves considerable room for a hoax a mock crucifixion, a skilfully stage-managed ritual. There would have been only a few eye-witnesses immediately present. To the general populace the drama would only have been visible, as the Synoptic Gospels confirm, from some distance. And from such a distance, it would not have been apparent who in fact was being crucified. Or if he was actually dead.

Such a charade would, of course, have necessitated some connivance and collusion on the part of Pontius Pilate or of someone influential in the

Roman administration. And indeed such connivance and collusion is highly probable.

Granted, Pilate was a cruel and tyrannical man. But he was also corrupt and susceptible to bribes. The historical Pilate, as opposed to the one depicted in the Gospels, would not have been above sparing Jesus’s life in exchange for a sizeable sum of money and perhaps a guarantee of no further political agitation.

Whatever his motivation, there is, in any case, no question that Pilate is somehow intimately involved in the affair. He acknowledges Jesus’s claim as

“King of the Jews’. He also expresses, or feigns to express, surprise that

Jesus’s death occurs as quickly as it apparently does. And, perhaps most important of all, he grants Jesus’s body to Joseph of Arimathe

According to Roman law at the time, a crucified man was denied all burial.=a Indeed guards were customarily posted to prevent relatives or friends removing the bodies of the dead. The victim would simply be left on the cross, at the mercy of the elements and carrion birds. Yet Pilate, in a flagrant breach of procedure, readily grants Jesus’s body to Joseph of

Arimathea. This clearly attests to some complicity on Pilate’s part.

And it may attest to other things as well.

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In English translations of Mark’s Gospel Joseph asks Pilate for Jesus’s body. Pilate expresses surprise that Jesus is dead, checks with a centurion, then, satisfied, consents to Joseph’s request. This would appear straightforward enough at first glance; but in the original

Greek version of Mark’s Gospel, the matter becomes rather more complicated.