Killing Jesus: A History

from rural Galilee should be sitting alone among these gray-bearded rabbis, with their flowing robes and encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish history, they are not saying. In fact, the opposite is true: Jesus’s understanding of complex spiritual concepts has astonished the priests and teachers. They listen to his words as he speaks and treat him like a savant, marveling to one another about his amazing gifts.
    Jesus is quite aware that his parents have already begun the journey back to Nazareth. He is not an insensitive child, but his thirst for knowledge and his eagerness to share his insights are so great that it never crosses his mind that Mary and Joseph will be worried once they discover him missing. Nor does Jesus believe that his actions constitute an act of disobedience. The need to dig deeper into the meaning of God overwhelms every other consideration. Like all Jewish boys, when he begins puberty he will go from being considered a mere boy to being thought of as a full-fledged member of the religious community and thus accountable for his actions. But Jesus is different from other boys his age. He is not content merely to learn the oral history of his faith; he also feels a keen desire to debate its nuances and legends. So deep is this need that even now, days since his parents departed for home, Jesus is still finding new questions to ask.
    *   *   *
    Meanwhile, Mary and Joseph frantically search the narrow streets and bazaars of the Lower City, fearing the worst for their boy. Jesus could have wandered away from the caravan and been abducted. Such things happen. Still, they believe he is in Jerusalem, no doubt scared and lonely and hungry. Perhaps the high priests have taken pity on him and allowed him to sleep at night in the Temple, with its many rooms. Or maybe he has been forced to curl up in an alley, shivering in the cold nighttime air. The most confounding thing about Jesus’s disappearance is how uncharacteristic it is. He is normally an extremely well-behaved boy and not the sort to worry Mary and Joseph.
    They enter the Temple through the southern doors and then climb the broad stone staircase leading up onto the Temple Mount. They find themselves standing on a large, crowded plaza, where they begin scanning the many worshippers for signs of their lost son.
    But it’s almost impossible to know where to look first. Twice as big as the Forum in Rome, the Temple Mount is a three-acre platform with walls stretching a quarter mile in length and looming 450 feet over the Kidron Valley below. Herod the Great built the entire structure in just eighteen months, atop the site where the former temples of Solomon and Zerubbabel once rose. The majority of the Mount is a vast open-air stone courtyard known as the Court of the Gentiles, which is open to Jew and Gentile alike. And it is here that Mary and Joseph now stand.
    Seeing no sign of Jesus, they move to the center of the Mount. There, like a fifteen-story limestone-and-gold island, rises the Temple. This is not merely a place of worship but also a refuge from the repression of Roman occupation, a place where all Jews can speak freely and pray to God without fear. There are separate courtyards for men and women, rooms for priests to sleep when they are on duty, stairs and terraces from which those priests teach the Jewish faith, and altars where sheep, doves, and heifers are sacrificed. It is the first thing any visitor to Jerusalem sees as he comes up over the surrounding hills and gazes down upon the city.
    The Temple is surrounded on four sides by a low wall that separates it from the Court of the Gentiles. Only Jews can cross from one side of the wall to the other. Just in case a Roman soldier or other Gentile should be tempted to step through the gates, a sign reminds them that they will be killed. FOREIGNERS ! reads the inscription, DO NOT ENTER WITHIN THE GRILLE AND PARTITION SURROUNDING THE TEMPLE. HE WHO IS CAUGHT WILL ONLY HAVE HIMSELF TO BLAME FOR HIS DEATH WHICH WILL FOLLOW .
    The threat is hollow. A Jew would be executed on the spot if he dared kill a trespassing legionary. And from time to time, Romans have even sent troops into the Temple to assert their authority. But the threatening sign does serve one purpose. The words are a reminder that this is a holy, inviolate place, built, according to tradition, in the precise location atop Mount Moriah where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac, where King David chose to build the First Temple,