Killing Jesus: A History

the tax collectors and prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”
    The crowd is awed. The high priests are stunned into silence.
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    Word of Jesus’s intellectual victory spreads through the Temple courts. The pilgrims now love Jesus even more. They are speaking of him as a true prophet and hope he will live up to the promise of his celebratory entry into Jerusalem just two short days ago.
    The sun climbs higher and higher in the sky, and business in the Temple courts goes on as Jesus holds the crowd in thrall. Rather than back down after their earlier embarrassment, the chief priests and elders continue to look on.
    The Nazarene tells a parable about a wealthy landowner and his troublesome tenants. The summation is a line stating that the religious leaders will lose their authority and be replaced by others whose belief is more genuine.
    Then Jesus tells a second parable, about heaven, comparing it to a wedding, with God as the father of the groom, preparing a luxurious banquet for his son’s guests. Again the religious leaders are the subject of the final line, a barb about a guest who shows up poorly dressed and is then bound hand and foot and thrown from the ceremony. “For many are invited,” Jesus says of heaven, “but few are chosen.”
    This stings badly. The authority of the religious leaders is that they are the chosen ones. For Jesus to state publicly that they are not is an enormous defamation of their character. So they finally leave the Temple courts and switch tactics, sending their own disciples out to wage theological battle. These disciples are smart. Rather than attacking Jesus, they try to soften him up with flattery. “Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by men because you pay no attention to who they are.”
    Then the flattery ends. Aware that they’re unlikely to catch Jesus in a theological misstatement, the Pharisees’ disciples now try to frame Jesus by using Rome. “What is your opinion?” they ask. “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
    “Why are you trying to trap me?” Jesus seethes. He asks for someone to hand him a denarius. “Whose portrait is this?” he asks, holding up the coin. “And whose inscription?”
    “Caesar’s,” they answer.
    “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Jesus tells them. “And to God what is God’s.”
    Again the crowd is awed. Although Caesar is a feared name, the Nazarene has marginalized Rome without directly offending it. The brilliance of Jesus’s words will last throughout the ages.
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    Having failed in their mission, those disciples leave. They are soon replaced by the Sadducees, a wealthy and more liberal Temple sect who count Caiaphas among their number. Once again, they try to pierce the aura of Jesus’s vulnerability with a religious riddle, and once again they fail.
    Soon the Pharisees step forward to take their turn. “Teacher,” asks their leader, a man known for being an expert in the law, “what is the greatest commandment in the law?”
    Under the teachings of the Pharisees, there are 613 religious statutes. Even though each carries a designation marking it as either great or little, the fact remains that each must be followed. Asking Jesus to select one is a clever way of pushing him into a corner, making him defend his choice.
    But Jesus does not choose from one of the established laws. Instead, he articulates a new one: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” 4
    The Pharisees stand silent. How could anyone argue with that? Only, Jesus goes on to add a second law: “Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”
    Jesus has now defeated the sharpest minds in the Temple. But he does not settle for victory and walk away. Instead, the Nazarene turns and excoriates the priests in front of the pilgrims. “Everything they do is for men to see,” he tells the crowd. “They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long. They love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues. They love to be greeted in the marketplace and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’”
    Six times, Jesus denounces the Pharisees as hypocrites. He calls them a brood of vipers. 5