Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

(John 18:8–11). Luke’s discomfort with a Jesus who seems to resist arrest is ameliorated
     by his insistence that Jesus stopped the melee and healed the poor servant’s ear before
     allowing himself to be taken away (Luke 22:49–53). That said, it is Luke who specifically
     claims that the disciples were commanded by Jesus to bring
two
swords to Gethsemane (Luke 22:35–38).
    On Eusebius, see Pamphili Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
III.3, quoted in George R. Edwards,
Jesus and the Politics of Violence
(New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 31. Eusebius’s account has been challenged by some
     contemporary scholars including L. Michael White,
From Jesus to Christianity
(New York: HarperOne, 2004), 230.
    Raymond Brown outlines the argument for a set of pregospel passion narratives in his
     encyclopedic two-volume work
The Death of the Messiah
(New York: Doubleday, 1994), 53–93. Contra Brown is the so-called Perrin School,
     which rejects the notion of a pre-Markan passion narrative and claims that the narrative
     of the trial and crucifixion was shaped by Mark and adapted by all the canonized gospels,
     including John. See
The Passion in Mark: Studies on Mark 14-16
, ed. W. H. Kelber (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976).
    For the use of crucifixion among the Jews, see Ernst Bammel, “Crucifixion as a Punishment
     in Palestine,”
The Trial of Jesus
, ed. Ernst Bammel (Naperville, Ill.: Alec R. Allenson, 1970), 162–65. Josef Blinzler
     notes that by Roman times there was some sense of uniformity in the process of crucifixion,
     especially when it came to the nailing of the hands and feet to a crossbeam. There
     was usually a flogging beforehand, and at least among the Romans it was expected that
     the criminal would carry his own cross to the site of the crucifixion. See Blinzler,
The Trial of Jesus
(Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1959).
    Josephus notes that the Jews who tried to escape Jerusalem as it was besieged by Titus
     were first executed, then crucified;
The Jewish War
5.449–51. Martin Hengel writes that although crucifixion was a punishment reserved
     for non-Roman citizens, there were instances of Roman citizens being crucified. But
     these were deliberately done in response to crimes that were deemed treasonous. In
     other words, by giving the citizen a “slave’s punishment,” the message was that the
     crime was so severe that it forfeited the criminal’s Roman citizenship. See Hengel,
Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 39–45. Cicero’s quote is from Hengel, 37. See
     also J. W. Hewitt, “The Use of Nails in the Crucifixion,”
Harvard Theological Review
25 (1932): 29–45.
    Regarding Jesus’s trial before Caiaphas in the gospels, Matthew and Mark claim that
     Jesus was brought to the courtyard (
aule
) of the high priest and not to the Sanhedrin. Unlike Mark, Matthew specifically names
     the high priest Caiaphas. John claims that Jesus was first taken to the previous high
     priest, Ananus, before being transferred to Ananus’s son-in-law and the present high
     priest, Caiaphas. It is interesting to note that Mark treats as false the claim that
     Jesus will bring down the Temple and build another without human hands. As Matthew,
     Luke-Acts, and John make clear, that is precisely what Jesus threatened to do (Matthew
     26:59–61; Acts 6:13–14; John 2:19). In fact, a version of that very statement can
     be found in the Gospel of Thomas: “I shall destroy this house, and no one will be
     able to rebuild it.” Even Mark puts Jesus’s threat into the mouths of the passersby
     who mock him on the cross. If the statement were false, as Mark contends, where would
     the passersby have heard it? From the closed night session of the Sanhedrin? Unlikely.
     Indeed, such a statement seems to have been part of the post–70 C.E . Christological foundation of the Church, which considered the Christian community
     to be the “temple made not with human hands.” There can be no doubt that whatever
     Jesus’s actual words may have been, he had in fact threatened the Temple in some way.
     Mark himself attests to this: “Do you see these buildings? Not one stone will be left
     upon another; all will be thrown down” (Mark 13:2). For more on Jesus’s threats to
     the Temple, see Richard Horsley,
Jesus and the Spiral of Violence
, 292–96. With all this in mind, Mark’s apologetic overlay in the trial before the