Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

about him.
    “He is a good man,” someone whispers.
    “No. He is leading the people astray,” says another.
    Sometime later, after Jesus has revealed himself to the crowd, a few begin to make
     guesses about his identity. “Surely, he is a prophet.”
    And then someone finally says it. Everyone is clearly thinking it; how could they
     not be, what with Jesus standing tall amid the crowd declaring, “Let he who thirsts
     come to me and drink?” How are they to understand such heretical words? Who else would
     dare say such a thing openly and within earshot of the scribes and the teachers of
     the law, many of whom, we are told, would like nothing more than to silence and arrest
     this irksome preacher?
    “This man is the messiah!”
    This is no simple declaration. It is, in fact, an act of treason. In first-century
     Palestine, simply saying the words “This is the messiah,” aloud and in public, can
     be a criminal offense, punishable by crucifixion. True, the Jews of Jesus’s time had
     somewhat conflicting views about the role and function of the messiah, fed by a score
     of messianic traditions and popular folktales that were floating around the Holy Land.
     Some believed the messiah would be a restorative figure who would return the Jews
     to their previous position of power and glory. Others viewed the messiah in more apocalyptic
     and utopian terms, as someone who would annihilate the present world and build a new,
     more just world upon its ruins. There were those who thought the messiah would be
     a king, and those who thought he’d be a priest. The Essenes apparently awaited two
     separate messiahs—one kingly, the other priestly—thoughmost Jews thought of the messiah as possessing a combination of both traits. Nevertheless,
     among the crowd of Jews gathered for the Feast of Tabernacles, there seems to have
     been a fair consensus about who the messiah is supposed to be and what the messiah
     is supposed to do: he is the descendant of King David; he comes to restore Israel,
     to free the Jews from the yoke of occupation, and to establish God’s rule in Jerusalem.
     To call Jesus the messiah, therefore, is to place him inexorably upon a path—already
     well trodden by a host of failed messiahs who came before him—toward conflict, revolution,
     and war against the prevailing powers. Where that path would ultimately lead, no one
     at the festival could know for sure. But there was some sense of where the path must
     begin.
    “Does not the scripture say that the messiah is of David’s seed?” someone in the crowd
     asks. “That he comes from the village where David lived? From Bethlehem?”
    “But we know where this man comes from,” claims another. Indeed, the crowd seems to
     know Jesus well. They know his brothers, who are there with him. His entire family
     is present. They traveled to the festival together from their home in Galilee. From
     Nazareth.
    “Look into it,” says a Pharisee with the confidence that comes from a lifetime of
     scrutinizing the scriptures. “You will see: the prophet does not come out of Galilee.”
    Jesus does not dispute their claim. “Yes, you all know me,” he admits. “And you know
     where I am from.” Instead, he deflects the matter of his earthly home entirely, choosing
     instead to emphasize his heavenly origins. “I have not come here on my own; the one
     who sent me is true. And he, you do not know. But I know him. I am from him. He is
     the one who sent me” (John 7:1–29).
    Such statements are commonplace in John, the last of the four canonized gospels, composed
     between 100 and 120 C.E . John shows no interest at all in Jesus’s physical birth, though even he acknowledges
     that Jesus was a “Nazarean” (John 18:5–7). In John’s view, Jesus is an eternal being,
     the
logos
who was with God fromthe beginning of time, the primal force through whom all creation sprang and without
     whom nothing came into being (John 1:3).
    A similar lack of concern about Jesus’s earthly origins can be found in the first
     gospel, Mark, written just after 70 C.E . Mark’s focus is kept squarely on Jesus’s ministry; he is uninterested either in
     Jesus’s birth or, perhaps surprisingly, in Jesus’s resurrection, as he writes nothing
     at all about either event.
    The early Christian community appears not to have been particularly concerned about
     any aspect of Jesus’s life before the launch of his ministry. Stories about his birth
     and