Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

“ambassadors”—apostles sent off to neighboring towns and villages to preach independently
     and without supervision (Luke 9:1–6). They would not be the leaders of Jesus’s movement,
     but rather its chief missionaries. Yet the Twelve had another more symbolic function,
     one that would manifest itself later in Jesus’s ministry. For they will come to represent
     the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel, long since destroyed and scattered.
    With his home base firmly established and his handpicked group of disciples growing,
     Jesus began visiting the village synagogue to preach his message to the people of
     Capernaum. The gospels say that those who heard him were astonished at his teaching,
     though not so much because of his words. Again, at this point, Jesus was merely echoing
     his master, John the Baptist: “From that time [when Jesus arrived in Capernaum],”
     Matthew writes, “Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent! The Kingdom of Heaven is near’ ”
     (Matthew 4:17). Rather, what astonished the crowds at that Capernaum synagogue was
     the charismatic authority with which Jesus spoke, “for he taught them as one with
     authority, and not as the scribes” (Matthew 7:28; Mark 1:22; Luke 4:31).
    The comparison to the scribes, emphasized in all three synoptic gospels, is conspicuous
     and telling. Unlike John the Baptist, who was likely raised in a family of Judean
     priests, Jesus was a peasant. He spoke like a peasant. He taught in Aramaic, the common
     tongue. His authority was not that of the bookish scholars and the priestly aristocracy.
     Their authority came from their solemn lucubrationand their intimate connection to the Temple. Jesus’s authority came directly from
     God. Indeed, from the moment he entered the synagogue in this small coastal village,
     Jesus went out of his way to set himself in direct opposition to the guardians of
     the Temple and the Jewish cult by challenging their authority as God’s representatives
     on earth.
    Although the gospels portray Jesus as being in conflict with a whole range of Jewish
     authorities who are often lumped together into formulaic categories such as “the chief
     priests and elders,” or “the scribes and Pharisees,” these were separate and distinct
     groups in first-century Palestine, and Jesus had different relationships with each
     of them. While the gospels tend to paint the Pharisees as Jesus’s main detractors,
     the fact is that his relations with the Pharisees, while occasionally testy, were,
     for the most part, fairly civil and even friendly at times. It was a Pharisee who
     warned Jesus that his life was in danger (Luke 13:31), a Pharisee who helped bury
     him after his execution (John 19:39–40), a Pharisee who saved the lives of his disciples
     after he ascended into heaven (Acts 5:34). Jesus dined with Pharisees, he debated
     them, he lived among them; a few Pharisees were even counted among his followers.
    In contrast, the handful of encounters Jesus had with the priestly nobility and the
     learned elite of legal scholars (the scribes) who represent them is always portrayed
     by the gospels in the most hostile light. To whom else was Jesus referring when he
     said, “You have turned my house into a den of thieves”? It was not the merchants and
     money changers he was addressing as he raged through the Temple courtyard, overturning
     tables and breaking open cages. It was those who profited most heavily from the Temple’s
     commerce, and who did so on the backs of poor Galileans like himself.
    Like his zealous predecessors, Jesus was less concerned with the pagan empire occupying
     Palestine than he was with the Jewish imposter occupying God’s Temple. Both would
     come to view Jesus as a threat, and both would seek his death. But there can be no
     doubt that Jesus’s main antagonist in the gospels is neither the distantemperor in Rome nor his heathen officials in Judea. It is the high priest Caiaphas,
     who will become the main instigator of the plot to execute Jesus precisely because
     of the threat he posed to the Temple’s authority (Mark 14:1–2; Matthew 26:57–66; John
     11:49–50).
    As Jesus’s ministry expanded, becoming ever more urgent and confrontational, his words
     and actions would increasingly reflect a deep antagonism toward the high priest and
     the Judean religious establishment, who, in Jesus’s words, loved “to prance around
     in long robes and be greeted with respect in the