CEPHAS AND THE ROOSTER
5:40 am – YERUSHALAYIM, FRIDAY, APRIL 7, A.D. 30
CEPHAS, CLOSED in his thoughts, hadn't even noticed the arrival of Yousef from Armathajim, and even if he had, he wouldn't have cared much about his Rabbi's friend, for him Yousef was a busybody who, being a rich person and a long-time friend date from Yeshua's family, I thought I could do whatever I wanted.
He had sat behind the Levites, covering his bald spot with his robe. That gesture had little to do with the prevailing cold, but with his ardent desire that no one would discover him again and report him.
The guards and sicarios continued to discuss the traditions and legends about demons.
At Ananus' residence, everything seemed peaceful. There was no movement, no sign of violence or agitation.
Cephas had been seated for little more than half an hour when a second woman approached the circle. She was younger, and from the looks of it she was another servant. She placed herself by the concierge and the latter, seeing her, leaned towards her left ear, whispering something to her, at the same time indicating Cephas with her hand. The newcomer looked carefully. She took a few steps then, circling those gathered around the fire.
When he reached the apostle, he tugged at the cloak that hid Shim-on's head, shouting to him:
— Aren't you one of that Galilean's faithful?
The Hebrew's unexpected exclamation startled the Levites and Cephas at the same time, and the disciple, white as lime, stumbled to his feet, looking at the girl.
— I don't know that man – he shouted, he louder than his inquisitor. – And I'm not one of his disciples either!
Cephas put such vehemence into her sentences that the arteries in his neck swelled and his face turned purple. The eyes of Yeshua's terrified friend almost popped out of their sockets as a very thin thread of saliva ran down the left corner of his lips.
Cephas' aggressiveness was such that the servant recoiled in fear, fleeing from there towards the door of the house. This time, the servants and guards remained for a few seconds with their eyes fixed on the unfortunate fisherman. Cephas, stunned, turned away from the fire.
Despite his weakness, Cephas continued to love the Rabbi.
BACK TO THE RAILS of the wall, bent over and silent, Shim-on Cephas often banged his head against the irons. The headbutts, dry and constant, instead of hurting him, seemed to bring him some serenity. After a while, after wiping his tears with one of the sleeves of his cloak, he rejoined the group.
The stubborn Galilean was unwilling to imitate his companions who had fled up the mountain and, overcoming his fear, he made himself comfortable among the servants, who at no time became accusers or bothered him. At least, the men who, back then, were rallying around the flames.
But luckily, shortly afterwards the group was increased by half a dozen priests, apparently from the house of Kaiafa, whose mission was to coordinate and control the transfer of the Nazarene.
After asking the assembled Levites for information, four of the priests went into the back house while the other two remained by the fire.
The unhappy disciple had buried his face in his small, calloused hands, marking the evident despair with an uninterrupted and rhythmic frontal sway of the body. The second public denial had been completed. Silence continued to dominate Yerushaláyim.
Blinded by rage, he hid among the olive trees, willing to follow the group that had captured the Rabbi. And there it continued until, a few minutes before dawn, the concierge and servant who had compromised the apostle's safety with their questions returned to the charge. They approached him unexpectedly and, almost without raising her voice, the concierge commented in a serene tone, without the initial malice:
— I am sure that you are one of the disciples of this Yeshua. Not only because one of your faithful asked me to let you into the courtyard, but also because my brother saw you in the Temple with that man... Why deny it?
For the third time Cephas denied any connection with the Nazarene. But on this occasion, his denial was much colder and more calculating.
— Unfortunately you are wrong, woman, accept this and stop bothering me.
Cephas did not count that just at that moment, as the light of the new day dawned in the east, voices began to be heard inside the mansion. He leapt to his feet as one of Ananus's servants rushed out, alerting the guards.
It all happened so quickly that no one could react.
SUDDENLY, in the doorway appeared the Rabbi. He was still tied up. Along with him, Yohanan, the legionnaire and two other servants of Ananus.
For the space of a minute, while the Levites from the Temple were organizing to escort the prisoner, Yeshua slowly raised his head, turning his face to Cephas, who was still on his right and a little more than two meters away.
In the flickering, reddened light of the torches, Yeshua's eyes riveted solely and exclusively to Cephas's. Yeshua did not smile, but his gaze conveyed a deep and moving message of love and pity. With that gesture, the Rabbi reached as never before to the bewildered heart of the renegade disciple.
There was no need for words, the Rabbi seemed to know exactly what had happened during those nearly three hours spent in the courtyard of the former high priest, and Cephas, upon receiving that intense message, began to assess in depth the extent of his guilt.
At that moment, when the Roman soldier behind the Nazarene forced him to descend the stairs with a violent shove, nearby, a rooster ripped the silence of dawn in a long, shrill song.
The Rabbi's closest friend paled.
The porter, who was standing by our side, rushed towards the gate, opening the creaking iron door, and the group of Levites, always surrounding the Rabbi, came out of Ananus' house.
From that moment on, and for some time, other roosters filled the first dawns of that Friday, April 7, with their crowing...
***
THE WEDDING OF CANA
GALILEIA, 27 d.C
ON THE THIRD DAY after this there was a wedding at Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Yeshua was there; and Yeshua was also invited to marry his disciples. When the wine had run out, Yeshua's mother said to him:
— They don't have any more wine.
Yeshua answered him:
— What have I to do with you, woman? – It is not my time yet.
His mother said to the servants:
— Do what he tells you to do.
Now six stone water pots were placed there, which the Jews used for purifications, and each carried two or three metrets.
Yeshua said to them:
— I filled the pots with water. They filled them to the top.
Then he said to them:
— Take it now and take it to the chairman of the table.
They did.
When the chairman of the table tasted the water turned into wine, not knowing where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), he called the bridegroom and said to him:
— Every man puts the good wine first, and when the guests have drunk enough, then he presents them with the inferior; but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
With this miracle, Yeshua at Cana of Galilee gave the beginning of his miracles, and thus manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brethren, and his disciples; and they did not stay there many days. The Passover of the Jews was near, and Yeshua ascended to Yerushaláyim. He found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and also the money changers sitting; and having made a scourge of ropes, he drove everyone out of the temple, the sheep as well as the oxen, he poured out the money of the changers on the ground, overturned the tables, and said to those who sold the doves:
— Get these things out of here; do not make my Father's house a house of business.
Then his disciples remembered that it is written:
The zeal of your house will devour me.
So the Jews asked him:
— What miracle do you show us, since you do these things?
Yeshua answered them:
— Lay down this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up.
So the Jews replied to him:
— In forty-six years this sanctuary was built, and will you raise it up in three days?
But he was referring to the sanctuary of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had said. While he was in Yerushaláyim on the feast of Passover, many, seeing the miracles he performed, believed in his name; but Yeshua himself did not trust them, because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to bear witness to him of the man; for he himself knew what was in man.
***
PONTIUS PILATUS
PREFECTUS PONTIUS PILATUS arrived in Yerushaláyim in the year 26 AD. He was the fifth prefectus, or procurator, whom Rome sent to oversee the occupation of Judea.
After the death of Herod Magnus, and the dismissal of his son Archelaus as ethnarch in Yerushaláyim, Rome decided that it would be better to rule the province directly, rather than again through another Jewish client-king.
The Pontius were Samnites, descendants of the mountainous Samnio region south of Rome, a tough nation of stone and blood and brutal men that had been forcibly vanquished and absorbed by the Roman Empire in the 3rd century BC. Pilatus was the epithet of what meant "skilled with a spear", a tribute to Pilatus' father, whose glory as a Roman soldier under Julius Caesar had enabled the Pontius to rise from their humble beginnings to the rank of Roman knights.
Pilatus, like all Roman knights, did his expected military duty to the Empire, but he was not as skilled a soldier as his father, he was an administrator, more comfortable with accounts and records than swords and spears. However, he was no less harsh, cruel, insensitive and rigid man: a proud and imperious Roman, with little regard for the sensibilities of subject peoples.
Pilatus' contempt for the Jews was obvious from the first day he arrived in Yerushaláyim, decked out in white robes and golden breastplate, a red cape over his shoulders. The new procurator announced his presence in the City of David by marching through the gates of Yerushaláyim followed by a legion of Roman soldiers carrying banners bearing the emperor's image, an ostentation of contempt for Jewish sensibilities.
He later introduced a set of golden Roman shields dedicated to Tiberius, "son of the divine Augustus", in the Temple of Yerushaláyim. The shields were an offering in the name of the Roman gods, their presence in the Jewish Temple a deliberate act of blasphemy. Informed by his engineers that Yerushaláyim needed to rebuild his old aqueducts, Pilatus simply took the money to pay for the Temple treasury project, and the person responsible for this construction was Yousef Armathajim.
When the Jews protested, Pilatus sent his troops to kill them in the streets, but the faith of those men caused him to change his strategy and go back to making a great unnecessary slaughter. Pilatus was best known for his extreme depravity, his total disregard for Jewish law and traditions, his thinly disguised distaste for the Jewish nation as a whole.
During his tenure in Yerushaláyim, he so eagerly sent thousands upon thousands of Jews to the cross, and without trial, that the people of Yerushaláyim felt compelled to file a formal complaint with the Roman Emperor. Despite this, or perhaps because of this cold and harsh cruelty to the Jews, Pontius Pilatus became one of the longest-lived Roman procurators in Judea. It was dangerous and volatile work.
The procurator's most important task was to ensure the uninterrupted flow of tax revenue to Rome. But for that he had to maintain a functioning, if fragile, relationship with the high priest; the procurator would administer the civil and economic affairs of Judea, while the high priest would maintain the Jewish worship.
The tenuous link between the two offices meant that no Roman procurator or Jewish high priest lasted long, especially in the first few decades after Herod's death. The five procurators before Pilatus each served only a few years, the only exception being Pilatus' immediate predecessor, Valerius Gratus. But while Gratus appointed and exonerated five different high priests in his time as procurator, over the course of Pilatus' decade-long tenure he had only one high priest to deal with:
Yousef bar Kaiafa...
Like most high priests, Kaiafa was an extremely wealthy man, although this wealth came from his wife, the daughter of a previous high priest named Ananus. Kaiafa was appointed to the post not on his own merit, but through the influence of his father-in-law, a surprising character, who managed to pass the position to five of his sons, remaining a significant force throughout Kaiafa's administration.
Gratus had appointed Kaiafa as high priest in the year 18 AD, that is, he had already served eight years in the post when Pilatus arrived in Yerushaláyim. Part of the reason Kaiafa was able to hold the post for an unprecedented eighteen years was the close relationship he eventually forged with Pontius Pilatus. The two men worked well together.
The period of their combined rule, 18 AD. A.D. 36 coincided with the most stable period in the entire first century. Together they managed to keep the revolutionary impulse of the Jews inoperative, ruthlessly dealing with any hint of political disturbance, no matter how small. However, despite their best efforts, Pilatus and Kaiafa were unable to quench the zeal that had been kindled in the hearts of Jews by the Messianic uprisings that took place at the turn of the century, those of Yehudhah ben Hezekiah, the bandit chief, Shim-on of Pereia and Athrones, the shepherd boy.
Not long after Pilatus arrived in Yerushaláyim, a new crop of preachers, prophets, bandits and messiahs began roaming Judea, gathering disciples, preaching deliverance from Rome and promising the coming of the Kingdom of God.
In A.D. 28, an ascetic preacher named Yohanan began baptizing people in the waters of the Jordan River, initiating them into what he believed to be the true nation of Israel. When Yohanan Baptista's popularity became too great to control, the tetrarch of Pilatus in Perea, Herod Antipas, had him arrested and executed in 29 AD.
A few years before, a carpenter from Natsrat named Yeshua led a group of disciples in a triumphant procession into Yerushaláyim, where he attacked the Temple, overturned the tables of the money changers and released the sacrificial animals from their cages, there were two episodes in which Yeshua did, the first time Pilatus and Kaiafa were revealed for being a totally unknown man, but three years later the episode was repeated, infuriating Kaiafa who decided to put an end to the Nazarene who was ruining his business and risking breaking the bond he had built with the Empire. Roman.
PONTIUS PILATUS was sitting with his back straight on his way to Yerushaláyim. His wife Claudia travels in a carriage next to his, which leads the caravan through hostile terrain.
Pilatus had three thousand men at his disposal. They were not legitimate Roman soldiers, but a mix of Arab, Samaritan, and Syrian forces who once defended Herod Magnus. Pilatus' military caravan departed from the coastal fortress of Caesarea. The procurator made this trip three times a year for Jewish festivals. The 60-mile journey took them south along the Mediterranean along a paved Roman road.
After an overnight stop, the route departed from the coast, following a dirt road through the Plain of Sharon and up through the mountains to Yerushaláyim. Pilatus intended for Rome to be present at the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the three great celebrations in the Jewish religious calendar.
Like Passover, this holiday involved hundreds of thousands of pilgrims going to Yerushaláyim to celebrate it. The Jews celebrate forty years of wandering in the wilderness and have a feast to celebrate the end of the bountiful harvest. Pilatus did not have much patience for Jewish customs. He didn't believe that the Jews were loyal to Rome either, proof of this was the numerous revolts orchestrated by rebels called zealots.
The procurator was in a delicate situation during these festivals: if the Jews rebelled, as they were wont to do when they gathered in such large crowds, he would be held accountable; but if he retaliates too forcefully, he might be called to account in Rome for disobeying Tiberius' order that that people be treated as a "sacred ally." Thus, Pilatus endures the weeks of festivities.
He and Claudia stayed in the sumptuous palace of Herod the Great and left only when strictly necessary. Pontius Pilatus had been the procurator of Judea for only four years. His job should simply have been to mediate local disputes and keep the peace, but the truth was that the conqueror's role was always marked by danger. Pilatus was an inflexible, obstinate and cruel-tempered man, and even so, the Jews managed to deceive him and almost jeopardized his career, during the episode when Pilatus ordered Roman standards to adorn the Temple, not only the inhabitants of Yerushaláyim managed to that they be removed, as they wrote a letter to Emperor Tiberius detailing the ruler's indiscretion.
Tiberius was furious and immediately, without even waiting for the next day, he wrote to Pilatus, scolding and rebuking him a thousand times for his audacity, and Pilatus was solely to blame for it. He had the ingenious idea of building a new aqueduct to bring water to Yerushaláyim, but his gesture of goodwill had a serious downside: the money for the works had to come from the Temple's public treasury. The Jewish people were outraged at this use of their sacred savings, and during a recent festival a small army rose up to demand that Pilatus stop the construction of the aqueduct. They cursed the ruler when he appeared on the streets of Yerushaláyim, encouraged by the size of the crowd, thinking it would make his words remain anonymous. But Pilatus had foreseen the protest and ordered hundreds of his soldiers to disguise themselves in the peasant robes of Jewish pilgrims and infiltrate among them, with orders to hide a dagger or club beneath the folds of their clothing.
When the crowd marched towards the palace to protest more violently, these men surrounded the protesters and attacked them, beating and stabbing the defenseless pilgrims. Many of them were killed that way. That was the end of that rebellion.
To the Jewish people, Pilatus was a villain. They consider him vindictive and belligerent and talk about his depravity, violence, robberies, attacks, aggressive temper, his frequent executions of prisoners without prior judgment and his incessant savagery. However, one of his is just as guilty as the Roman ruler. Pontius Pilatus would be unable to rule the Jewish people without the help of Yousef bar Kaiafa, the high priest and leader of the Jewish supreme court.
Kaiafa was an accomplished politician, and he knew that Emperor Tiberius not only believed it was important to respect Jewish traditions, he also kept the temperamental Pilatus on a tight leash. Pilatus might be in charge of Judea, but it was Kaiafa who oversees the day-to-day operations of Yerushaláyim, pretending that his own cruel goals were only religiosity and devotion. Few in Yerushaláyim realized that the same man who conducted the rites of atonement for sins, and who appeared in the Temple courts during Passover and Yom Kippur in the most lavish ceremonial robes, was a friend of Rome and the decaying Emperor Tiberius.
The glamor of his position was even more evident during Yom Kippur, the annual ceremony of forgiveness, when Kaiafa entered alone into the inner sanctum of the Temple known as the Holy of Holies, which was supposed to be the abode of God. For faithful Jews, this put him closer to God than any other mortal on the face of the earth. He would then return to introduce himself to the faithful who gathered in the Temple courts. Two goats were brought in and placed one on each side of Kaiafa. As part of the ritual of forgiveness, the high priest had to decide which goat would be released and which would be sacrificed to atone for the sins of the Jewish people. This same man who stood in the presence of God and ensured that the sins of his people were forgiven.
This was the high priest who raised no objections when Pilatus plundered the Temple reserves for his own whims. Kaiafa also said absolutely nothing when Jews were massacred in the streets of the Holy City. He didn't complain when the Roman ruler forced him to return the gem-encrusted ceremonial robes at the end of each festival. The Romans preferred to keep the expensive garments as a reminder of their power, returning them seven days before each festival so they could be purified. Before him, the high priests were mere puppets of Rome, easily replaced when they committed some act of insubordination. But Kaiafa, a member of the Sadducees faction, developed a simple and brilliant strategy to stay in power: he didn't meddle in Rome's affairs.
Rome, on the other hand, generally did not meddle in the affairs of the Temple and this helped Pilatus to remain in his position and made Kaiafa's power increase more and more. Both men knew this and were comfortable with it. So while his four predecessors served for just a year before being deposed, Kaiafa had remained high priest for twelve years, with no sign of stepping down anytime soon. And with each year in power, the bond between Rome and the Temple grew stronger, while the chasm between the high priest and working-class Jews widened.
It also helped that Pilatus and Kaiafa had more similarities than differences. Pilatus belonged to the wealthy Roman equestrian class, while Kaiafa belonged to a centuries-old lineage of Temple priests. Both were middle-aged and married men. The two liked to enjoy a glass of imported wine at the end of the day.
When Pilatus was in Yerushaláyim, they lived within a few hundred meters of each other, in the luxurious Upper City, in palaces whose servants were slaves of both sexes. The two considered themselves pious men, although they worshiped completely different deities. The last thing Pilatus and Kaiafa needed was a messianic figure to destabilize this delicate balance of power – which is exactly why the high priest and religious authorities planned to arrest Yeshua ben Yousef the instant he set foot in the City. Holy.
The Pharisees did their part and came back with reports of numerous transgressions committed by the Nazarene against religious law. The ruse to assassinate Yeshua was about to have its long-awaited victorious outcome on their part.
***
BAR ABBAS E JUDITE
THE SICARIES WERE ZEALOTS fueled by an apocalyptic worldview and a fervent devotion to establishing God's government on earth. They were fanatical in their opposition to the Roman occupation, although they reserved their revenge for the Jews, especially among the wealthy priestly aristocracy, who submitted to Roman rule. Fearless and uncontrollable, the sicarios murdered their opponents with impunity: in the middle of the city, in broad daylight, in the midst of large crowds, during feast days and festivals.
They mingled with the masses, daggers hidden within their cloaks, until they were close enough to attack. Then, when the dead man fell to the ground, covered in blood, the sicarios would stealthily sheath the dagger and join their voices to the screams of indignation from the panicked crowd.
The leader of the hit men at the time of Yeshua was a Jewish revolutionary named Bar Abbas, the bastard son of none other than the failed messiah Yehudhah ben Hezekiah with a young prostitute who faithfully followed him, believing she was carrying the messiah's child. Bar Abbas shared his father's hatred of the wealthy priestly aristocracy in general, and the unctuous high priests in particular. To the sicarios, Ananus and Kaiafa were imposters, thieves and swindlers who had grown up rich, exploiting people's suffering. They were as responsible for the enslavement of the Jews as the pagan emperor in Rome. His presence on the Temple Mount contaminated the entire nation. His existence was an abomination to the Lord.
They had to die.
Bar Abbas' strategy worked, he got the trust of Kaiafa's wife, Judite, and conquered her and became her lover who confided all his secrets to him, including that none of his children were Kaiafa's who couldn't even get his penis erect. and to satisfy her in bed, perhaps to give him children, but the wife's infidelities were convenient for the high priest who needed to have children in the eyes of the people and of Ananus, his father-in-law, but Bar Abbas insisted that all the Sanhedrim knew it, as well as the most important castes of the City of David, forcing him to stone her in the public square, which was a disgrace to the entire caste of the high priests, even though Ananus had severely objected to stoning his own daughter, the power in the end. spoke louder.
One of the last things Judith saw was Bar Abbas in disguise, she didn't know why, but somehow that man had freed her from a yoke too heavy to carry alone.
***
TIME URGES
YERUSHALAYIM, THURSDAY, APRIL 6, A.D. 30
KAIAFA HAD ALREADY SEEN what happened when political rebellion broke out in that holy place, and he remembered the porticoes of the Temple in flames after Herod's death. He believed that Yeshua ben Yousef was a false prophet like so many others who came before him, Yehudhah ben Hezekiah, Yehudhah the Galilean, Yeshua ben Ananias, Shim-on bar Kokhba, Yohanan Baptista, Enahen the Essene, Honi Ha-M'agel who had slept for seventy years and then woke up working miracles among other charlatans.
Yousef bar Kaiafa only believed in one representative of God on Earth, in himself.
Today's spectacle clearly demonstrates how dangerous it has become. The threat must be crushed.
As the Temple's high priest and the world's most powerful Jewish authority, Kaiafa was bound by religious law to take drastic action against Yeshua ben Yousef immediately.
— It is written: - Kaiafa shouted before the members of the Sanhedrim: "If a prophet or someone who predicts in dreams appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or a wonder", says the book Deuteronomy, that prophet or dreamer will have to be killed, for he preached rebellion against the Lord.
Kaiafa knew very well that Yeshua was acting very cunningly in using the crowds as a way of avoiding his arrest, but now he was in his hands, not only Yeshua but also Pilatus who desperately needed him to maintain order in the Holy City, the two warnings received from Tiberius was his greatest asset. The high priest, however, was determined to turn the tables in his favor. But if he does not want to risk becoming unclean, he should act as soon as possible to begin the Passover rites. This was the most important week of the year for Kaiafa.
He had an extraordinary number of duties and administrative tasks in his charge to ensure that the celebration of Passover took place without further incident. Rome was watching closely through the eyes of Pontius Pilatus, and any failure by him during this greatest of all festivals could result in his removal from office.
But nothing was more important than silencing Yeshua. Time was running out. There are only a few hours left for Passover.
***
THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO YERUSHALAYIM
YERUSHALAYIM, SUNDAY, APRIL 7, A.D. 30
THE NEXT MORNING, Yeshua chooses two disciples and assigns them a very special task.
— Go to the village ahead of you – he orders; soon they will find a donkey tied, with a colt by her side. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone asks you something, tell them the Lord needs them and will send them back soon.
Then Yeshua and the other ten disciples continue their journey. Knowing that they will return to Elazar's house at night, they carry little luggage, with no need to carry the sack of groceries or the staffs displayed by most pilgrims. Crowds gather around Yeshua on the way and their voices carry the accent of the region they come from. Pilgrims were excited that their journey was almost at an end, many of them elated to be in the presence of Yeshua of Natsrat, the Rabbi of Galilee, the base of the Zealots, faithful guardians of Judaism.
Just at the other end of Bethphage, the two disciples were waiting. One of them holds the reins of a donkey that has never been a mount before. The animal was not saddled. A disciple removes his quadrangular cloak and places it on the animal's back as a saddle. The other disciples also took off their robes and spread them on the ground in a gesture of submission, forming a mat on which the donkey could pass.
Following suit, many pilgrims take off their cloak and spread it on the ground. Others gather fronds from palm trees or the broken branches of olive and cypress trees and happily wave them in the air. This was the sign everyone had been waiting for. The fulfillment of Zechariah's prophecy.
— Blessed is the King! – A disciple shouts. The others present join him, acclaiming Yeshua and calling his name.
— Hosanna – they sing. – Hosanna in the highest.
Yeshua rode forward on the donkey and the people bowed.
— Save us, Lord – they plead, grateful that Christ has finally come to their rescue.
— We prosper, Lord. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
The words of thanks are taken from Psalm 118, sung during Passover. This was the moment those simple peasants had been waiting for. Of all the thousands of pilgrims who set out from Galilee, these were the fortunate ones who could tell their children and grandchildren that they witnessed the triumphant arrival of Yeshua Christ to Yerushaláyim.
But not everyone bowed. A group of Pharisees were waiting for Yeshua and watched the scene with clear disgust. They call out to him, giving the Nazarene one last chance to avoid a blasphemy charge.
— Rabbi – they shout, "rebuke your disciples!
But Yeshua refuses to do so.
— I say to you — he speaks to the Pharisees — if they keep silent, the stones will cry out.
Others who were informed of Yeshua's presence ran out of Yerushaláyim, scattering palm fronds along the path of the Nazarene. This is a traditional symbol of triumph and glory. The donkey stops at the top of the Mount of Olives. Yeshua looks around him. Tents cover the side of the hill, for this is where the poorest Galileans camped during Passover.
Straight ahead, on the other side of the Kidron Valley, Yerushaláyim called Yeshua and the Temple shone in the midday sun. Countless pilgrims filled the winding path that led down to the valley. The mud and limestone trail was very steep, and Yeshua would have to be very careful to guide the donkey down the slope without being thrown off the mount.
The day had come.
Yeshua's entire life had led him to this moment when he would claim the title of "King of the Jews", and that is exactly what I would be written above his head during his crucifixion.
Suddenly, he starts crying. Perhaps it was the idea of spending the last week in the company of his good friends Elazar, Myriam and Martha. It could be that he was foreseeing the coming destruction of that great city. Or perhaps he looks to Yerushaláyim knowing that his own splendor will not last long, for powerful enemies await him within the city walls.
Over the past three years, Yeshua had been worshiped, but also a target of attack and suspicion. Even his disciples, despite their deep belief in his teachings, sometimes cared more about vying for power than they did about understanding his true nature and message to the world.
He explained very clearly to the disciples that he was more than an earthly Christ. But they didn't understand. He told them countless times that he was a divine being, the Son of God. They failed to understand this concept. Yeshua clarified that he was the Christ, but that his kingdom was not of this world. The disciples did not understand what he is talking about. Three times Yeshua told them that he was going to die this week. But his followers refuse to even entertain the idea.
More frustrating than all of this was Yeshua's fear that the disciples could not understand His true message. These men knew him better than anyone else. They walked countless miles beside him, listened to him teach for hours on end, and sat with him in silent prayer. Even so, they still did not understand who he really claimed to be.
In this moment of triumph, Yeshua was in anguish. He has replayed in his head a thousand times the words he would say on Passover and the effect it would have on his followers, past and recent. He knew that his claims that he was a king would lead to crucifixion. He would be sacrificed, just like those countless Passover lambs. It was just a matter of time.
The Nazarene Rabbi looks down the hill through the olive trees. In the distance he sees Gethsemane and, just beyond, the flat surface of the narrow Kidron Valley. Looking beyond the valley, he sees that same worn path climb towards the walls of the city of Yerushaláyim, it was possible to clearly see the city gates, as well as the Roman soldiers who guarded its entrance. Yeshua also sees people rushing out to worship him, enthusiastically plucking palm branches from the nearest trees and waving them in the air. This exuberant display of respect impresses him, as it reminds him that many believe he is the anointed one—the incarnation of Moshe and David who came to save them and free them from their bondage.
But he knew that while Moshe and David were remembered for their great achievements, they were also rejected by society. Yeshua was a prince like Moshe, but not a warrior like David, despite being descended from him by both mother and father lineage. He was also an intellectual. His domain was logic. This is something that the book of Deuteronomy had already predicted:
— The Lord his God will raise up a prophet like me from among your own brethren; hear him.
But this prophecy was dangerous. His claim that he is the Son of God would make Yeshua a lunatic, a liar, or a deity who fulfills the prophecies of Scripture. Few in the crowd believed him to be unhinged or a charlatan. But would they take the extraordinary leap of faith to believe that Yeshua is God incarnate?
It was complicated in view of the countless Messiahs who had succeeded him and others who would come after him, all had fulfilled different aspects of the sacred prophecies, some of them would even have died on the tree and survived it using a little-known stratagem, a wine mixed with the mandrake plant, capable of provoking in the condemned, also a state of apparent death. A kind of anesthetic, a liquid called "mandrake wine," it was this very compound that had saved Yehudhah ben Hezekiah's life.
It was time to move on, as hosanna chants came from all over and the Pharisees, who were nearby, watched with their usual veiled contempt.
Yeshua urged his donkey to walk. Step by step, carefully, the two descended the Mount of Olives, crossed the Kidron Valley and passed through a tunnel of worshipers, with Yeshua marching majestically up the hill and into the great golden city of Yerushaláyim.
YESHUA ENTERS YERUSHALAYIM, riding on a donkey and flanked by a frantic crowd shouting:
— Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed be the coming kingdom of our father David!
The people, in ecstasy, sang hymns of praise to God. Some spread cloaks on the street for Yeshua to pass over, just as the Israelites did for Jehu when he was declared judge over all Israel. Others cut their palms and wave them in the air, in memory of the heroic Maccabees who freed Israel from foreign rule two centuries earlier.
The entire show was meticulously orchestrated by Yeshua and his followers, in fulfillment of Zechariah's prophecy:
— Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, daughter of Yerushaláyim! Behold, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.
The message conveyed to the townspeople was unmistakable:
— The long-awaited Messiah, the true King of the Jews, a descendant of David, came to free Israel from slavery.
As provocative as his entry into Yerushaláyim might be, it paled in comparison to what Yeshua was going to do the next day.
With his disciples and, presumably, the praising crowd in tow, Yeshua enters the Temple's public courtyard, the Courtyard of the Gentiles, and begins to clean it. In a fit of rage, he overturns the tables of the money changers and evicts the sellers of cheap food and souvenirs. He releases the sheep and cattle ready to be sold for sacrifice and opens the dove and pigeon cages, putting the birds to flight.
— Get these things out of here! – He screams.
With the help of his disciples, he blocks the entrance to the courtyard, forbidding anyone carrying goods for sale or barter from entering the Temple. So, as the throng of vendors, worshipers, priests, and onlookers shuffle over the strewn debris, as the frightened animals set off in a stampede, pursued by panicked owners, frantically running out of the Temple gates and into the crowded streets of Yerushaláyim , as a troop of heavily armed Roman guards and Temple police invade the courtyard seeking to arrest whoever is responsible for the chaos.
There was Yeshua, distant and unperturbed, shouting above the noise:
— It is written: My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. But you have made it a den of thieves.
The authorities were irate, and rightly so. There was no law forbidding the presence of vendors in the Court of the Gentiles. Other parts of the Temple were sacrosanct and off-limits to the lame, the sick, the unclean, and most especially the masses of Gentiles. But the outer court was a free-for-all space that served both as a bustling bazaar and as the administrative headquarters of the Sanhedrim, the Jewish supreme council.
The merchants and money changers, who sold the sacrificial animals, the unclean, the Gentiles and the heretics, all had the right to enter the Court of the Gentiles as they pleased and do business there.
It was not surprising that the priests of the Temple demanded to know exactly who this agitator thought he was, three years earlier something similar had already happened during Passover.
— By what authority does he claim to cleanse the Temple? – shouted one of the Sanhedrists – What sign can he offer to justify such a blatantly criminal act?
Yeshua ignores these questions completely and instead responded with his cryptic prophecy.
— Destroy this Temple and in three days I will rebuild it.
The crowd was silent, so much so that they apparently did not notice Yeshua and his disciples calmly exit the Temple and walk out of the city, having finished taking part in what the Roman authorities would have considered a capital offense: sedition, punishable by crucifixion. After all, an attack on the Temple's business was akin to an attack on the priestly nobility, which, given the Temple's tangled relationship with Rome, amounted to an attack on Rome itself.
Watching Yeshua break cages and kick tables in an uproar, made more radical disciples like Shim-on Zealots remember the words of King David, who shouted:
— Taking care of your house has consumed me.
Temple authorities also recognize Yeshua's zeal and create a cunning plot to get him to implicate himself as a zealot revolutionary. Advancing to Yeshua in full view of all present, they ask:
— Rabbi, we know that you are true, that you teach the way of God according to truth and that you do not revere any man. Tell us: is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or not?
This was not a simple question, of course, it was the essential test of belonging to the zealot belief. Since the Yehudhah revolt, the question of whether Moshe's law permitted paying tribute to Rome became the distinguishing feature of those adhering to Zealot principles. The argument was simple and understood by all, Rome's demand for tribute demonstrated nothing less than a claim to ownership over the land and its inhabitants. But the land did not belong to Rome. The land belonged to God. Caesar was not entitled to receive tribute, because he had no right to the land.
In asking Yeshua about the legality of the tribute to Rome, the religious authorities were asking him an entirely different question:
Are you or aren't you a zealot?
— Show me a denarius - Yeshua says serenely, referring to the Roman coin used to pay the tribute - Whose image and inscription is this?
— It's Caesar's," the authorities reply.
— Well then, I have given back Caesar's property to Caesar, and God's property to God.
The TRUTH was that Yeshua's answer was the clearest statement one could find as to where exactly he stood in the debate between priests and zealots, and not the tribute issue, but the far more significant issue of God's sovereignty over Earth.
Yeshua's words spoke for themselves:
Yeshua used the verb Returni in the Greek form of "apodidomi to Caesar the property that belongs to Caesar…" The Greek verb apodidomi, often translated as "to become", was actually a compound word: apo is a preposition that in this case means "return"; didomi was a verb meaning "to give". Apodidomi was used specifically when paying someone for property to which they were entitled; the word implied that the person who was to be paid was the rightful owner of the thing being paid for.
In other words, according to Yeshua, Caesar is entitled to "get back" the denarius coin not because he deserves the tribute, but because it is his coin: his name and image are stamped on it. God had nothing to do with it.
By extension, God had the right to "take back" the land that the Romans took for themselves, because it is God's land. Caesar has nothing to do with it.
So give back to Caesar what is his, and give back to God what belonged to God. This was the Zealot argument at its simplest and most concise. And it seemed to be enough for the authorities in Yerushaláyim to immediately label Yeshua as east.
A bandit. A zealot. A lestai...