The Life of Jesus Christ

The idea underlying the Jewish sacrificial system was this: a person did a wrong thing, which disturbed the relationship between him and God.  To restore that relationship, some cure was necessary, and that cure was the sacrifice.
    To kill an unblemished lamb as an act of worship involved material sacrifice on the part of the worshiper, but more was involved as well.  The sacrifice was in some sense substitutionary.  The sins of the worshiper were transferred to the sacrificial lamb and were killed along with it.  Something mystical was a work, something tied to the spilling of blood.
    The mystical element seems foreign to the modern mind, but the Jews of Jesus’ day understood it very well.  When John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” he was evoking an image that resonated with his listeners.  It may not be possible for it to resonate as strongly with us.  Because it provides the context in which Jesus’ death is presented, though, we can benefit from revisiting the ancient practice in an effort to see what it meant to those who practiced it.

    The historian Flavius Josephus, born in Jerusalem in A.D. 37, left us a meticulously detailed description of the Jewish temple built by Herod the Great.  He traced the career of Pontius Pilate from his appointment as procurator to his recall to Rome and the career of Herod Antipas from his appointment as tetrarch to his banishment.  Josephus even mentioned Jesus, “a wise man…a doer of wonderful works.”  Writing in the first century, he said that “the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct at this day.”
    The gospels, whatever else they are, are historical narratives that stand alongside the writings of Josephus and others.  They recount the doings of real people, who lived and died in real places.  At the heart of Christian doctrine is a series of events that left their mark in the historical record.

    Christianity holds that it is a mistake to think of Jesus as half-man, half-God, like one of the demigods of mythology.  He was, and is, completely human and completely God, a man with all of God’s nature, and God with all of man’s.  This God-man had two complete natures, and yet was one person.  The Second Person of the Trinity was Mary’s son.  Mary’s son was God.
    At the wedding at Cana, Jesus’ two natures were both on display.  Mary addressed him as her son, but asked him for the impossible.  There were two ways for Jesus to make wine.  Using the powers of his human nature, he could have begun to tread grapes, but in the middle of a wedding feast this would be impractical at best.  Using the powers of his divine nature, he could have done what the apostle John records him as doing.  Jesus was one person with the powers of both natures at his disposal, but at the wedding feast there had been as yet no public display of his divine nature.

Norman Mailer’s book is full of the philosophical musings of Yeshua.  Few scenes are presented dramatically or at any length, but I’ll admit I skimmed the novel.  Speaking in the first person, Jesus sets out to put the record straight, critiquing the gospel accounts as he goes.

    In my own story I slipped into Jesus’ mind rarely and briefly, and when I did, I blew it.  Even a page or two at a time is fraught with peril.  To do it for a book-length manuscript is…well, is likely to produce just what Mailer has given us.

    The high priest was one of the Sadducees, the priestly aristocracy that took its name from Zadok, who was high priest under David a thousand years before.  The Sadducees, in Jesus’ day, were politically minded - masters of worldly success even when that meant collaboration with the occupying Romans.  They saw no need for an afterlife and did not believe in any.
    Annas served for fifteen years, and though he was dismissed, his influence was such that he was able to have five of his sons appointed after him.  Caiaphas, his son-in-law, was appointed in 18 A.D.  Among his other powers, the high priest was the president of the Sanhedrin, the body that governed the Jews under the authority of all-powerful Rome.  Most of the Sanhedrin were Sadducees, who prospered under Roman rule and had a vested interest in the status quo.
    Judas Iscariot and Simon the Zealot would have hated Rome and all those who collaborated with them.