Loosely Based on a True Story: The Passion of Jesus Christ in Verbal and Visual Media
by John Dominic Crossan
There are different accounts of the execution (what some Christians call "the passion") of Jesus in the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John at the start of the Christian New Testament. On the one hand, it is utterly impossible to reconcile the tone or atmosphere in the earliest version (Mark) with that in the latest version (John). In the former, Jesus is almost out of personal control; in the latter, he is almost in juridical control. In Gethsemane, for example, Mark has Jesus prostrate on the ground, has him beg God to avoid the sufferings ahead, and has all his followers desert him. In John, it is the full cohort of arresting troops (600 strong) that end up prostrate on the ground. Jesus then affirms that he accepts his fate, and orders his captors to let his followers go. On the other hand, it is quite possible to collate all the events from those four discrete versions into one single consecutive narrative with, admittedly, a little pushing here and pulling there. That convergence can then create a composite Passion Story, Passion Play, or Passion Movie. Its general sequence will be: the agony of Jesus in Gethsemane; the night-trial before the Jewish authorities ending with a formal charge of blasphemy; the dawn-trial before the Roman authorities; an interlude-trial before Herod Antipas (only in Luke); a final condemnation by Pilate who asserts Jesus's innocence, but gives in finally to "the crowd" (Mark), or "the whole people" (Matthew), or "the Jews" (John). Thereafter, Jesus is scourged as the normal prelude to Roman crucifixion.
In what follows, I raise first the question of historicity. What, in my best scholarly reconstruction, did and did not happen during that execution? What is Roman history and what is Christian parable? I also raise the question of transition from a verbal to a visual medium in any historical story and especially in this one. Finally, I wonder why Christians who believe they have received a gospel inspired by God in fourfold, that is, manifold format, want so regularly to get it all into one single, composite version.
Two hundred years of gospel scholarship has established two generally accepted conclusions. First, the four gospels of the Christian New Testament are exactly and precisely what they claim to be. They are not history, although they contain it. They are not biography, although they contain it. They are "gospel" or "good news," and their multiplicity emphasizes their nature and purpose. What happened in the first quarter of the first century ce is creatively developed to become good news for different times and places in the last quarter of that same century. There is, in other words, a dialectic between then-and-now in which history becomes parable, a then-to-now interaction in which the past is sometimes recorded and sometimes invented but always for current relevance. The words and deeds of Jesus from the late 20s ce are reconstructed as divergent gospels for the 70s by Mark, for the 80s by Matthew or Luke, and for the 90s by John. But that also means that when those four gospels narrate the story of Jesus's execution, they update, as it were, the friends and enemies of Jesus from, say, the year 30 ce to the years 70–95 ce. Gospel authors look much more to their community's contemporary adversaries than to those of Jesus one or two generations earlier. Caveat lector, therefore. Still, those early Christians left us four canonical examples of that updating process, as any parallel-column study makes clearly evident (see below). It is not their fault if we cannot tell fact from fiction, history from parable, and biography from gospel.
Second, those four gospels are not four independent texts, but most likely a single stream of linked tradition. It is generally accepted that Matthew and Luke use Mark as their major source and, although this is more disputed, John is probably using those earlier gospels at least for the opening and closing chapters of his interpretation. In other words, the passion of Jesus is basically Mark's account as adopted and adapted by Matthew, Luke, and John. We can, therefore, see their changes, assess their purposes, and, above all else, realize how much depends on a single version—that of Mark.
What, in light of these two conclusions, is the best historical reconstruction for the dramatic story of an open Passover amnesty, a reluctant Roman governor, and a shouting Jerusalem crowd forcing him to act against justice and his own best judgment?
Would Pilate—or any sensible governor—grant an open amnesty on even a special occasion? Open means that the petitioners—not the governor—get to choose the criminal to be released. No responsible administrator could countenance such an annual release of "anyone for whom they asked," as Mark 15:6 puts it. The release of whomever Pilate decided, is possible; of whomever the crowd decided, is unlikely. Philo, the contemporary Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, describing in his Flaccus what good governors should do for condemned prisoners at the greatest festival gives this example: "It is the custom to punish no one, even of those who have been lawfully condemned, until the famous festival and assembly in honor of the birth-day of the illustrious emperor, has passed." At best, then, postponement but not amnesty.
There are first-century governors of Judea about whom we know only their names, but Pilate is not one of those. We know a lot about him from non-Christian texts.
First, Philo, once again describes Pilate in his Embassy to Gaius as "a man of a very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate." He speaks of "his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity." He mentions him as "being exceedingly angry, and being at all times a man of most ferocious passions." This may well be rhetorical overkill, but it is precisely Pilate whom Philo chooses as a specific example of a very bad governor.
Second, in the gospels, Pilate finally condemns Jesus by submitting reluctantly to the wishes of the shouting crowd. Various motives for that acquiescence are given in the gospels: "Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd," in Mark 15:15; "Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning" in Matthew 27:24; and "Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, 'If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor'" in John 19:12. But there is an acute irony here. What the Jewish historian Josephus emphasizes about Pilate in his Jewish Antiquities is precisely his lethal way with unarmed but protesting crowds. He brought pagan images into Jerusalem on his military standards. An unarmed crowd demanded their removal and, confronted with the crowd's willingness to die as martyrs, he finally backed down and removed the offensive emblems. Next, when they tried such nonviolent resistance a second time over his use of Temple money for a Jerusalem aqueduct, Pilate infiltrated civilian-dressed soldiers and "many of them were actually slain on the spot." Finally, he was removed from office by his immediate superior, the Syrian legate Vitellius, and sent to explain his actions before Tiberius in Rome. Those actions, not unexpectedly, involved "the slaughter" of a Samaritan crowd (18.55–89). The high-priest Caiaphas was also dismissed from office by Vitellius at around the same time— from even the viewpoint of imperial administration they had, apparently, collaborated not wisely but too well.
The gospels, however, record Pilate's patient debate and reluctant submission before a crowd demanding he do what they want. Maybe Pilate had an unusually good day? Or, better, maybe Mark was creating parable rather than writing history.
Recall, as background, that Jerusalem was somewhat of a tinder-box at the time of the great festivals, and especially at Passover, when thousands of Jewish pilgrims were concentrated in and around the confined space of the Temple to celebrate liberation from past Egyptian oppression, though they were under its current Roman equivalent. On such occasions, Pilate came up to Jerusalem from his base at coastal Caesarea. Zero tolerance was standard for any disturbances, with crucifixion an immediate penalty and instant warning for disturbers.
Consider that open Passover amnesty even within the narrative logic of a Markan fictional parable. Mark 15:8 says that, "the crowd (singular ochlos in Greek) came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom." How many is a "crowd"? In that tense Passover situation and with a governor like Pilate, I suggest that even ten people might be pushing their luck, since it was necessary to send a clear message to Pilate and his soldiers that their small numbers did not constitute any type of threat. In any case, a very small group comes before Pilate to request liberty for, as Mark 15:7 says, "a man called Barabbas [who] was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection." In the logic of Mark's narrative, they simply wanted their hero Barabbas saved from crucifixion, and when Pilate, sensibly judging Jesus to be the lesser threat to Roman law and order, tried to give them him instead, they shouted for Jesus, not Barabbas, to be crucified. So, according to Mark 15:15, "Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified." All of that, be it fictional parable or factual history, is clear enough. In any case, the "crowd" is there primarily for Barabbas and not—or only secondarily, or only to free him—against Jesus.
Mark invents the parable of Barabbas or Jesus to interpret the terrible destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in the war of 66–74 ce. against Rome. That Jerusalem "crowd" in the year 30 ce represents, for Mark, those who accepted the wrong method of opposing Roman imperial oppression in the year 70 ce. Barabbas incarnates the option of violent rebellion just as Jesus incarnates the option of nonviolent resistance. Those options were, of course, both absolutely intra-Jewish first-century alternatives, both totally if divergently activist, and both equally liable to end up in martyrdom. Pilate understood the difference quite clearly and that is why he rounded up Barabbas's followers (two of whom died beside Jesus) but did not pursue Jesus's disciples (none of whom died with Jesus). Pilate, in other words, got it precisely right. Jesus's message was that the Kingdom of God, that is, what the world would look like if God sat on Caesar's throne, could be entered here and now by a communal share-life lived against the normalcy of imperial greed-life. It was not about the next life and heaven-above but about this life and earth-below. It was about living already within the justice and righteousness of God, not the power and control of Rome. Jesus's option, therefore, is but one other mode of Jewish nonviolent resistance, similar to those unarmed and nonviolent protests against Pilate around 26 ce—a strategy repeated when Caligula attempted to place his divine statue in the Temple around 41 ce.
Watch now how that originally (small) "crowd" grows exponentially as the story is copied from Mark into Matthew, Luke, and John. This is actually the most significant and most revealing element in the story. Mark's "crowd" which, in that context, could hardly have been a dozen people, grows exponentially as his version is copied and changed into Matthew, Luke, and John in that chronological sequence. This can best be seen in the summary diagram below.
| Mark 15:8, 11, 15 (Date: c.70 C.E.) |
Matthew 27:15, 20, 24, 25 (Date: c. 85 C.E.) |
Luke 23:4, 13, 18 (Date: c. 85 C.E.) |
John 18:31, 36, 38; 19:7 (Date: c. 95 C.E.) |
| "the crowd" "the crowd" "(they)" "the crowd" |
"the crowd" "the crowds" "the crowd" "the people as a whole" |
"the chief priests and the crowds" "the chief priests, the leaders, and the people" "(they) all together" |
"the Jews" "the Jews" "the Jews" "the Jews" |
Recall, as mentioned above, that those are not four independent witnesses with access to different data, divergent traditions, or separate archival sources. It is simply a case of Mark's (small) "crowd" growing exponentially but intra-textually before our eyes as it progresses across twenty-five years to become "the Jews."
It is within that context, of course, that Matthew develops within ten verses from "crowd" to "crowds" to that infamous quotation, "the people as a whole answered, 'His blood be on us and on our children.'" That is only, repeat only, from the theology of Matthew's community and not from the history of Jesus's execution. That verse means that "the whole people" take responsibility for Jesus's execution, consider it just, and approve of its implementation. That is why, says Matthew, Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70 ce. It was not just because of a very unwise political rebellion (as Mark said), but because of a divine punishment.
First of all, let me repeat—"the whole people" never said any such thing in earlier Roman history but only in later Matthean theology. Second, even if they had said it, the reason Jerusalem was destroyed was not divine penalty but imperial cruelty—a small people rose against a great empire and, inevitably, they lost. Third, even if "the whole people" or "the Jews" of that time and place had actually and historically agreed on Jesus's execution (how could such an "all" have ever operated), any later attempt to widen responsibility beyond those immediately involved was earlier denied by Jeremiah 31:29 and Ezekiel 18:2, who claimed that children were not responsible for their parents' action. Finally, for Christians, no matter who did what in the execution of Jesus, and even if all words and deeds in those gospel accounts are taken literally and historically, whoever was responsible was surely already forgiven before Jesus was dead. The dying prayer of Jesus in Luke 23:34 is, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."
The reason for that increasing responsibility, from Mark's (small) pro-Barabbas "crowd" to all of John's anti-Jesus "Jews," was not to exculpate the Romans by blaming the Jews for that execution. It was not lie but gospel. Recall what was said above about a gospel's now-as-then amalgam of words and deeds of Jesus or friends and enemies of Jesus. At the time of Jesus, Christian Jews were, like Pharisaic, Essenee, or Sadduceean Jews, one more group struggling polemically with one another for the future of their people under the strains of Greek internationalism and Roman imperialism. Slowly but surely, however, the Christian Jewish option was being refused by more and more of their fellow Jews. And, inevitably from the nature of "gospel," as those opponents grew in the last quarter of the first century, Jesus's opponents grew as well in the first quarter of the century, from (small) "crowd" to "the whole people" to "the Jews."
All of this should be self-evident to any Christian who reads those four gospels in parallel columns, genetic relationships, and chronological sequences. But that process is also dangerous and subject to terrible misuse as the tragic history of Christian anti-Judaism and political anti-Semitism has made clear. Further, the problems and dangers multiply as one moves from the verbal register of quadruple gospel text to the visual register of a necessarily single staging or screening.
Any Passion Play or Passion Movie starts with certain major a priori problems. First, it tells of an execution without detailing the life that led to it and thereby turns a martyr into a victim. Why should anyone oppose, let alone condemn, this person? Second, it emphasizes passion, not in our ordinary active sense of fervor or dedication (a passion for justice) but in its passive meaning, from the Latin passio or suffering. But Roman crucifixion was not primarily about private suffering, but about public warning. Were suffering its main purpose, the individual would have been kept in the barracks and tortured for weeks. Third, as a single Passion Play on stage or screen, it must necessarily collate four gospels into one and thereby negate their intrinsic purpose. Fourth, any visual dramatization of those four texts will have to make many decisions about actors, costumes, voices, and so on, that may well derive less from textual accuracy than from directorial prejudice. What message is sent to the audience at "Oberammergau," for example, when Caiaphas arrives on stage atop a sedes gestatoria and Pilate simply walks on. Who is in charge, who is more important, and who is more responsible? Or, again, imagine a purely hypothetical Passion Movie. What will its director do with that "crowd"? Will it be a small group of pro-Barabbas petitioners or "the whole people" of Jerusalem or "the Jews" (of all time)? Will it fill the streets of Jerusalem in the year 30 ce and our theater screens in the year 2004? Finally, if a Christian believes that God inspired that discrete canonical multiple-gospel, does not a Passion Play or Passion Movie simply create a single uninspired anti-gospel?
John Dominic Crossan is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul University and the author of many books including, Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
This article was printed in Tikkun (March/April 2004).
View this article in the Tikkun online archives at http://tikkun.org/archive/backissues/xtik0403/politics/040312a.html/view?searchterm=jesus%20passion