Here’s an extraordinary insight into the historical Jesus from an ancient source that is unquestionably independent of the Gospels. The historian Josephus, writing a few years after the disastrous Jewish uprising against Roman occupation, describes Jesus as a rustic from the provinces who came to Jerusalem at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles and began publicly to prophesy impending disaster for the city.
In a display of extra-legal frustration, leaders of the Jews had him arrested and severely beaten. Jesus submitted to the chastisement without complaint, merely reiterating his belief that the city and the people were doomed. Supposing that ‘this was a sort of divine fury in the man’, the authorities brought him before the Roman procurator, who had him whipped until his bones were exposed. But, Josephus tells us, Jesus did not ‘make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was, “Woe, woe to Jerusalem!”’ When the procurator questioned Jesus about his identity and the meaning of his dismal message, Jesus refused to answer. Seeing no great threat in the man the procurator washed his hands of him, but in the end Jesus was killed by the Romans.
The story is found in Josephus’ account of the Jewish War (War 6.300-309). Oddly, unlike the much disputed Testimonium Flavianum, it is rarely mentioned in discussions about the historical Jesus. The reason, of course, is that this is not Jesus son of Joseph (as it was supposed) but Jesus son of Ananus, who came to Jerusalem four years before the war and began to cry out in the streets: ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!’
After his interrogation by the procurator Albinus he was released and for more than seven years he repeated his refrain: ‘Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!’ He continued during the Roman siege of the city, until one day as he was walking upon the wall, he cried out loudly: ‘Woe, woe, to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house! … Woe, woe, to myself also!’ At that moment a stone from one of the siege engines struck him, and he was killed.
The parallels between the careers of these two Jewish prophets are remarkable and illuminating: it seems to me that if we are going to understand Jesus of Nazareth properly, we have to keep clearly in view the fact that he prophesied, taught, acted, and initiated a movement of reform in the light of the impending destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. The series of vehement ‘woes’ pronounced against the scribes and the Pharisees in Matthew 23 concludes with the dire warning of destruction:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate. (Matt. 23:37-38)
Then Jesus walks from the temple and tells his gawping disciples, ‘You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down’ (Matt. 24:2). But he goes on to tell a story of suffering and perseverance that culminates in a symbolic drama of vindication, in which Israel’s cosmos is overthrown and the glorified Son of man gathers his elect and instates a renewed people after the devastation of divine judgment. There is a hopefulness here that goes far beyond the acute but limited vision of Jesus son of Ananus.
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