The Passover Plot by Hugh Schonfield

Author:Hugh Schonfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781934708415
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser Conari
Published: 2017-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. This is the meaning of the Hebraic words, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.’

2. The Gentiles were thought of as sinners because they did not observe the laws of God given to Moses, just as those Jews were sinners who lived like Gentiles in violation of the Law. See Gal. ii. 14–15; Mt. ix. 10–11. The chief priests had at their disposal a small force recruited from many nationalities, and also non-Jewish servants and slaves.

3. From inscriptions and from Josephus the name Malchus or Malichus was in common use among Arabs and Syrians.

4. The nature of the connection is not certain. Some scholars hold that John the priest was a kinsman of Annas, reading gnorimos instead of gnostos as in the Purple Codex of Patmos. It is clear at any rate that he was a person of some standing, and not to be confused with the stormy Galilean fisherman John the son of Zebedee.

5. See Chapter 10, Note 12.

6. See Lev. xxiv. 16.

7. The Syrian legate Vitellius was eager to conciliate the Jewish people by making concessions to national sentiment, and one of his acts in this connection was to depose Caiaphas (Josephus, Antiq. XVIII. iv. 3). Many years later when Annas son of the Annas of the Gospels was high priest James the brother of Jesus was arrested and executed by an illegally convened meeting of the Sanhedrin while a new governor of Judea was on the way to take up his appointment. Some of the leading citizens of Jerusalem protested to the governor at this highhanded action, whereupon he wrote threatening the high priest with punishment and Agrippa II deposed Annas from the highpriesthood after he had been only three months in office (Antiq. XX. ix. 1).

8. The reiteration is found only in Luke, but John has the repetition of the cry, ‘Away with him, away with him!’ (Jn. xix. 15). If we can rely on these reflections of the Jerusalem tradition they would point to a largely non-Jewish crowd customarily given to ‘vain repetitions’ (Mt. vi. 7). An example is, ‘Caesar, let the prisoners be dragged! Caesar, let the prisoners be dragged!’

9. These august personages would not have demeaned themselves by attending the crucifixion in person, and in any case it is clear from the Gospels that they were most anxious not to be associated with the execution in the minds of the Jewish people. John the priest, who was at the cross, makes no mention of their presence. Jesus had said he would fall into the hands of these authorities and that they would mock him. This was enough to create the story on the basis of the testimony in Psalm xxii. 7–8.

10. See Part Two, Chapter 6, Some Gospel Mysteries.

11. Jn. xix. 28–30.

12. Isa. xi. 10–12.

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