(2/2) Who Killed Jesus? The Christ Myth Theory and Ancient Writing
I was thinking last time about how the Jews thought God brought judgment against them historically through them being conquered. I’d like to apply this to the destruction of the temple in 70CE. This seems to be a big impetus for the gospels, and so Mark is usually thought of as inventing Jesus making a prophecy about the destruction of the temple: In Mark 13:1-2 Jesus said, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” Mark goes on to contextualize this with the corruptness of the temple with Jesus’ temple tantrum event. The Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70 CE after a five-month siege. Roman soldiers stripped the Temple Mount bare, throwing down every stone. Christians later interpreted these events as a fulfillment of one of Jesus’ predictions, and some believed it was punishment for the Jews’ rejection of Jesus. For example, Matthew 23:37-39 (Luke 19:41-44) depicts Jesus expressing deep sorrow and lament over Jerusalem, metaphorically comparing himself to a mother hen longing to gather her chicks under her wings, but the people of Jerusalem repeatedly rejected his protection and are now facing impending destruction due to their unwillingness to repent and accept him as their Messiah; essentially, it signifies a tragic consequence of rejecting God’s love and grace. Jesus is criticizing the religious leaders and expressing deep grief over the city’s impending doom. Early church fathers had a similar understanding.
In order to understand how this would have looked to some ancient followers of Jesus, we need to contextualize it within the lens of the destruction of the first temple as God’s judgment. According to the Bible, the First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II as God bringing punishment for the people of Judah’s widespread sinfulness, including idolatry, social injustice, and disobedience to God’s laws, which led to the Babylonian siege and ultimately the burning of the temple by fire; this is primarily detailed in the books of 2 Kings and Jeremiah. The Bible portrays the destruction as divine retribution for the people’s moral decline, specifically their idol worship and disregard for God’s commandments. King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon is described as the instrument used by God to destroy the temple.
Again, as I said last time, the story of the Jewish people involves trying to see how they were God’s specially chosen people even though they kept getting conquered. The destruction of the second temple would have convinced some Jews that the romans were God’s instrument for passing judgment on their religious leaders. Because the gospel writers were looking back to Jesus to make sense of this event, a reasonable inference is that Mark was familiar with Paul’s writings such as 1 Thess 2 and in part birthed his gospel out of it. So, we read:
14 For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone 16 by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins, but wrath has overtaken them at last (or completely or forever) (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)
Mark, as a reader of Paul, would have interpreted the end of this above passage, which for Paul meant the beginning of the judgment of God’s enemies as part of the apocalypse that had begun, as the Jewish religious leaders being formally punished with the destruction of the temple. But note, Jerusalem itself was destroyed, so the Judgment was on the Jews generally, and hence Mark implicates the crowd in Jesus’ death. The point for considering the death of the historical Jesus is Mark was using Paul because Mark looked back to Paul and saw the notion of a world that wrongfully killed God’s beloved Jesus.
What is crucial and what I always stress is the whole of the religion makes no sense if we interpret Jesus’ death as substitutionary atonement, because of reasoning analogous to “how does punishing an innocent child in Africa for the crimes of a felon in Chicago serve Justice?” We must see the crucified Jesus instead through the moral influence eyes of the soldier at the cross: “Truly this was an innocent man!” The Roman empire, and any other that might follow it, would eventually be permanently overcome by Jesus and his apostles after the apocalypse ruling a Kingdom of God which was populated by believers who were transformed by the realization of the crucifixion that circumcised their hearts letting the law living on their hearts to shine though. Such spirits could no more sin than you could punch your grandmother. It is absurd, offensive, and never comes to mind. Temptation belongs to the fleshly (in Paul’s sense) part of your heart that has been cut away. See my writings here:
NB I did some editing of the first post in this series so check it out: Who Killed Jesus? The Christ Myth Theory and Ancient Writing