RelatedThe wood of the Cross"The cross is Christ's, outside of ideologies."

The vast majority of historians no longer have any doubt in affirming that Jesus of Nazareth really existed. 

Not only that: more and more historical and archaeological evidence is accumulating that confirms numerous details of his life, death and resurrection. We will try to briefly analyze some of them.

When

Jesus' public life lasted approximately three years-there are three Passovers mentioned by the evangelist. John in the account of Jesus' life, which is the most accurate in that it supplements the approximations of the other three evangelists and points out details overlooked by them, also from the chronological point of view). Then the Nazarene went up for the last time to Jerusalem, where Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees and Herodians conspired to put him to death, arrested him, handed him over to the Romans and, staging a trial (which was more like a farce) with the procurator, or praefectus Pontius Pilate, they had him crucified.

In spite of the discordance between the Synoptics and John in placing the death of Jesus on the 14th or 15th of the Hebrew calendar of Nisan, all the evangelists coincide in placing it on a Friday within the Paschal festivities.

Giuseppe Ricciotti, great historian and biographer of Christ, enumerating a series of possibilities all analyzed by scholars, concludes that the exact date of this event is the 14th of Nisan (Friday, April 7) of the year 30 A.D., Jesus having been born two years before the death of Herod, being about thirty years old at the beginning of his public life and counting 34 or 35 years at his death.

Some personalities and institutions 

Several of the following characters and institutions involved in the trial and condemnation to death of Jesus, apart from the Sanhedrin, were mentioned almost exclusively in the Gospels and in a few contemporary documents. However, archaeology has provided us with important details about them.

-Nicodemo (Naqdimon Ben Gurion) and Joseph of Arimathea (Ramataim). Both were notables of Jerusalem. They are mentioned in both Jewish writings and the Gospels. It is known that their descendants were slaughtered during the sack and capture of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

-CaiphasHe was high priest and head of the Sanhedrin from 18 to 36 AD. He was the son-in-law of Annas (high priest from 6 to 15 A.D.). From the list of the high priests of Israel and from Flavius Josephus we know that up to six high priests after Annas were his sons. They all belonged to the Sadducean stream. In 1990, the tomb of Yosef Bar Qajfa (Caiaphas was the nickname) and his family was found.

-Barabas and the thieves. All are called, in the Greek of the Gospels, lestés, They were, in fact, troublemakers (we read that Barabbas was a murderer and a violent man who had participated in a riot), most probably fanatics. It is paradoxical that the name of Barabbas, as recorded even in the oldest codices of the Gospels, was Jesus, named Bar-Abba (such as Joseph called Caiaphas, Simon called Peter, etc.). There is thus an ironic, or tragic, juxtaposition between the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of the Father, and a temporary messianic troublemaker.

-Pontius Pilate. In the Greek of the Gospels, it is called heghémonin Latin praefectus. In fact, he was prefect of Judea for about a decade under Tiberius. In 1961, Italian archaeologists, led by Antonio Frova, discovered at Caesarea Maritima a limestone tombstone with an inscription referring to Pontius Pilate as Praefectus Judaeae. Apparently, the stone block, known since then as the "Pilate Inscription," was originally located on the exterior of a building that Pontius Pilate had constructed for the emperor Tiberius. Until the date of its discovery, although both Josephus Flavius and Philo of Alexandria had referred to Pontius Pilate, his very existence, or at least his actual office in Judea, whether prefect or procurator, was doubtful.

-Simon the Cyrenian. He is the one who is forced to carry the cross of Jesus during the ascent to Calvary. In 1941, in the Kidron Valley, in Jerusalem, an ossuary was found with the name of Alexander, son of Simon, as it is written in the Gospels.

-The Sanhedrin (Hebrew: סַנְהֶדְרִין, sanhedrîn, i.e., "assembly" or "council," the Great Assembly) of Jerusalem. It was the legislative and judicial body during the Hasmonean-Roman phase of the Second Temple period. Opinions were debated before voting and the expression of the majority became a binding judgment. It traditionally consisted of 71 members.

The process of Christ

The trial of Jesus took place in accordance with a procedure called cognitio extra ordinem, introduced by Augustus in the Roman provinces, which allowed the competent authority to initiate a trial without a jury, preside over it and pass sentence independently. 

There were rules: the accusation had to be supported by whistleblowers, and then the accused was further interrogated, often tortured to admit guilt.

The accusation, in the case of Jesus, was of "lèse majesté", because he had proclaimed himself to be the son of God, a blasphemous expression for the Jews and illegitimate for the Romans (for the Romans "son of God" was a title reserved for the emperor).

The threat that the Jews addressed to Pilate, when they saw him hesitate to condemn Jesus to death, was that of not being "Caesar's friend". And it was an effective threat, considering that a previous praefectus, Gaius Valerius, had been dismissed shortly before for not being "Caesar's friend". Pilate himself was removed a few years later. 

The hearing was held at the lithostroptusa paved courtyard with a raised seating area, gabbathàin which the governor, or praefectussat down to pass sentence.

Recent archaeological discoveries have brought to light, in the vicinity of the Temple esplanade, exactly where the Gospel of John indicates and perfectly corresponding to its description, a portico of about 2,500 square meters, paved according to Roman usage (lithostrotonin fact). Given its location right next to the Antonia Fortress, at the northwest end of the Temple esplanade, and the type of remains brought to light, it could be the site of Jesus' trial.

Condemnation and flagellation

Jesus suffered the most atrocious death, the one reserved for slaves, murderers, thieves and those who were not Roman citizens: crucifixion.

In an attempt to get him to admit his guilt or to punish him by not crucifying him, he was previously inflicted with an equally terrible torture: scourging with the terrible instrument called flagrumThe whip, a whip fitted with metal balls and bony instruments that lacerate the skin and tear off chunks of flesh. Horace called this practice "horribile flagellum". 

Normally, in Jewish circles, it did not exceed 39 strokes. On the man in the shroud, however, at least 372 lacerating scourging wounds (excluding the white parts of the sheet) were found, probably inflicted by two torturers.

According to documents of Latin authors, the scourge left the bones exposed because it tore off whole strips of flesh. ("I can count all my bones")). We have a faithful reconstruction of this in the film The Passion by Mel Gibson.

Crucifixion

Crucifixion is a technique of torture and condemnation to death that originated in the East (perhaps in India or Persia), but also spread to Israel and the Mediterranean through the Phoenicians. The Romans, who had not invented it, were nevertheless its greatest users, perfecting the technique in an extremely cruel way to humiliate and make the condemned (who did not necessarily have to be Roman citizens, but slaves or inhabitants of the provinces) suffer as much as possible.

Also in Israel they were hung or nailed to trees, but with the arrival of the Romans a real cross was used, which could be of two types: crux commissaT-shaped, or crux immissa, in the form of a dagger. The latter is the one we know today, which is probably due to the fact that we know from the Gospel of Matthew that narrates the existence of the tituluma title with the motif of the condemnation that was placed over Jesus' head. 

Once condemned, Jesus was forced to bear the cross beam of the crux immissa (the patibulumHe was then stripped of his clothes and carried by a man who weighed between 50 and 80 kilos) for a few hundred meters up a hill just outside the walls of Jerusalem (Golgotha, where the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher stands today). There, according to Roman procedure, he was stripped naked. 

Other details of the punishment are known from the Roman custom of crucifying those condemned to death: they were tied or nailed with their arms stretched out to the patibulum and raised on the vertical post already fixed, to which the feet were tied or nailed.

Most of the weight of the body was supported by a kind of support (seat) that protruded from the vertical pole and on which the victim was placed astride: this is not mentioned in the Gospels, but many ancient Roman authors mention it. 

The foot support (suppedaneum), often represented in Christian art, is, however, unknown in Antiquity.

Death was usually slow, very slow, accompanied by atrocious suffering: the victim, lifted from the ground no more than half a meter, was completely naked and could remain hanging for hours, if not days, shaken by tetanic cramps, terrible shocks with excruciating pain (due to injury or laceration of nerves, such as the radial nerve at the wrist: the nail, between 12 and 18 centimeters long, was forced through the carpal tunnel), wheezing and inability to breathe properly, as blood could not flow to the limbs stretched to exhaustion, nor to the heart, and the lungs could not open.

Hence hypovolemic shock (blood loss, mechanical asphyxia, dehydration and malnutrition) accompanied by hemopericardium (blood accumulated in the pericardium and the transparent and clearer part, the serum, separated from the globular part: a phenomenon commonly observed in persons subjected to torture) and "rupture of the cardiac muscle", i.e. myocardial infarction. 

The rupture of the heart seems to be the cause of the "high-pitched scream" emitted by the dying Jesus. On the other hand, the outflow of blood and water through the orifice caused by the spear corresponds exactly to the hemopericardium.

In the Gospels we read that, unlike others condemned to crucifixion (who could be hung for days), the agony of Jesus did not last more than a few hours, from the sixth hour to the ninth hour, which is consistent with the massive loss of blood due to the flagellation. 

RelatedThe wood of the Cross"The cross is Christ's, outside of ideologies."

RelatedThe road to Easter 

It is not possible to approach the paschal mystery in an integral way without first knowing the process of the Passion and Death of Christ. 

Each step narrated in the Gospels, and confirmed again and again by archaeology and documentary sources of the time, takes on full meaning in the light of faith and history. 

Penance and Lent

Catholics began a few days ago the season of LentIt is a time not so much - or not only - of penance but, like Advent for Christmas, of preparation. 

At first, in the early Church, Lent was conceived as a time of greater preparation for Easter in which the catechumens who would receive baptism during the Easter Vigil. The practice of fasting was directed above all to them and the fasting itself did not have a penitential purpose, but an ascetic-illuminative one. 

Only later, from the third century onwards, the experience of the Lenten season was extended to the whole ecclesial community, especially to penitents (those who had committed serious sins and needed to be reconciled and readmitted into the community, and those who aspired to greater perfection). For this reason, they began to be assigned a special place in the church, close to that of the catechumens, and outside the sanctuary. There they remained dressed in mourning (a practice still in force among the confraternities of penitents), with their skulls shaved and covered with ashes until Holy Thursday. On this day, the penitent was solemnly reconciled by the imposition of hands by the bishop or priest and a prayer imploring God to readmit the sinner to the community from which he had separated.

Moving decisively towards Easter

However, a fundamental characteristic of both ancient and modern Lent is not so much the cultivation of penitential practices such as fasting, but living these practices with reference to Christ. 

The forty days of Lent, with the practices observed during them, have the fundamental purpose of commemorating the forty days of Jesus in the desert before the beginning of his public mission, forty days in which Christ fasted and was exposed to temptation. 

St. Francis de Sales writes that fasting in itself is not a virtue. Lent itself, therefore, is a mortification. "virtuous" only if it has as its goal the final push towards Easter; as St. Paul would say about the athletes who prepare their body to obtain a corruptible crown, while Christians temper their body and spirit through penance to obtain an incorruptible one. 

In the Gospel of Luke (Paul's disciple), we read that, "when the days were completed in which he was to be taken up to heaven, Jesus made the decision to go to Jerusalem." therefore, towards his Passover. 

It is interesting to note that the Greek text of Luke uses the expression "ἐστήριξε τὸ πρόσωπον-.stêrizéin ton prosopon".i.e, "harden the face" to head towards Jerusalem, which here has the meaning of taking a firm decision, with an attitude that we could even say, hostile. 

If we also take into account the reference to the prophet Isaiah, in which the prophet himself proclaims: "so I hardened my face like flint, knowing that I would not be disappointed."We can go back to the original Hebrew expression which, literally, would be: "I hardened my face like flint.". We know that flint, lapis ignis in Latin, is a particular type of stone used to produce the sparks needed to ignite firearms, but also, in ancient times, simply to light fires. To produce sparks, however, the stone must be struck.

Luke also uses the verb stêrizéin in another passage of his Gospel, when Jesus, addressing Peter, orders him to confirm (stêrizéin) to his brethren once he had repented, and in Acts, when speaking of Paul confirming all the disciples in the faith. 

In fact, in imitation of Christ and his disciples, in the period leading up to Easter, Christians and catechumens seem to be called upon to "harden like flint", that is, to move resolutely towards the goal of their journey, which is not only Jerusalem, but eternal life, trusting in God and knowing that they will not be disappointed.

Easter

We know that the culmination of Jesus Christ's mission was his Passover, which would take place on the Jewish festival of that name.

Passover was one of the main celebrations of the Jewish year, in fact, it was the main one. It was part of the so-called "pilgrimage festivities".together with Pentecost (Shavu'òt) and the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkôt). On the occasion of these three feasts, every male Israelite who had reached a certain age was obliged to go to the Temple in Jerusalem.

This holiday was, and still is for today's Jews, the commemoration of the passage (passover) of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt to freedom and the Promised Land, a step that was achieved through the sacrifice of the firstborn of the Egyptians and the lambs of the Jews. 

In Hebrew, however, passover also means the sacrificial victim, a lamb without blemish that was sacrificed in place of the firstborn of each family. Therefore, the Passover is also the lamb.

The Easter Calendar

Passover (Hebrew, Pesach) is celebrated in the month of Nisan (between mid-March and mid-April), on the afternoon of the 14th, in conjunction with the "Feast of the Unleavened Bread" or unleavened bread, which was celebrated from the 15th to the 21st. These eight days (from the 14th to the 21st) were therefore called both Passover and Unleavened.

At the time of Jesus, the Jewish calendar was quite elastic, an elasticity on which probably depends a discrepancy between the synoptic gospels and that of John. 

Indeed, the official Temple calendar was not accepted throughout Palestine and by all Jewish sects. 

In addition to this luni-solar calendar there was a different liturgical calendar, corresponding to the ancient priestly calendar of 364 days, later replaced in 167 B.C. by the Babylonian lunar calendar of 350 days. 

In addition, there was also a dispute between Pharisees and Sadducees (specifically, the Boethians, i.e., the followers of the family of Simon Boethius, high priest between 25 B.C. and 4 A.D.). The latter used to move certain dates of the calendar by one day according to the year, especially when the Passover fell on Friday or Sunday.

It so happened, for example, that the Sadducees (the class of the "high priests") and the wealthy classes, if the Passover fell on Friday, postponed by one day the sacrifice of the lamb and the Passover supper (which were on the previous day, Thursday), while all the people, who used to take the Pharisees as a reference, followed the Pharisaic calendar, continuing with the sacrifice of the lamb and the Passover supper on Thursday. 

In the year in which Jesus died, Passover regularly fell on Friday, although John, perhaps following the ancient priestly calendar, writes that this day was Parasceve. The priests mentioned in his Gospel postponed the Passover meal by one day (that Friday was Parasceve for them). Jesus and the disciples, on the other hand, seem to have followed the Pharisaic calendar.

The Jewish celebration

As of 10 or 11 a.m. on the morning of the 14th of Nisan, every small piece of leavened bread (jametz) was to disappear from all Jewish homes. From that moment on and during the following seven days, it was obligatory to consume only unleavened bread. Also on the 14th, in the afternoon, the immolation of the lambs took place in the inner court of the Temple. The head of the family was in charge of taking the victim to be sacrificed to the Temple, and then brought it back home skinned and stripped of some internal parts. 

The blood, on the other hand, was given to the priests, who sprinkled it on the altar of burnt offerings.

It is almost impossible to imagine the stench and the tumult that was created on those occasions. There were tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, in fact, of Jews from both Palestine and the Diaspora who flocked to Jerusalem for the feast; so many, in fact, that shifts had to be established so that all could perform the sacrifice of the lamb.

The historian Flavius Josephus made a calculation on behalf of the Roman authorities in the time of Nero (in the year 65 approximately), showing that only on the evening of the 14th of Nisan of that year no less than 255,600 lambs were sacrificed. 

The slaughtered lambs were roasted that evening for the Passover feast, which began after sunset and lasted at least until midnight. At each banquet there were no less than ten people and no more than twenty, all reclining on low couches concentric to the table. 

At least four ritual cups of wine circulated, in addition to other non-ritual cups that could pass before the third ritual, but not between the third and the fourth. All the participants in the banquet had to drink from the same cup (kiddush ritual), a large cup. 

The dinner began with the pouring of the first cup and the recitation of a prayer to bless the banquet and the wine. 

This was followed by unleavened bread, bitter herbs and a special fruit and nut sauce (haroset) in which the herbs were dipped. After this, the roast lamb was served and then it was the turn of the second cup. The head of the family would then make a short speech explaining the meaning of the feast, usually in response to a question from a son. For example, the son might ask: "Why is tonight different from the others?" o "Why is it that every other night we go to sleep after dinner and tonight we stay up?". And so, the head of the family, in accordance with what is an imperative duty of the Jewish people, memory (zikkaron), reminded the family of the benefits God had bestowed on Israel by delivering them from Egypt.

Then the roasted lamb, together with the bitter herbs dipped in the sauce, was eaten in haste, while the second cup was circulated. This was followed by the recitation of the first part of the Hallel (hence the term alleluia), a hymn composed of Psalms 113 to 118 (which, in the Catholic Church, are also sung during the Liturgy of the Hours on Sundays) and a blessing was recited with which the banquet proper began, preceded by the washing of hands.

After pouring the third ritual cup, a prayer of thanksgiving and the second part of the hymn are recited. Hallel. Finally, the fourth ritual cup was poured.

It is interesting to conclude with the aforementioned identification, at Easter, between the "step" from slavery to freedom and the sacrificial victim, a lamb without blemish sacrificed in the place of the firstborn, which, in the Christian vision, coincides with the identification between the "step" from death to life and a new Lamb without blemish, sacrificed in place of sinners. 

RelatedThe road to Easter