Watching Jesus Die: Getting to Know Calvary’s Cast of Characters

By Woodrow Michael Kroll and Marvin R. Wilson

What if you could transport yourself back to the first century, walking the dusty streets of Jerusalem, late on Thursday night before Passover? And what if you were tagging along behind eleven men led by Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane? You'd leave the Upper Room and go deep into the Kidron Valley to the garden. There the temple police and a half-crazed crowd arrive brandishing torches. Jesus is taken to the palace of Annas and then to the High Priest Caiaphas. What insight do we gain from history, archaeology, and most importantly the New Testament about where they lived? In the morning Jesus would be sent to the Chamber of Hewn Stone. What was this place and why is it important to the Passion narratives? On to Pilate's Judgment Hall where new archaeological evidence questions its traditional location. You pick up the trail again on the Via Dolorosa and follow Jesus to Jerusalem's killing field. There you find the Savior dying on a Roman cross. In just a few hours you have followed him from the Upper Room to Joseph's tomb and have gained valuable insight into each stopover to help you on your own journey to Calvary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Dec 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666772029

Woodrow Michael Kroll

Woodrow Michael Kroll has been the chairman of the Department of Religion at a major university, a college president, and for twenty-three years the president and senior Bible teacher for the international radio program Back to the Bible, with a daily listening audience of ten million people. Kroll is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Biblical Archaeology Society, and the Evangelical Theological Society, where he has been a presenter on crucifixion.

Book preview

Introduction

Most people enjoy reading biographies. Biography is one of the most popular genres of literature. But biographies suffer from a balance issue. Some biographies are important but are not entertaining. Others are entertaining but not important. To get a biography that is both entertaining and important is not that easy unless you begin with an important character and entertainingly tell his or her story.

For the cast of characters at Calvary, this is not a problem. Even the story of the most mundane person is enlivened by their interaction with Jesus. Without question, it is Jesus who gives life to their story. Without Jesus, we would never have heard of Suzanna, Nicodemus, or even Peter. Without Jesus, Annas and Caiaphas would be buried in the histories of Josephus and other more obscure writers. But with Jesus and their contact with him, these characters come alive.

In this book, we will examine the lives, characters, and interactions with Jesus of Nazareth of no less than twenty-seven individuals or groups. Every person mentioned by name, and even those not mentioned by name, who figures in the Passion Weekend will be explored. If the Gospels refer to them, they are a part of Calvary’s cast of characters and an important part of this book.

But we want to get more from their stories than just entertainment. We want to gain insight into their relationship with Jesus. We want to know why their role in the crucifixion was so important that one or more of the evangelists felt compelled to include it in their Gospel. And, we want to come away with some practical insights from their stories that will assist us on our spiritual journey.

So, find your most comfortable chair and begin. Unfortunately, not everything you read will make you comfortable, but it will make you think and that’s valuable in itself, Also it will make you glad you read Watching Jesus Die.

Chapter 1

Jesus of Nazareth: The Main Character in the Drama

Perhaps the most direct, most definitive statement from the lips of Jesus declaring why he left heaven and came to Earth is found in Luke 19:10, ‘For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’ Read this as Jesus’ mission statement.

Jesus’ Name

Jesus’ DNA

Jesus’ Early Years

Jesus’ Family

Jesus’ Physical Appearance

Jesus’ Mission to Earth

In 1978, Michael Hart (Ph.D. in astronomy, Princeton University) published a book entitled The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History.¹ Not only did Hart choose for himself the 100 people included in his list, but he also had the hutzpah to rank them from one to one hundred. (Hutzpah is a popular Yiddish term for a person who has extraordinary audacity or insolence. For example, a teenager kills both his parents and then throws himself at the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. That’s hutzpah). As soon as I heard about the book, I asked my assistant to go to a Barnes & Noble bookstore and buy a copy.

As you would expect, Jesus of Nazareth made the list, but it might surprise you where Michael Hart placed him on the list. Jesus was not number one. Hart put Muhammad in that spot because he was the founder of a substantial religion. (While Islam is second to Christianity in the number of adherents in the world, it is expected to overtake Christianity by 2050). However, Jesus was not number two. That spot went to Sir Isaac Newton for his scientific achievements. Jesus, the Savior of the world, the Messiah of Israel, and the Son of God, Hart put in the third position among the one hundred most influential people in history.

Imagine Jesus, the omnipotent God in human form, winning only the bronze medal at the Human Olympics. That is what Michael Hart implied.

Nevertheless, Jesus is not number three in the eyes of the Sovereign God. Nor is he number three for much of the world. Even most secular historians recognize the crucifixion of Jesus as one of the most significant events in the history of humankind.² No human being has touched more lives, spawned more hospitals and soup kitchens, or given more hope to hopeless people than Jesus of Nazareth and his followers. In the cast of characters related to the Calvary event, we must begin with Jesus. For the Christian, he will always be number one.

Jesus’ Name

Our English form of Jesus’ name comes from the Hebrew name Yēšû. This is a shortened form of the word Yēšûa῾ in the Hebrew Bible. Even this represents a shortened form of the name of the great Old Testament hero Yěhôšûa῾, Joshua, the successor to Moses. Before the Babylonian exile, the name Joshua was the standard meaning of the Hebrew Yěhôšûa῾. However, among the Jews who returned from exile, the name Jesus Yēšûa῾ and the shortened form Yēšû became more common. Yeshua remained a popular name in Jewish Christian families until the second century AD.

The name Jesus occurs 1,058 times in the New Testament, 718 of them in the Gospels alone. In combination with the title Christos meaning the Anointed One, Jesus Christ is found 231 times in the New Testament, but only eight times in the Gospels. This title was more theological than historical and thus is most prominent in the epistles, especially those of the Apostle Paul. The expression Son of God is used to identify Jesus sixty times in the New Testament, thirty-one of them in the Gospels. The title and name Lord Jesus can be found 102 times, all in the New Testament, but only twice in the Gospels—once in Mark and once in Luke. These references unmistakably denote Jesus of Nazareth.

At this time, adoration of Jesus Christ became so deeply rooted that Christian families stopped giving this meaningful name to their children. Even today, except in Hispanic cultures, the name remains rare in use.

In the Gospels, however, the Savior was most often referred to simply as Jesus or Jesus of Nazareth. Even the titulus over his head on the cross said, Ἰησοῦς Ναζωραῖος βασιλεύς Ἰουδαῖος, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." This was to indicate which Jesus the Roman prefect crucified, for there were other men named Jesus in the late Second Temple Period, such as Jesus Barabbas, the prisoner released by Pontius Pilate instead of Jesus who is called Christ (Matt 27:16 NET),³ Joshua, an ancestor of Christ, (the Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8 renderings of Joshua in the KJV), Jesus Justice, a Jewish Christian who sent greetings to the Colossians along with the Apostle Paul (Col 4:11).

Archaeologists have unearthed the tombs of seventy-one Yeshuas and counting from the period of Jesus’ life and death.⁴ It is not the name itself that deserves so much esteem as that one person who bore it. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9–11). As the Gaither song noted, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, there’s just something about that name.

Jesus’ DNA

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) had only been known by the public for a decade or so when I was in college. I still remember stumbling over the pronunciation of deoxyribonucleic. Today, in the twenty-first century, people are using their DNA to learn about their ancestors. Searching for your ancestry using your DNA became a growth industry in the first two decades of this century. But in the days of David, king of Israel, or King Herod of Judea, there were no DNA kits to inform you about your ancestry. You had to rely on written records. The Bible includes a DNA-like account of those whom we know to be the ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth.

Before Matthew says anything about Jesus, the writer presents Jesus’ lineage. Lineage was important to those for whom Matthew’s Gospel was written; his readers were predominantly Jewish people. Matthew’s first verse says, The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. He traces Jesus’ ancestry back through David, the great Jewish king, to Abraham, the Father of the Jewish nation.

Luke 3 also records the lineage of Jesus, but this time the evangelist goes all the way back to Adam. That’s important, too, because Luke wrote to a predominantly non-Jewish audience. Clearly, the two genealogies are different, but most scholars agree that Luke’s genealogy represents the family tree from Adam to Jesus traced through Mary’s side of the family through King David. In contrast, Matthew’s genealogy represents the family tree from Abraham to Jesus traced through Joseph’s (Jesus’ legal father) side of the family, which also runs through King David.

A curious note about Jesus’ DNA is found in Matthew’s genealogy. I’m going to follow it in the King James Version because it is there found most distinctly. The connective verb between each generation presented in Matthew’s list and translated as begat (Greek: ἐγέννησεν; English: egennēsen) means to procreate, literally to give seed to. Matthew used this verb no less than thirty-eight times.⁵

However, Matthew makes a distinctive and noticeable change when he comes to connecting Joseph and Jesus. At the end of the genealogy, Matthew writes, And Eliud begat Eleazar, and Eleazar begat Matthan, and Matthan begat Jacob. And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ (Matt 1:15–16 KJV).

Matthew unmistakably avoided saying that Joseph begat (γεννάω) Jesus for that would imply a physical relationship, a passing of DNA. Instead, the evangelist said, "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. This squares with what the angel told Joseph: Do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit" (Matt 1:20).

Jesus of Nazareth was the legal son of Joseph ben Jacob of Nazareth and the physical son of Mary, Joseph’s wife. Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father. Jesus was not half God and half man; that would make him only 50 percent divine and 50 percent human, not wholly God nor wholly man. Furthermore, Jesus was not 100 percent God and 100 percent man; those two percentages are mutually exclusive. Instead, he was the unique, one-of-a-kind God-man, the Son of Man and Son of God, human-divine. We have nothing or no one to compare the God-man to because there is nobody like him, nor will there ever be. Jesus’ DNA is divine and human, and he is the only person for whom that will be true.

Jesus’ Early Years

While both Matthew and Luke record infancy narratives, only Luke records Jesus being presented at the Jerusalem Temple, about forty days after his birth. Leviticus 12:2–4 describes the seven days for Mary’s ritual uncleanness and thirty-three days for purification. It was here in the Temple the devout Simeon recognized the infant Jesus as the salvation of Israel (Luke 2:22–35). Matthew records that Joseph, Mary, and the young child escaped to Egypt in the face of jealous King Herod’s slaughter of all the boys in Bethlehem two years of age and younger (Matt 2:13–15).

Only Matthew records that the Holy Family returned to the land of Israel after Herod died. However, because of Herod’s son, Archelaus, the new king over Judea, and his father’s equal in cruelty, the Holy Family journeyed back to Nazareth where Joseph resumed his trade as a craftsman working with wood and stone. This is where Jesus grew up, on the hills of Nazareth and the adjacent Valley of Jezreel.

The Valley of Jezreel (Hebrew ʿEmeq Yizreʿel or Ha-ʿEmeq) is also called the Plain of Esdraelon. It is a lowland valley in northern Israel that divides the hilly areas of Galilee to the north from the mountains of Samaria to the south. A portion of this valley is identified with Armageddon, the site of the final battle of this age where Revelation 19 says Jesus will ride out of heaven with his armies and defeat the armies of Satan in the most decisive victory in history.

I have always found it a poignant detail that the valley where Jesus played with sticks as swords with the other little boys of Nazareth is the same valley in which He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev 19:15–16).

Luke 2:41ff records a company of Jews from Galilee traveling together up to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. This group included Joseph, Mary, and Jesus at age twelve. When they returned to Nazareth, Luke 2:52 indicates Jesus grew in all areas a human being grows: in wisdom (intellectually); in stature (physically); in favor with God (spiritually); and man (socially).

Jesus’ early years were relatively uneventful, at least as recorded by the evangelists. He grew up learning spiritual lessons in Joseph’s home and life lessons in his workshop.

Wild stories

Because people are curious, and from age twelve until the beginning of his ministry, the Gospels tell us nothing of the hidden years of Jesus’ life, some apocryphal writings (the so-called lost gospels) were created to fill in the gaps of Jesus’ teens and twenties. It’s misleading at best to say these gospels were lost; we’ve possessed copies of them for centuries. They were only lost because they were rejected as not worthy of inclusion in the canon of Scripture.

Jesus makes clay birds come alive (Arabic Infancy Gospel,

36

)

The stories about Jesus in some apocryphal writings are outlandish. One of them, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, tells a tale of the five-year-old Jesus making twelve birds from clay in a stream, apparently unaware it was the Sabbath. When his father Joseph rebuked the pre-teen, Jesus simply clapped his hands, and the birds flew away.

John P. Meier writes the following:

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas presents the child Jesus as a self-willed little brat who, throwing a tantrum, makes a child who runs up against him drop dead. The portrait of this sinister superboy belongs more in a horror movie than a gospel. If nothing else, it is a healthy reminder that much apocryphal material stems from ‘pop’ rather than learned Christian circles and reflects neither early reliable traditions nor elevated theology, but instead curiosity, fascination with the bizarre and miraculous.⁶

As a result, these apocryphal stories may stoke the imagination, but they do not advance the truth about Jesus’ childhood or teen years. No respectable academic mind finds these stories respectable.

Jesus’ theological training

In Nazareth, under the tutelage of Joseph the carpenter, Jesus learned to craft furniture, construct wooden frames, build houses, lay stone with cement, and more. As a young boy, he sat at his father’s knee, learning the Law of Moses and studying the Scriptures. He was schooled in Nazareth and was a devout follower of Yahweh, the God of Israel. John 7:14–15 implies that Jesus was not trained as a rabbi. Yet he was often addressed with the honorific title rabbi because he taught as one highly trained in the Law (see Matt 26:25, 49; Mark 9:5; 10:51; 11:21; 14:45; John 1:38, 49; 3:2, 26; 4:31; 6:25; 9:2; 11:8). Also, he was often addressed less formally as a teacher (see Matt 8:19; 9:11; 10:24–25; 19:16; 22:24, 36; 26:18; Mark 4:38; 9:17, 38; 10:17, 20, 35; 12:14, 19, 32; Luke 7:40; 11:45; 12:13; 19:39; John 3:2; 8:4; 11:28; 13:13–14).

In the middle of the Feast of Booths, Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying, ‘How is it that this man has learning. when he has never studied?’ (John 7:15). Never studied means Jesus was educated both by Joseph and the village Bet ha-Sefer, the primary school where children under thirteen learned the Scriptures. Nevertheless, he was not trained at the Bet ha-Midrash or house of study where advanced students of the Law later gathered to listen to the Midrash and hear discourses or expositions of the Law.

Jesus was not raised in Jerusalem or in a strong rabbinic tradition, but he was not a local Nazarene hack either. We know Jesus could read and write. When the scribes and Pharisees brought the woman caught in adultery to Jesus to test him, John 8:6 reveals, Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. John chose the word (Greek: κατέγραφεν; English: kategraphen) that means to write. He was not drawing emojis or meaningless characters in the dirt. Jesus was writing, probably in Aramaic. After Jesus shocked these pious religious leaders, he admonished them, Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. Jesus once again bent down and finished writing in the dirt.

Recently, a 2,000-year-old rare, intact inkwell was found in Khirbet Brakhot (Gush Etzion), four miles southeast of Bethlehem. It is a clay cylinder with a round handle. The discovery of this inkwell supports the premise that writing, and therefore literacy, was more common in the Second Temple Period than previously believed.⁷

Being literate enabled Jesus to be well-versed in the Torah and the Prophets. Luke 4:16 indicates that shortly after the beginning of his ministry, Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.

Jesus’ education, however, was not limited to Joseph and the Nazareth synagogue. When the Jews at the Feast of Booths asked, How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied? Jesus answered, My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority (John 7:14–17). The world cannot provide a better education than divine instruction.

Jesus’ Family

As we have seen, Jesus’ mother was a young virgin of Nazareth named Mary. Jesus had no biological father, but Joseph, the husband of Mary, took Jesus into their family as his own son. As a result, Jesus became the legal firstborn son of Joseph and Mary. As the legal heir to Joseph, Jesus would assume all the rights and privileges of the firstborn male in every Jewish family.

Jesus’ siblings

The Gospel of Mark (6:1–3) records there were other children in this pious family. As mentioned, when Jesus first began his public ministry, he soon found himself back in Nazareth with his disciples. And on the Sabbath, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, ‘Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? (Mark 6:3).

Most scholars date Mark as our earliest Gospel, usually putting it just after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its Holy Temple in the summer of 70 C.E. – James Tabor

The account in Matthew 13 adds a bit more information. Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’ And they took offense at him (Matt 13:54–57).

Since Jesus was now an adult, we can anticipate those siblings mentioned by Mark are all adults as well. When Matthew recorded this event, he said, "And are not all (Greek: πᾶσαι; English: pasai) his sisters with us?" (v. 56), implying that the entirety of Jesus’ immediate family was present. Mary would have been edging close to non-childbearing years; there would be no more children. Besides, it is valuable to note that Joseph is not mentioned, and this leads to speculation that by the time of Jesus’ public ministry, his legal, loving father, Joseph, was already dead.

Text versus tradition interpretations

The issue of Jesus’ siblings is one where the Catholic and Protestant/Evangelical branches of the Christian Church are divided. It is, in fact, a case of text versus tradition. If you only read the four Gospels, you might wonder why the Catholic Church venerates the Virgin Mary when she plays such a surprisingly minor role in the canonical Gospels.⁸ While Protestants and Evangelicals, as well as some early church councils, rejected the apocryphal books as being unworthy to be included in the Bible, the Catholic and Orthodox wings of the church accepted these traditions as factual and historical. Some of the tradition in the Catholic Church comes from these apocryphal documents. To these, other Catholic-sanctioned traditions have sprung from within Catholicism and have grown over the centuries. The Catholic belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary is one of these.

Catholics believe Mary was a virgin before her pregnancy with Jesus and remained a virgin afterward. Catholic theologians explain these brothers and sisters of Jesus either as belonging to Joseph from a previous marriage or as being Jesus’ cousins. These theologians look to the second-century Protoevangellium Jacobi (James), an apocryphal gospel that was widely read but never accepted into the New Testament canon, to support their belief.

The Protoevangellium 9.2 records the selection of the young Mary for the older Joseph as a wife. Joseph refused, saying, I have sons and am old, but she is a girl. Later, 17.1 says, Now there went out a decree from the king Augustus that all (inhabitants) of Bethlehem in Judaea should be enrolled. And Joseph said: ‘I shall enroll my sons, but what shall I do with this child? How shall I enroll her? As my wife? I am ashamed to do that. Or as my daughter? But all the children of Israel know that she is not my daughter.

The belief that Jesus’ brothers were mere half-brothers—having the same legal father but not the same biological mother—is sometimes referred to as the Epiphanian Solution. The fourth-century AD Cyprian Bishop of Salamis, Epiphanius wrote an exposition in his Panarion championing this theory. The Panarion is a massive compendium of heresies up to the time of Epiphanius. Written between 374 and 377 AD, it forms a handbook listing and refuting eighty heresies and provides arguments to be used against heretics.⁹

Other Catholics understand the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ brothers and sisters to be his cousins. This view was championed by Jerome in the late fourth century AD. Jerome wrote a tract entitled Against Helvidius espousing this view, which became the predominant view in Western Catholicism during the Middle Ages. In the East, the idea that these brothers and sisters were only half-brothers and half-sisters continued to hold sway.

While the vast majority of Catholics believe Jesus’ brothers and sisters belonged to Joseph by a previous marriage, not all do. The twentieth-century German Catholic theologian and New Testament scholar Rudolf Pesch raised his voice in support of the true siblings position in a mammoth two-volume commentary on the Gospel of Mark.¹⁰

On the other hand, with no felt need to preserve Mary’s perpetual virginity, Protestants understand these brothers and sisters to be genuine siblings, the subsequent offspring of Joseph and Mary after the birth of Jesus. Protestant and Evangelical theologians see several problems in the perpetual virginity theory.

The primary source of the appeal of Christianity was Jesus – his incarnation, his life, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. – Kenneth Scott Latourette

In Matthew 1:24–25, the evangelist chose a specific word to indicate that Joseph and Mary did not have sexual relations until the birth of Jesus. "When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until [Greek: ἐγίνωσκεν; English: eginōsken] she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus."

This word héōs, a preposition, is also an adverb of continuance meaning until a particular time or place, or as far as. It implies that until the birth of Jesus, this couple had no sexual relations, but after he was born, they did. No intimacy until.

Also, there is a concern with the expression mother and brothers. If James, Joses, Judas, and Simon were Jesus’ cousins and not his brothers, would you not refer to your family unit as your mother and cousins? If these men were sons of Joseph but not sons of Mary, why is this unit of mother and brothers maintained throughout the Gospel accounts? Even American biblical scholar and Roman Catholic priest John P. Meier comments, It is difficult to maintain that the brothers are thought of only as stepbrothers or cousins of Jesus when Matthew is at pains to separate the legal but not biological father of Jesus from Jesus’ real, biological mother.¹¹ While the issue is settled among Protestants and Evangelicals, it is still open to many Catholics.

As if the sibling question were not sticky enough, there is a far stickier question about Jesus’ marital status. Contrary to a group of today’s wildly-speculative and totally-inaccurate authors, Jesus did not have a wife and children. If he did, what was his wife’s name? From the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we learn about his mother. We read of his legal father, Joseph. We hear of his brothers named James, Joses, Jude, and Simon. We even know of the unnamed sisters of the Lord Jesus. However, we hear nothing of a wife. We know of no name associated with a wife of Jesus. Any honest person reading the Gospels must ask why.

Some have speculated that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife, but even though she was a devoted follower of the Lord, no Gospel, no Epistle, nor any other canonical writing links her to Jesus in a romantic way.¹² The truth is, the Bible is convincingly silent about Jesus taking a wife. The most logical, reasonable explanation for this silence is that he didn’t take a wife and that he remained single and celibate his entire life.

Jesus’ Physical Appearance

Even the most ancient biographies, like our modern bios, give some description of the physical appearance of the person in their memoir. The Old Testament descriptions of King David, for example, refer to his natural good looks; he was ruddy and handsome (1 Sam 16:12; 17:42). Goliath of Gath was six cubits and a span (1 Sam 17:4). Nevertheless oddly enough, the New Testament Gospels do not provide any reference to Jesus’ physical appearance. Over the centuries, many attempts have been made; all have failed. Our image of Jesus is colored by artists and actors rather than historical references and facts.¹³

During my student days, I remember a class at Princeton in which the venerable Bruce Metzger was the instructor. In class, there was an extended debate among the students about what we know of Jesus’ physical appearance. My contribution to the discussion was that we knew Jesus had a beard because the Bible referred to it being plucked out.¹⁴ My mild-mannered professor gently pushed back and asked where that information was found in the Bible. At the time I could not put my finger on it. After class, equally gently, Professor Metzger reminded me that my reference to Jesus having his beard plucked out was not in the Gospel narratives at all but was rather the prophecy of Isaiah 50:6. I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting. As usual, Bruce Metzger was correct.

The truth is, we know very little of what Jesus may have looked like. Likely he was a typical Jewish man of the first century, with olive skin and dark hair.¹⁵

In 2011, Ray Downing, an Emmy-award-winning 3D digital artist, using information obtained from the Shroud of Turin, created a Virtual Jesus image that appeared in a History Channel special called The Real Face of Jesus? Yet even this famous raised facial image is predicated on the man of the Shroud being Jesus of Nazareth, a fact not in evidence, as they say.

Jesus’ Mission to Earth

The profound mission statement of America is etched on the Statue of Liberty. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Winston Churchill walked into the House of Commons on June 4, 1940. The allies had just rescued 338,000 troops from Dunkirk, but Churchill needed to prepare his nation for the fall of France. What followed was Churchill’s declaration, We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.¹⁶

Such declarations of purpose are not uncommon. They announce to the public the intention or mission someone or some entity has. You must wonder why Jesus did not make such a declaration. Why does the Bible not tell us precisely why Jesus came to Earth? Why doesn’t it tell us directly what Jesus’ mission was? Maybe it does, and we’ve just missed it.

Jesus was not unsure of his mission

It is not up for debate whether Jesus knew what his mission to Earth was. He did. Jesus did not reach Golgotha surprised, puzzled, or confused. In fact, he clearly stated his mission repeatedly, both to his disciples and others.

A quick check of the Bible’s use of the word must concerning Jesus and his mission reveals the many occasions where he said things like, But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation (Luke 17:25), or As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up (John 3:14).

The real truth is that while He came to preach the Gospel, His chief object in coming was that there might be a Gospel to preach. – Robert William Dale

Years ago, Alexander MacLaren wrote a book entitled Christ’s Musts: And Other Sermons. MacLaren listed these and other musts of which Jesus spoke:

► I must be in my Father’s house (Luke 2:49).

► I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God (Luke 4:43).

► I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following (Luke 13:33).

► But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’ (John 15:25).

► I must stay at your house today (Luke 19:5).

► They did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead (John 20:9).

► This Scripture must be fulfilled in me (Luke 22:37).

► Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled (Luke 24:44).

► We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day (John 9:4).

► I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also (John 10:16).¹⁷

However, of all the things Jesus said he "must do, none is greater than this: From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised" (Matt 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22; 24:7).

Jesus was not at all confused about why he came to Earth. There was no inner-deity confusion in the Godhead, either. Father, Son, and Spirit were all involved in planning Jesus’ journey to Golgotha, and they worked that plan with sovereign smoothness.

Jesus’ direct statement of his mission

Perhaps the most direct, most definitive statement from the lips of Jesus declaring why he left heaven and came to Earth is found in Luke 19:10. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Read this as Jesus’ personal mission statement. This was his purpose in coming to Earth stated as clearly as possible.

The second most unambiguous statement follows hard on the heels of the foremost verse in the New Testament–John 3:16. In verse 17, Jesus explained, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. – C. S. Lewis

Let there be no nonsense about Jesus’ uncertainty as he approached Calvary. He knew exactly why he was there. Jesus came to seek out those whom he would save through faith. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph 2:8–10).

Michael Hart may have included Jesus as number three in his ranking of the one hundred most influential persons in history, but he apparently doesn’t know the Jesus I know. Jesus is the crucial figure in the Passion story. All others are important only as they relate to him. The Gospel story begins with him, walks along with him, and ends with him. He truly is the Alpha and Omega (Rev 1:8; 21:6; 22:13). More than anyone else in history, Jesus makes a difference, in all our lives.

1 . Hart, 100, 2000.

2 . See Hartz, Tatort Antike, 2012.

3 . It is no secret that the ESV and NIV render these verses differently, depending on which manuscripts each reading relies on. Most manuscripts omit the word Jesus and simply have Barabbas, but the addition of τὸν λεγόμενον Χριστόν (who is called Christ) to᾿Ιησοῦν in verse 17 makes better sense than Barabbas also being called Jesus.

4 . Joseph P. Amar, University of Notre Dame and Paul V.M. Flesher, University of Wyoming.

5 . The Greek γεννάω is found in the Textus Receptus which is the basis for the King James Bible and others. Some versions update the word ‘begot’ to ‘fathered’ (CSB, HCSB, NASB) or more popularly ‘was the father of’ (JBP, TLB, NIV, NLT, RSV, etc. The ESV, the version used throughout this book series, uses the Greek word ἐγέννησεν and translates it simply as ‘the father of.’ The word is the common expression for being born. King Herod gathered his religious retinue together and inquired of them where the Christ child would be born. Jesus said to Nicodemus, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.

6 . Meier, Marginal, 115.

7 . Laden, Inkwell BAR, September 29, 2020.

8 . From his Triumphal Entry to his post-resurrection appearances, Jesus is mentioned by name 230 times in the Gospels, by name Peter is mentioned sixty-three times, and even Judas is mentioned by name eighteen times. Mary, however, Jesus’ mother is never mentioned by name even though she was at nearly all the events during that time, including Jesus’ crucifixion and the empty tomb. John 19:25 states that standing by the cross were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus speaks to Mary, he referred to her as Woman not by name or even Mother.

9 . See the English translation of Epiphanius, 90–91, 229, 348–351.

10 . Pesch, Kommentar, 1989.

11 . Meier, Marginal, 323.

12 . Two sensationalist fiction writers who envisioned the maid from Magdala as Jesus’ wife were Nikos Kazantzakis in The Last Temptation of Christ and, more recently, Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code.

13 . The earliest representations of Jesus discovered to date are found in the Roman catacombs. The art is very much stereotypical, just like other portraits of this period. Jesus is depicted as having no beard. Nevertheless, by the fourth century, he has grown a beard and begins to look more like artists over the centuries have portrayed him.

14 . A cubit was the distance between a normal man’s elbow and the tip of his middle finger. A span was a handbreadth or approximately half of a cubit. This makes Goliath’s height six times eighteen inches plus nine inches equals 117" or 9.75 feet.)

15 . For some of the difficulties encountered in determining what Jesus looked like, see the article entitled, Painting a Portrait of Jesus by D. Moody Smith in the March/April 2007 issue of the BAR.

16 . The famous speech delivered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on June 4, 1940.

17 . MacLaren, Musts, 2018.

Chapter 2

The Disciples: Companions and Followers of Jesus

The disciples were just twelve ordinary men, engaged in everyday, often menial occupations. However, when Jesus said, ‘Follow me,’ their response was anything but ordinary. It was both positive and immediate.

Biographical Snapshots of Jesus’ Twelve Disciples

Peter

Andrew

James

John

Philip

Bartholomew

Thomas

Matthew

James, the son of Alphaeus

Thaddeus

Simon the Zealot

Judas Iscariot

Jesus alone was the Son of God. He alone was the Messiah of Israel. But he was not alone when walking the dusty roads of Galilee or the narrow streets of Jerusalem. He was accompanied by twelve ordinary men with an extraordinary mission. The more we know of these men, the more impressed we are with their contribution to the early spread of the gospel message.

Biographical Snapshots of Jesus’ Twelve Disciples

A disciple is a student, a learner, or a pupil. In the New Testament, the word is used for one who followed Jesus of Nazareth. Sometimes it is used specifically for the twelve men Jesus called to be his pupils, often known as the twelve disciples (Matt 10:1; 11:1; 20:17: Luke 9:1). In general, the term disciples means a larger group of Jesus’ followers, while the Twelve, or the apostles, refers to Jesus’ exclusively-called disciples. Matthew 10 provides the first list of the Twelve in the New Testament. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him (Matt 10:2–4).

What follows are brief biographical sketches of the Twelve, the critical players in the Passion story. Much of what we know about these twelve men you will already be aware of; some things may be new to you. Let’s learn a little something about each.

Peter

Unquestionably, Peter was the primary disciple among the Twelve. He took the leadership role almost every time. He denied Jesus and then wept bitterly. Peter was one of the more flawed disciples, but in his grace and mercy, after his resurrection, Jesus restored Peter. Peter was such a key player in the Gospel narratives that Chapter 3 in this book is entirely dedicated to his life and ministry. As a result, there is no need to say more about him here.

Andrew

If you have lived in the shadow of a famous brother, you can identify with Andrew. This disciple is mentioned by name only twelve times in the New Testament (eleven in the Gospels, one in Acts), but half of those times, he is identified as Simon Peter’s brother (Matt 4:18; 10:2; Mark 1:16; Luke 6:14; John 1:40, 44; 6:8; Acts 1:13).

St. Andrew at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Rome

Peter and Andrew were mending their nets along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee when Jesus summoned them, Follow me. They were the first to be called to discipleship. Originally Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist (John 1:40), but when Jesus came by, Andrew introduced his brother to Jesus (John 1:40–42), and eventually, both of them followed the Savior.

According to tradition, it was in Achaia, Greece, in the town of Patra, Andrew died a martyr. When Governor Aepeas’ wife was healed and decided to follow Jesus Christ, and shortly after that the governor’s brother became a Christian, Aepeas was infuriated. He arrested Andrew and condemned him to die on a cross. Because Andrew felt he was unworthy to be crucified in the same way as his Lord, he begged that his cross be of a different shape. Some traditions claim Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross, which is still referred to as Saint Andrew’s Cross. These same traditions say that while he was dying on that cross, he called to the crowds and preached salvation through Jesus Christ. If true, Andrew began his ministry by bringing his brother to the Lord, and he was still introducing others to the Lord when his ministry was ending.

James

James and his brother John were the sons of Zebedee and Salome. They originated from Bethsaida, but James and John later lived in Capernaum and eventually Jerusalem. Along with his brother, James was one of the closest disciples of the Lord Jesus. Often Peter, James, and John were singled out for personal experiences with the Lord, such as on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt 17:1) or in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:33). James may have suffered from the same dilemma as Andrew, for he is never mentioned in the New Testament apart from his brother John, even at his death (Acts 12:2). However, James is always mentioned first, probably because he was the older of the two. He preached in Jerusalem and Judea, but Acts 12:1–2 notifies us that about 44 AD, he was beheaded by Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great.

John

Without question, Peter was the leader of this disciple band, but John was the disciple closest to Jesus’ heart. John was keenly aware of his close relationship with the Lord. He is called the beloved disciple. Four times in the Gospel that bears his name, John referred to himself as, the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 13:23; 20:2; 21:7, 20). John is not just the author of the Gospel of John, but also the three Epistles of John and he received the Apocalypse of Revelation. He is the most prolific New Testament writer outside of the Apostle Paul.

John received the Revelation while he was banished to Patmos, a small sixteen kilometers long, ten kilometers wide (10 miles by 6 miles) rocky island in the Aegean Sea. Because of its desolate and barren nature in the first century, Patmos was used as a prison colony by the Romans. If you visit this small Greek island today, you will find it lush and green in places, but with a generous amount of brush and exposed rock. The main attraction is the Cave of the Apocalypse, where tradition claims Prochorus was the scribe who took down the reams of words as the apostle was experiencing the vision of the Apocalypse. Early Christian tradition says John lived there for about eighteen months before he was released and found his way back to Ephesus.

John 19:26–27 records that John became something of a substitute son to Mary and cared for her in her elder years. Mary became a substitute mom for John, which is not particularly odd. Many believe that Salome, the mother of James and John, was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus (John 19:25). John was the only one of Jesus’ Twelve to die of natural causes.

There is a long-standing tradition that John returned to Ephesus after receiving the Revelation on Patmos. There he cared for Mary, Jesus’ mother, until she died. If you visit Ephesus today you may be shown a quaint cottage that is said to have belonged to Mary, although rebuilt many times.

Philip

Philip came from the same town as Peter and Andrew, Bethsaida on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee (John 1:44). Because this was a well-known fishing village, there is a high likelihood that Philip was also a fisherman. Each of the lists of disciples records his name fifth in the list (Matt 10:1–3; Mark 3:16–18; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13). This Philip must be distinguished from Philip the evangelist (see Acts 8).

St. Philip at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Rome

The Gospel of John presents the story of Philip in four brief vignettes. First, John 1:43–46 shows Philip as a man of fledgling faith. As soon as he encountered Jesus, he found his friend Nathaniel and introduced him to Jesus. Second, John 6:1–9 shows Philip’s faltering faith as it records the story of the feeding of the 5,000. When Jesus turned to Philip and asked, "Where are we