THEY went them out to fulfill him, of whom that they had heard a lot — this man from Galilee, this employee of wonders. Some spread their garments before him; others, branches cut from the roadside palms. Some at the least will need to have thought they were seeing Zechariah’s prophecy fulfilled: “Thy king cometh unto thee . . . lowly, and riding upon an ass.” They cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David” — a royal title.
Just a few days later, a few of those self same people could be standing within the cold of the spring night to listen to what the Roman governor and the Temple authorities would make of this man — their hero — who just might restore the Kingdom to Israel. He had been arrested at night, so slickly, when no awkward adulatory crowd protected him. While the examination went on, one can imagine them muttering, wondering what was happening, not in a excellent temper.
John (probably the disciple who “was known to the high priest”) could have impotently witnessed the entire sorry business. He tells us Jesus is brought forth to them — in keeping with Mark and Matthew, a number of the people had already been stirred up by the priests — with a royal purple robe on his scourged, half-flayed back, and a crown on his head. Mark and Matthew say that the soldiers made the crown as they enjoyed the customary mocking of a condemned man. And, in a flash, the group are shouting that their so-recent hero be crucified.
Why? Relations between the authorities, Roman and Jewish, were tense. The Romans never understood this awkward individuals with their strange religion and its multitude of prohibitions; and Pilate had tactlessly trodden on quite just a few toes when he first got here to Judaea. The Temple people were wary of anything that may upset the fragile balance with the Romans — like talk of a king, especially one who appeared to claim to be the Son of God (theou nios, in Greek). That was some claim; for what to a Jew was blasphemy, to a Roman to be divi filius claimed kinship with the authority of the Julian dynasty.
Furthermore, those in authority all the time fear the unpredictability of crowds. Jerusalem was heaving with people, who, just a few days earlier, had given this strange, charismatic Galilean a quasi-royal reception; the final thing anyone wanted was a riot which could develop into a rebel. Better pick him up quietly, and interrogate him. It might even be expedient, for everybody’s sake, to get rid of him.
WE ALL know the story: trumped-up charges by the Temple hierarchy; inconsistent false testimony; the monolithic, difficult, silent dignity of Jesus; Pilate’s frustrated attempts to perform some semblance of the magistrate’s duty to manage justice. But: “If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend” — that was going for the jugular indeed; for Pilate, a mere eques, had depended utterly for his profession (pretty successful thus far, since Judaea was a key strategic province within the Empire, between the old enemy, Persia, and the breadbasket of Egypt) on staying in Tiberius’s good books.
But Pilate still tried; for “he found no fault in him.” Even when it seemed that executing him was inevitable, even after he had had Jesus scourged — bad enough, in all conscience — he still tried for a way out: that Passover custom of releasing a well-liked prisoner. And the adoring multitude of the triumphal entry would surely select this man? But they selected one other Jesus, and bayed for his or her darling’s blood.
It was usual to mock, humiliate, even mutilate, malefactors before their execution — indeed, public executions for hundreds of years remained a spectacle, a theatrical show. People would take their children. So, yes, the soldiers mocked Jesus. They dressed him in a kingly robe, plaiting that mockery of a crown on the spur (so to talk) of the cruel moment, because the tense of the verb implies.
Did the soldiers crown him believing that he really had claimed, absurdly, to be a political, nationalist messiah? Was it caricature slightly than merely torture? Was it a palpable sneer at those restive Jews — “This is what your idea of a king adds as much as”?
That crown could be a clue to the group’s response. Whatever they made it from will need to have been able to hand. Once, when a toddler, I attempted to plait brambles (certainly one of my unfavourite plants, though I admit their ecological usefulness) right into a circle. I soon stopped; far too painful. And, anyway, brambles wouldn’t be growing within the courtyard of a big constructing. A thorn bush? Well, try something as relatively mild as hawthorn, which lacks the ferocious thorns of some Mediterranean bushes. You need thick gloves — and, again, thorn bushes able to hand in the midst of a city? So, what did they use?
More than 60 years ago, my most learned mentor, Henry Hart, made an excellent suggestion. Palms still grow in Jerusalem, offering grateful shade in gardens from the day’s heat. Date palms are notoriously thorny: for those who strip the leaflets from the rachis, you might be left with a line of sharp spikes. Strip one side, trim some off the opposite, then bend the leaf round and tie it, and in just a few moments you could have a serviceable, cruelly painful — and recognisable — crown.
THE crown familiar to most individuals then was a corona radiata, which alluded to the sun rays of Helios. It was utilized by monarchs who claimed divine descent and authority; it had appeared on coins for some centuries. Ptolemy III of Egypt used it; Augustus’s denarius of about 18 BC, and Tiberius’s billion tetradrachm (minted in Alexandria in AD 19/20) carried it. It was starting to be related to the Caesars after the death of the divus — deified — Julius.
So, the figure now paraded to the group is dressed as basileos and theos, and such costume recalls the hated Seleucid kings, against whom the Maccabees had successfully revolted. Their crowned image appeared on coins still in use. By accident, the soldiers had touched a sore spot in popular memory and myth: oppression by kings who claimed to be divine. It also ignited an old criticism of the Jews (John 19.6-7): the clash of jurisdictions between Rome and Herod.
Pilate is alarmed; so he calls Jesus back for a final attempt to seek out a technique to free him. But, when he comes out again — “Would you crucify your King?” — his cultured irony, his uncertainty about truth, is now turned not against Jesus, but against the Jews. He has washed his hands of them. But his irony rebounds, for they might, and Chris was — and is.
Dr Charles Moseley is a Life Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge.
