Jesus Heads to Jerusalem (based on Matthew 16: 21-28)

To understand the circumstances around Jesus’ death and the events which went on in Jerusalem around Passover 30CE (please note that the terms BC and AD have been replaced by BCE meaning Before Common Era and AD by CE meaning Common Era), we need to understand the political nature of the Holy Land when Jesus lived.  The Holy Land was occupied by the Romans.  That included all the land known as Judea in the south, Samaria in the centre, and Galilee in the north.  There was an alliance between the invaders from Italy and the local Jewish leadership.  It was an unholy alliance where the Roman and the Jewish leadership (known as the Sanhedrin) ruled their people in the Promised Land by force; governance was for the benefit of the leadership, not the people.  They were like the Quisling group who ruled occupied Norway for the Nazis in World War 2.  The Jewish people had been suffering since 63BCE (since Emperor Pompey’s siege of Jerusalem), and by the time of Jesus death in about 30CE, they had been suffering nearly 100 years.  The Promised Land was in a state of turmoil with all sorts of men emerging calling themselves Messiah.  From reading the scriptures it appears that Jesus first mission to the Children of Israel was to modify the rules they lived by, emphasizing a more humane approach.  Concepts like “loving your neighbour” were planks in the major platform of his mission.  Jesus knew that to bring about change he needed to go to the capital of the nation and preach his good word.  He set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51–56).

During the time of Jesus, our Jewish brothers and sisters worshiped one God who was known by many names.  The people around them worshiped many gods.  They were pagans, a religious group who practiced worship of the earth through a myriad of gods such as Zeus, Poseidon, Thor and so on.  The Children of Israel were in constant rebellion against the pagan emperor of the Roman Empire.  To back them up on this theme, the scriptures have one important admonition: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:2 and Deuteronomy 5:6).  During the Roman occupation there was constant unrest in the Holy Land.  There was unrest in other places of the Empire as well, but nothing compared to the rebellion in the Holy Land.

Forty years after the Crucifixion, one final rebellion was held and Rome came in with a large force and put an end to the unrest.  Jerusalem was destroyed, the Temple pulled down and nearly 100 000 Jews were enslaved and moved out of the country.  Over one million citizens of Judea were killed in the uprising.  The Jewish homeland was destroyed until 1948 when the modern-day State of Israel was formed.

The reason ethnic Jews were found all over the world is summed up one word: diaspora.  The diaspora was a “dispersion” of people – it took Jews from the Holy Land and forced them to live in other parts of the Empire.  It was in those foreign places where the Jewish people were forbidden to own land and needed to become economically dependent on trades to survive.  Freedom was denied to them and often the laws protecting the native peoples did not extend to them. 

To see the extent of discrimination one needs to look no further than movies like Ivanhoe or Schindler’s List.   In our immediate past two centuries, antisemitism was wide spread in Europe.  Harsh living conditions existed for many Jews.  Poland treated their Jewish population brutally.   Before the advent of Hitler’s antisemitic policies and programs, there was wide spread antisemitism in Germany and Austria.  Hitler did not invent antisemitism.  His lackies extended discrimination to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Even today with all the history behind us, there is still antisemitism in Europe, Russia, USA and Canada and other places.