Since we are between Good Friday and Easter, I thought I'd write a post about the theological implications of Jesus' death on the cross from an historical point of view.
According to the gospels, Jesus predicted his death and that his death would atone for sins. His disciples had a hard time wrapping their minds around that, which is understandable since by this time they believed Jesus was the messiah. Going to his death would've made no sense if he was the messiah because the messiah was supposed to come to restore to the Jews everything that was lost--their unity with Israel, their sovereignty, the throne of David, etc. How could Jesus be the messiah if he was going to die?
If Jesus really did predict his death, I imagine the disciples must've figured they weren't hearing him right or maybe he was using some kind of metaphor they didn't understand or whatever. At one point, Jesus seems to have gotten through to Peter, and when he did, Peter was all like, "Oh no you won't!" Jesus rebuked him, which must've left Peter pretty confused. Peter's continued confusion is evident in how he tried to rescue Jesus when Jesus was being arrested in the garden.
When I was younger, and I read the gospels, I thought the disciples were comically clueless. I remember wondering if maybe the authors of the gospels just made them appear stupid so that Jesus would appear a lot smarter. But now that I've gained a better understanding of what a messiah would've meant to an average Jew in the first century, I think their reaction to Jesus' predictions about his death make a lot more sense. They weren't stupid. They were suffering from cognitive dissonance. Jesus was saying something that was totally incongruent with his claim to being the messiah.
Or so it must've seemed. They later came to see Jesus' crucifixion as the means through which Jesus would accomplish all the messianic expectations. The division between Judah and Israel, the scattering of Israel, the destruction of the first Temple, the end of David's dynasty, the exile, and the occupation by other nations, were all the result of Israel's failure to observe God's Law given to them through Moses on Mt. Sinai. Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross dealt with sin once and for all, removing all of the obstacles to God's promises being fulfilled. The Old Testament says that the messiah would usher in the eschatological kingdom with everlasting peace and prosperity for everybody, but the New Testament says how he would do it.
I can't remember who it was (maybe Raymond E. Brown), but I remember some Jesus scholar speculating about whether Jesus knew he was going to die when he went to Jerusalem that last time. According to the gospels, Jesus was warned not to go because it wasn't safe. But he decided to go anyway, and when he got there, he was greeted by a crowd of people waving palm branches and shouting, "Hosanna to the son of David!" If Jesus wasn't in any danger before, this surely would've put him in danger because now he's got a crowd of people hailing him as the messiah. All four gospels say he rode in on a donkey, which would suggest that he was consciously fulfilling the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 about a king riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.
If that happened, then surely Jesus was claiming to be the messiah, and the crowd understood him to be making that claim. But what did he expect to happen next? Did he know this would get him killed? Did he go to Jerusalem for that purpose? Or did he expect that this was his moment to finally sit on the throne of David?
If Jesus did know that going to Jerusalem would get him killed, this would explain why we get the sense in Mark's gospel and elsewhere that Jesus was initially ambiguous about who he was. At one point the crowds seem frustrated with Jesus because up until then he hadn't told them plainly that he was the messiah. Some people thought he was the messiah. Others thought he was just a prophet. Some even thought he was John the Baptist risen from the dead. But by the time he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, his messianic claims are all out in the open, and nobody is confused about it anymore. It may be that Jesus wasn't overt in the beginning because he knew that would've cut his ministry short. If that's the real reason Jesus was secretive about being the messiah early on but bold later on, then that would suggest that he did go to Jerusalem to die because in that case he knew that making overt claims to be the Davidic king would get him killed, and now he's going to Jerusalem on a major pilgrimage festival and being very overt about claiming to be the king of the Jews.
One of the earliest sources we have about the historical Jesus is a quote that Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 11. It's about the last supper where Jesus identified the bread and wine of the meal with his body and blood, saying that the cup is the new covenant in his blood. That means Jesus spilt his blood to establish a new covenant. So according to one of our very earliest sources, Jesus did seem to predict that he would die and that his death would initiate a new covenant.
There's one other place where Paul uses the same language to introduce an oral tradition that he's passing on, and that's in 1 Corinthians 15 where he says that Jesus "died for sins." This formula goes all the way back to the very beginning of Christianity. According to a footnote in Mike Licona's book on the resurrection of Jesus (note 140 on page 234), scholars date this formula anywhere from a few months to five years after Jesus' death, so it's very early.
It raises an interesting question about how Jesus' disciples actually came to think of Jesus' death on the cross in a salvific way. They clearly didn't think of it that way before Jesus' death. They were confused when Jesus predicted his death, and even after the last supper, Peter still seemed to be confused by it. And all of them appear to have been shocked and disillusioned when Jesus was crucified.
There are a few possibilities. It's possible that after Jesus was resurrected, he explained it to them, and they finally understood. It's possible that they remembered Jesus predicting his death, including how he called the cup the new covenant in his blood, and although they didn't understand him at the time, they interpreted his words with the advantage of hind sight. It's possible they made up the atonement out of thin air as a way of redeeming the crucifixion because they just couldn't handle their messiah dying in such a humiliating way.
That last possibility seems the least likely to me. If they fully expected Jesus to sit on the throne of David and establish national sovereignty, then his crucifixion would've disconfirmed their belief, and it does seem from the gospels that they initially lost hope when he was crucified. If they lost hope in him being the messiah because he died on the cross, there would be no motive to try to redeem the death to make it less embarrassing. And it won't do to suggest that they invented the idea of atonement to salvage their belief that he was the messiah since that wouldn't have done the trick anyway. Even if he died for sins, how's he going to sit on the throne of David if he's still dead? Without some reason to think Jesus is the messiah in spite of being dead, the claim that his death served a noble divine purpose is just arbitrary. It seems to me that before they'd have any motive to make up a scenario in which Jesus' death was actually part of God's plan or had a greater purpose, they would have to first have some other reason to think he was the messiah apart from that rationalization. The thought would be, "Oh, well, now that we know he is the messiah after all, why the death on the cross? It must've served some good purpose. Maybe he died for sins." But without some reason to think Jesus was the messiah in spite of his death, there would be no motive to invent the idea that his death on the cross atoned for sins.
I'll pick back up on that tomorrow since tomorrow is Easter, and Easter is a celebration of the resurrection.
EDIT: Here is tomorrow's post: "Jesus was raised from the dead."
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