The participants in any specific execution played scripted roles within this collective fable of Roman power. Specifically, the officers overseeing the execution played the part of Caesar’s legions, while the victim represented the larger social group of which he was a member. Applied to the case at hand, every Jewish cross was planted in a master commemorative narrative that both rationalized Roman power and discouraged future attempts at innovation. Viewed in this light, the Johannine Jesus says nothing remarkable when he compares his forthcoming death to Rome’s destruction of the temple in 70 CE (John 2:19-22), for in one sense the story of Jerusalem’s past and future destruction was already written into the autobiography of every Jewish crucifixion victim.
This is what is meant when the New Testament says that Jesus died for the sake of, because of, as a ransom for, as an atonement for, punished on account of, the sins of Israel. Jesus was not a participant in the sins of Israel, he was innocent of rebellion, but he underwent the same punishment at the hands of the Romans that Israel would suffer within a generation. Being hung upon a tree, he died under the curse prescribed in the Law against disobedient Israel (cf. Gal. 3:13):
All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. (Deut. 28:45; cf. 21:22-23)
Thatcher notes that the Dead Sea Scrolls ‘insist that “the curse of the tree” fell upon the 800 Jewish enemies of Alexander Jannaeus who were crucified as punishment for their participation in a revolt in 88 BCE’ (147). This was not merely Rome’s punishment of their recalcitrance. This was God’s punishment.
How Jesus’ unjust death would then turn out to be—historically speaking—the concrete means of victory over pagan imperialism is indicated by a paragraph from Walter Wink’s Naming the Powers, which is quoted by Matthew Forrest Lowe later in this volume of essays:
When Christians knelt in the Colosseum to pray as lions bore down on them, something sullied the audience’s thirst for revenge. Even in death these Christians were not only challenging the ultimacy of the emperor and the “spirit” of empire but also demonstrating the emperor’s powerlessness to impose his will even by death. The final sanction had been publicly robbed of its power. Even as the lions lapped up the blood of the saints, Caesar was stripped of his arms and led captive in Christ’s triumphal procession. His authority was shown to be only penul timate after all. (206)
By sharing in the punishment of Israel Jesus overcame death. By sharing in the dying and rising of Jesus the martyrs overcame Rome.
Comments
Re: Quote: Tom Thatcher: The death of Jesus and the defeat ...
I would like to push this further in two ways. Given the research of the likes of Carter, Horsley, Crossan and Reed, the Jewish government of Jesus day was fully identified with the Roman powers. So Israel, not Rome alone, was punishing Jesus and thereby precursing its own destruction. Secondly, arguing from Jesus to the character of God, as surely we must, moves us beyond “This was God’s punishment” to see it altogether as the triumph of God’s mercy. God operates in the opposite spirit to Rome and Israel, and instead of punishing people for their rejection of his sovereignty, sucks all its effects into himself. The martyrs, and all subsequent true witnesses, discover how, in and through Jesus, they can do the same. http://rogerhaydonmitchell.wordpress.com/
Re: Quote: Tom Thatcher: The death of Jesus and the defeat ...
I’m curious to know how you would support that specific point from the New Testament.
And how you would deal with Jesus’ parable of the wicked tenants? You would appear to be on the side of the chief priests, scribes and elders in this instance:
Or Paul’s statement in 2 Thessalonians 1:9:
Or pretty much the whole of the book of Revelation.
Do we actually find the New Testament projecting Jesus’ willingness to suffer the punishment that was due to his enemies back on his Father?