Bombs away! The Obama years

Map shows where President Barack Obama dropped his 20,000 bombs --outgoing US leader carries out 3,000 more strikes in 2016 than year before

And as the world gears up for a seemingly more violent four years, it is worth reflecting on President Obama's tenure.

According to newly released figures, President Obama had already upped the number of bombs on foreign countries.

US forces dropped over 3,000 more bombs in 2016 than 2015, taking the grand total of strikes for the year to at least 26,171.

This map by Statista shows you where they were:

Vast majority of strikes carried out in Iraq and Syria

The figures are likely to be an underestimate, since the only reliable data only comes from a handful of countries, and multiple bombs can be classed as a single “strike” under the Pentagon's definition.

Link this, sucker!

What is NATO good for? Well, pretty much nothing, at least right now. As I wrote in 2008,  "What has NATO ever done for us?" The answer is also pretty much nothing (since the fall of the USSR) and I do not take back a word of it.

America is moving rapidly to tribalism, pushed hard on purpose by the Marxist, America-hating revolutionary vanguard. And the very concept of "citizen" is vanishing. Because "Pre- & post-citizens" was written by VDH, you automatically should read it. My own relevant essays are here.

With Soleimani blown to smithereens, what to make of Iran's threats to retaliate? Oh, they will do something, but if they were capable of doing worse, they would have already done it. And with Soleimani dead, they have a huge blank in their murderous-imagination planning because, "Top commander's assassination leaves Iran with very few options to retaliate."

Then read Hussain Abdul-Hussain's thread on why "reporting in the main news outlets NYT and Wash Post is so misinformed (either on purpose or because of incompetence)... ."

Oh, when Trump blew up Soleimani, the Left was unanimous that it was an act of war that was going to start World War 3! Oh, how we long for the good old days when Obama launched 2,800 strikes on Iraq, Syria without congressional approval. And how fondly we remember "Obama's Breathtaking Expansion of a President's Power To Make War." Good times, eh? Good times!

Speaking of war, why was this an act of war:

Remains of the car Qassem Soleimani was riding it. 

... but this was not?

Smoke rises from the reception room of the U.S. embassy that was burned by Pro-Iranian militiamen and their supporters, in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020 (Link)

But the chickens come home to roost, even if to a new coop: "Obama official thinks Trump's strategy worked."

My take on Syria, Turkey, and the Kurds

Link to article

I worked with Petraeus when we were both at the Pentagon. He was a major then, promoted to Lt. Col. not long after I came to know him. I respect him immensely. He and Gen. Mattis were the key, essential players in redirecting US strategy in Iraq away from the disastrous Rumsfeld model. I have never met Mattis, but have nothing but greatest respect for him. Marines I have known who worked with him are in awe, and that says a lot. 

So when Petraeus and Mattis both sharply disagree with the administration's decision, I have no choice but to pay attention. 

But having said that, I would say their view is very solidly an establishment one. Senior military officers prosper very well. They gain their rank and status not only because of the military skills, but their political skills as well. They retire as comfortable members of the country's political class and often wind up with lucrative corporate consultancies and defense-related boards. I have seen this play out with three- and four-star generals I worked for. I do not blame them, actually, but we need to understand that they are far too invested in the status quo to try to change it. It what got them their rank and positions in the first place. Their incentives to change it are exactly zero. (This also applies to senior diplomatic personnel.)

I wrote a long essay in 2008 on why the US should exit NATO but of course, with both the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations, there was so much Old Guardism at work that there was (and is) no chance. Petraeus and Mattis (and I, for that matter) were raised militarily and strategically with a Cold War, organizational mind-think that has not significantly subsided. They still think that what G. Washington warned against, "entangling alliances," should be normative and are simply the MO for how things get done. 

Fourteen years ago Petraeus and Mattis were the Young Turks. Now they are the Old Guard. And that should temper how we assess what they say. None of this is to say that all will turn out well today. In fact, it would be insane to say so. Things never work out well in the Middle East! 

But it is also a real error to assume that had a mere 50 US troops been left in place, than everything would now be unicorns and rainbows. Turkey did not ask our permission to incur. They simply announced they were doing it. Turkey did not ask Trump to withdraw the troops; Trump just got them the heck out of the way. It would be nice for Petraeus and others to say how they would have responded to Turkey's announcement that it was coming, instead of just clutching their pearls in protest. They know better because they many times had to think through questions such those as I pose later in this essay. They know how to do it, but now they do not need to do it because the media will smile kindly upon them if they don't. And that is a problem.

My take: 

There is no solution to the problem of the Kurds. The Kurds have been screwed, they are being screwed, and they will continue to be screwed, because only Iraq, Turkey, and Syria (and Iran, as if...) can resolve the issue and all of them see the Kurds as tools to be used for their own purposes against the others. No Western nation can possibly have any effective role - not the USA, not Britain, not NATO, not nobody.

The Kurdish PKK is Turkey's main target. The PKK, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, is a Marxist faction that has been launching cross-border raids into Turkey since 1984 - as have other Kurdish factions. The PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by the Turks. And also by the US, the EU, NATO, and even Japan.

Turkey did not ask Trump to move 50 US soldiers out of their way. (Yes, 50.) Turkey simply announced that they were coming in. Would you rather those US troops stay there and resist the Turks by force of arms?

Anyone who is denouncing the withdrawal of a few dozen US troops from the affected area of Turkish operations, insisting they should not have been withdrawn, should first answer one basic question:

If you were president, would you have ordered US troops to resist the Turkish incursion by force of arms? 

Then proceed to these:

• If you would have given that order:
• What is your strategic goal?
• How many US troops are you are willing to have killed to attain that goal? 
• Once US troops are killed, what would be your response? 
• How many Turks are you willing to kill to attain the strategic goal? 
• Would you escalate the violence if the Turks do not withdraw? If so, would you restrict US combat strikes to only the incursion area, or would you strike Turkish forces still inside Turkey proper? For either answer, explain why.
• How will you ensure the safety of thousands of US Air Force personnel, aircraft, special weapons, and family members at the Turkish air base at Incirlik, Turkey? There are also large numbers British and Spanish military personnel there. 
• Would you ask for a congressional authorization of use of military force against Turkey? 
• If yes, are you really willing to go to war with a decades-long, US-ally member of NATO? 
• If not, why not? Would you wage war against Turkey anyway?
    
• If you would not have given that order:
• What is your strategic goal?
• Why would you leave the troops in place rather than withdraw them, if they are not to fight?
• What would you have done specifically different from what the administration has done, and why?

Anyone who will not address those topics before slamming the administration is not thinking about this seriously at all. And yes, that includes congressional members of both parties and, sadly, many of my ministry colleagues who have posted about this topic.

Democrats: Trump must never use US troops to secure America's border with Mexico!

Also Democrats: Trump must use US troops to secure Syria's border with Turkey!

Update: This article is pretty well balanced and explains why Trump did not sell out the Kurds while also pointing out that Erdogan is pretty much a thug himself. (But we knew that.)

Update: "Missing the Bigger Picture in Kurdish Syria," by Lt. Col. (ret.) Bob Maginnis, is an instructor at the Army War College. "He oversees a team of national security experts in the Pentagon and has more than 800 published articles on national security and geopolitical issues."

The coming Next American Civil War

Canadian David Warren is one of the most thoughtful and informed columnists writing today. Sadly, he begins his latest commentary this way:

When the next American Civil War starts, I imagine it will look something like Hong Kong: a big melee spreading through all public spaces (I note that USA is bigger than Hong Kong). But there will be fairly limited casualties, at first, each of which will become the subject of unrestrained media outrage, until the media collapse under physical reprisals. Later, the better and better armed demonstrators, on both sides, will tactically “evolve.” The surveillance state itself will begin to disintegrate, and with it any hope of restoring public order, through agencies such as police, courts, and prisons. Things like border surveillance will be abandoned, with immediate consequences, but as the attraction of going to the States diminishes, no one will mind. More noticeably, the economy will break down. Because the American military was designed chiefly to defend against foreign powers, on a very large scale — and the threat will instead be domestic and scattered — the Army will be (at first) effectively neutralized. Isolated firefights between Democrat and Republican soldiers will escalate to firefights between ships and aeroplanes, but these will end fairly quickly as a Pentagon dictatorship seizes control. Within a year, I expect, though only a small part of their arsenal will prove useful, bullet-enforced curfews will restore relative peace to the streets. I don’t expect the death toll to be more than a few hundred thousand, at least from direct conflict as the guns come out. Interruptions of food supply, and the spread of disease, will cost much more — but possibly less (proportionately) than in the last Civil War, in which both sides were better organized.

Read the whole thing.

Note this: "... possibly less (proportionately) than in the last Civil War... ." The War of Southern Secession took 700,000 lives, military and civilian. That amounted to 2.23 percent of the nation's population of 31,443,321. Proportional deaths today would amount to almost 7,400,000.

The main way I demur from David's assessment is that I said in mid-November 2016 that the Next American Civil War had already started: "America's low-intensity civil war."

Technically speaking, a civil war is one fought over who shall control the single, central government of a nation. The 1930s' Spanish civil war is a perfect example because both armies were fighting over who would govern the entire nation. What we call the American Civil War was not actually that; it was a war of secession. The CSA was not fighting to control the American central government but to separate from it altogether.

Rioting following election day 2019

What these harassments and the post-election riots are about is control of the central government - and the insurrectionists are using violence to achieve their goals. Don't think that just because the electoral college will vote and Trump's inauguration will take place that all this will suddenly fade away like magic. 

Everywhere in history, any time the Left has lost, it has turned more violent. Violence always underlies their means. 

That "low-intensity" battle to control the central government continued in the political-intelligence realm. CNBC reported in February, "Justice Department officials discussed if Trump could be removed as president via 25th Amendment after firing FBI Director James Comey: Andrew McCabe." The headline says it all, but here are the opening grafs:

Justice Department officials were so concerned about President Donald Trump’s fitness for office in May 2017 that they discussed whether Trump could be removed from office by convincing Vice President Mike Pence and a majority of the president’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly says in a new interview.

Those discussions came on the heels of Trump’s dramatic firing of FBI Director James Comey on May 9, 2017, according to McCabe’s interview with CBS’ '60 Minutes' ... .

Do not think that the Left is not already preparing for another Trump electoral victory. As Clausewitz said, "War is an extension of politics by other means." And Antifa is arming itself quite effectively.

Back to David Warren:

Perhaps the “battle of the worldviews” will resolve itself in some other way. The only thing I can safely predict is that, as the U.S. Constitution continues to dissolve, over the heat of parties that do not care for it, the country’s stability must also dissolve.

I am reminded of the old riddle, "How does someone go bankrupt?" And the answer is, "Slowly, and then very quickly." We the People abandoned Constitutional government over many years, nay, decades. It has accelerated this millennium. Next year, no matter the outcome of the election, it will go to full speed. The balkanization of the American people, deliberately under way for at least 60 years, will come to fruition. There is already no such thing any more as a national consensus on any kind of social or political topic.

There is no longer any cement (national ideals, polity, values, and aspirations) holding the bricks (the states) together. At best, the United States will abandon the "United" part of that and a loose federation will form among groups of states joined in tighter federations. At worst? Sorry, I do not want to go there.

Stanford University's Victor Davis Hanson asks, "Is America Entering a Dark Age?"

Update:

1. We also need to understand that some American cities have already chosen sides and are already complicit in enabling violence by the Left: Police Do Nothing as Antifa Thugs Violently Attack Trump Supporters After Minneapolis Rally. This continues a pattern in other cities such as Seattle and Portland.

Understand: those cities' political leaders are literally using the power of their office to do violence against the ideological opponents. As I have explained before, for the Left violence is never merely a last resort, it is simply one tool of the toolbox. Immersed in a neo-Marxist understanding that the United States is nothing but a theater for class struggle, they (as their Leninist forebears) see no distinction between using violence or political processes to attain their ends - the only thing that matters is that the ends are attained.

2. Reader Peter B. emails,

In addition to the likelihood that US combat vets are involved with Antifa, here’s a report that Antifa has been training with Kurdish militias in Syria: https://www.oann.com/kurdish-militia-trained-antifa-fighters-in-northern-syria/. 

I have not heard that before, but I would not be surprised. If true, Antifa members are probably posing as sympathetic volunteers to learn what the Kurds know about insurgent warfare. 

Update: 7 in 10 say US ‘on the edge of civil war’

Partisan political division and the resulting incivility has reached a low in America, with 67% believing that the nation is nearing civil war, according to a new national survey.

“The majority of Americans believe that we are two-thirds of the way to being on the edge of civil war. That to me is a very pessimistic place,” said Mo Elleithee, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.

Also, in the US the Left's shock troops are already in place and are getting ready. 

Christians under genocide and American victimhood

Just last July, Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt - the equivalent of our secretary of state - pointed out that Christians around the world were the most persecuted group of all.

When the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago, the European nations that Brother Andrew had visited undercover won their liberty and achieved one of the greatest advances of human freedom in modern history.

Yet when I became Foreign Secretary, I learned that almost a quarter of a billion Christians were still enduring persecution around the world.

The evidence shows sadly that the situation is becoming worse. The number of countries where Christians suffer because of their faith rose from 128 in 2015 to 144 a year later. In the Middle East, the very survival of Christianity as a living religion is in doubt.

A century ago, 20% of the region’s people were Christians; today the figure is below 5%.

(On Gov.UK, "Persecution of Christians review: Foreign Secretary’s speech following the final report") Secretary Hunt went on to say that 80 percent of the world's victims of religious persecution are Christians.

And that persecution is very often, if not usually, of the murderous kind:

Mass grave of murdered Christians in Syria.
Photos like this have been taken in many other places in the world.

Now,

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) shared the report compiled by the Bishop of Truro, the Right Reverend Philip Mounstephen. It states that violence and oppression against Christians are worsening as time goes by.

"Evidence shows not only the geographic spread of anti-Christian persecution, but also its increasing severity," the report states. "In some regions, the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN."

The evidence shows that Christianity is "by far the most widely persecuted religion." 

Original ACLJ report is here.

Meanwhile, in the United States the hip and "woke" compete with one another on who belongs to the most oppressed victim group. Because victimhood brings status in the US today; the US is rapidly becoming ever-more dominated by a victimhood culture.

What we call victimhood culture combines some aspects of honor and dignity. People in a victimhood culture are like the honorable in having a high sensitivity to slight. They’re quite touchy, and always vigilant for offenses. Insults are serious business, and even unintentional slights might provoke a severe conflict. But, as in a dignity culture, people generally eschew violent vengeance in favor of relying on some authority figure or other third party. They complain to the law, to the human resources department at their corporation, to the administration at their university, or — possibly as a strategy of getting attention from one of the former — to the public at large.

The combination of high sensitivity with dependence on others encourages people to emphasize or exaggerate the severity of offenses. There’s a corresponding tendency to emphasize one’s degree of victimization, one’s vulnerability to harm, and one’s need for assistance and protection. People who air grievances are likely to appeal to such concepts as disadvantage, marginality, or trauma, while casting the conflict as a matter of oppression.

The result is that this culture also emphasizes a particular source of moral worth: victimhood. Victim identities are deserving of special care and deference. Contrariwise, the privileged are morally suspect if not deserving of outright contempt. Privilege is to victimhood as cowardice is to honor.

When I posted the ACLJ report elsewhere, adding that "Americans would not know actual victimhood if it punched them in the face," a liberal friend of 20-plus years responded,

Suggest that to the family of the black man shot dead by police in a Walmart for holding a toy gun. Or the family of the black child shot dead by police in a Chicago park a few years ago for the same thing. The cop just rolled up, jumped out of the car and opened fire.

Then there are the thousands driven into bankruptcy by medical bills. The mentally ill walking the streets because we won't pay for treatment.

Or the veterans who can't receive decent care or who rely on food stamps that may be cut again so corporations can have tax cuts.

Or...

Don, I don't deny that Christians are being killed in other lands and that it is indeed genocide. But I think you are being pretty selective in defining victims. There are indeed many victims to be found in the US.

Of course there are true victims in America today. The murder rate in Chicago, Baltimore and some other Democrat-controlled cities is shocking. Those killed are certainly victims and often innocent victims.

But what we do not have is a real victim class, despite the devoted efforts of the Left to paint all black people, all homosexuals, all women, etc. as members of a specially-victimized class of persons, all of whom are dragged into victimhood just because of that identity.

No. Not even close to that. In the US today we do not have anything that even approaches the loosest definition of genocide as is happening to our brothers and sisters in Christ in much of the world. We do not have anything that approaches deliberate, planned, lethal persecution of a victim-class of people who are being killed, harmed, injured, deprived of rights or punished simply because of their religion.

And anyone who says, "Oh, America has lots of victims, too!" simply proves my point, that in America today, status-victimhood is a sought-after possession, and those who say that are incredibly equating, "I was triggered and offended by that joke about gays," with, "My husband and my children were beheaded because they were Christians."

I will backtrack, though, on one class of people who are definitely being killed genocidally in America purely because of their identity. That is the unborn, especially unborn black Americans.

But that is not merely acceptable to the Left, it is positively desirable. So perhaps you will understand when I find such protests against this post entirely unpersuasive and in fact unserious.

End note: American Christians are by no means under persecution (though sometimes discrimination), but that is not to say that the rhetorical groundwork is not being laid: Former Antifa College Professor: Kill Christians, Clock Trump With a Bat

Jeff Klinzman is a former adjunct Antifa College Professor at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Former” because he turned in his resignation after his online comments garnered a considerable backlash. ...

Klinzman also acknowledged that he was Antifa, and made incendiary statements on his facebook page…such as wanting to “stop evangelical Christians” and then included a poem that said, “Kill them all and bury them deep in the ground.”
 
“It’s not pretty, and I’m not proud, but seeing what evangelical Christians are doing to this county and its people fills me with rage, and a desire to exact revenge.” 

He knows he need not worry, though. Another college will quickly hire him, and at a large increase in compensation.

Execution Day - The Case Against Christ

"The Three Crosses," by Rembrandt

Sometime on the Friday after Passover, almost 2,000 years ago, Roman soldiers, acting on orders of Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea, took Jesus of Nazareth to a low hill outside Jerusalem and crucified him to death. As crucifixion deaths went, Jesus' death came pretty quickly, within a few hours. It was not unusual for victims to linger on the cross for days.

There were two criminals also crucified alongside Jesus. Because it was Passover week, emotions ran high among the Jews who had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the holy observances. There were many thousands of pilgrims there, some historians say more than 100,000. At sunset on Fridays the Jewish Sabbath began then as now, and even hardened Roman soldiers were uneasy about the execution of these men continuing when the Sabbath began during this particular week. So they decided to break the victims' legs in order to make quick their suffocation to death. Crucifixion is, after all, a form of hanging, killing by suffocation. With their legs broken, the victims could not push up to take a breath and so would die a quick, though brutal death ("excruciating" derives from the same root as "crucifixion," and it is no accidental relationship).

But when they came to Jesus to break his legs, they discovered he had already died. Another soldier, probably more experienced and thus leaving nothing to chance, took his long spear and plunged it into Jesus' side, almost certainly penetrating his heart, since that would have been the whole point of spearing him to begin with.

Before sundown, the Romans permitted some of Jesus' friends to retrieve his body and entomb it.

One of the vexing problems about Jesus' execution is that we really don't know exactly why Jesus was crucified. Of course, we know why the Romans crucified people - political offense against the empire - but just what Jesus did, or was accused of doing, relating to that is not fully clear. Even stipulating that the Jewish high council, the Sanhedrin, wanted to be quit of Jesus, they could have ordered him stoned to death for religious offenses without getting the Romans involved. The Gospels are clear enough that religious charges against Jesus not only could easily be made, they were made.

"Ecce homo" - Behold, the man.

Pilate, we know from Roman historians, was a weak man, inclined to violence to solve his problems, and was unskilled as a procurator. In fact, most modern historians have concluded that Judea had the singular misfortune among Roman provinces to suffer uncharacteristically inept Roman governance for several decades, including those on both ends of Jesus' life.

Certainly, Pilate thought almost nothing of crucifying Jews; during Jesus' own lifetime Pilate had sentenced hundreds, probably thousands, of Jews to the cross and had killed numberless more by other means. So one more was not even a statistic. (Jesus himself spoke of a time when Pilate had sent his cavalry, swords swinging, into a group of men making sacrifices, killing the lot of them, for reasons not related. Pilate seems to have been extremely paranoid about crowds of Jews who gathered for any reason.)

There are no notes from the trial of Jesus before Pilate. The accounts of the Gospels were written down many years later, decades, in fact. Even so, some historical facts are not disputed. The Sunday before Passover, about 33 AD, Jesus and his disciples arrived in Jerusalem. The crowd that greeted them joyfully soon dissipated. Jerusalem was packed with Jewish pilgrims in the city to celebrate Passover. Having been under Roman (hence pagan) occupation for many decades, and the pagan Greeks before that, the Jews' nationalistic fervor ran high during the holy season, so high, in fact, that Pilate abandoned his offices in Caesarea, seventy-five miles northwest, to come to Jerusalem along with a couple of thousand soldiers.

Pilate was a very violent ruler. He had little compunction about sentencing people to death. Many hundreds of Jews, if not more, had already died by his command. The first-century Jewish historian Philo wrote that Pilate was not much worried about niceties of the law such as a proper trial for the accused.

The level of collusion between the Jewish high council (the Sanhedrin) and Pilate is unclear. It was mediated by the high priest, Caiaphas, in any event. All four Gospels present Jesus as being hauled before the Caiaphas at his house and three say that there were other Jewish leaders present; Luke calls them "the elders of the people, both the chief priests and teachers of the law." Whomever they were, they are only presented as an echo board for Caiaphas.

What did Caiaphas have against Jesus? The synoptic Gospels indicate that Caiaphas's charge against Jesus was blasphemy. Matthew 26 records that after he was arrested and was brought before Caiaphas,

… the high priest said to him, "I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God." 

Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you, From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven." 

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "He has blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your verdict?" 

They answered, "He deserves death."

I think the Gospel of John's explanation, which differs from the others', gives important insights to the dynamics of Caiaphas's relationship with Pilate, showing that the high priest was primarily concerned with preserving the lives of the people. John presents a more nuanced case of Caiaphas against Jesus that makes Caiaphas more concerned with politics with Pilate than internal affairs of religion. Chapter 11 records that Caiaphas was deeply fearful of Pilate's propensity to violence, so much that Caiaphas was willing to plot Jesus's death in order to prevent Pilate from slaughtering the crowds who followed Jesus and then turning his soldiers loose to ravage the country itself.

There was Roman precedent for this. A few years after Jesus was born, a would-be revolutionary named Judas the Galilean led a rebellion against Rome centered in the city of Tzippori (Sepphoris) in Galilee. This was before Pilate became prefect, but the Roman response was crushing. According to Tacitus, the Roman Syrian governor sent two legions who laid waste to the entire city, crucified up to 2,000 men and sold the rebels' families into slavery. The shock of this savagery would have been vivid in Caiaphas's mind. It was the sort of thing, or worse, that he reasonably feared Pilate would render to Judea if Jesus continued unchecked.

The crowds Jesus drew were particularly worrisome because they signified that Jesus was gaining a growing following. There were royal politics involved here. The last king of the Jews had been Herod the Great, who had died in 1 BC. He was never accepted by the Judeans as a proper king because there was question of whether he actually was Jewish at all. Herod the Great’s throne was at the time vacant – when he had died in 1 BC, his territory was divided by the Romans into four parts, each ruled by a different descendant. What if, with the masses supporting him, Jesus attempted to claim the throne of David, to which he was by descent from David entitled? A power play by Jesus for the throne would have been brutally extinguished by the Romans.

To both the Jewish leaders and the Romans, a Jew with messianic intentions was foremost a political figure and in the minds of many Jews (and certainly Pilate), a potential military leader as well. That Jesus had said and done nothing to demonstrate such intentions would have been of no comfort to Caiaphas; as we say today, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. After all, what insurrectionist or revolutionary announces his goals before acting on them?

On Thursday evening of what would become known as Holy Week, Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, traitorously brought the Temple police to Gethsemane, just outside Jerusalem. They arrested Jesus and bound him. Jesus’ disciples fled, leaving Jesus isolated.

The simplest narrative of events from then on is John's. Jesus was taken to the home of Annas, a former high priest, also Caiaphas’ father-in-law. Whereas in the synoptic gospels Jesus appears before a council of some kind and is found guilty of blasphemy at a drumhead court, in John no such council is present nor is there any sort of trial. Jesus, remaining bound, speaks only to Annas, who instead of pronouncing him guilty of some crime, "questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching." Jesus doesn't play along. An official present struck him on the face for responding insolently to the high priest.

Annas dispatches Jesus to Caiaphas, who quickly sends Jesus to Pilate. John 18 records,

Pilate came out to them and asked, “What charges are you bringing against this man?”

“If he were not a criminal,” they replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.”

Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.”

“But we have no right to execute anyone,” they objected.

Pilate’s response strikes me as entirely reasonable. Here is a Jewish man, Jesus, charged with – what? Well, he’s a criminal. Pilate sees no Roman interest here so he tells the Jewish leaders, you can take care of that yourself. They protest that they have no right to execute anyone.

But of course, they do have that right – for capital offenses under Jewish law. Their response to Pilate reveals to him that they are claiming Jesus is an offender against the imperium, for which only Pilate could adjudge death.

Pilate was personally despicable but that doesn’t mean he was stupid. Any Roman prefect would have relied on an extensive network of Jewish informers, probably paid, and his own Roman soldiers and officials to stay apprised of developments and rumors among the ruled. Pilate would have not been caught flat-footed when Jesus was brought to him. He would likely have known that the crowds hailed Jesus as a messiah, or deliverer, when Jesus entered the city on Palm Sunday, but deliverer from what? In Pilate’s mind, it could only be delivery from Roman rule.

(Jesus even knew that such suspicions were harbored against him. In Mark 14, when Jesus is arrested, he demands directly, "Am I leading a rebellion that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?")

Pilate would have known long before this day that Jesus was a celebrated teacher and preacher, reportedly a miracle worker, who was drawing ever-increasing crowds. So he got straight to the point and asked Jesus directly: “Are you the king of the Jews?” The dialog in John 18 is succinct:

“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.”

Luke’s Gospel is more specific about the charges related to Pilate by Jesus’ Jewish captors, who tell Pilate, “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.” This does explain why Pilate asked Jesus whether he was a king. As for Jesus opposing paying taxes, it was (a) false and (b) even if true would not have exactly set him apart from 95 percent of all the Jews in the country. “Subverting the nation”? That’s nothing but Luke’s equivalent of their claim in John that Jesus was simply a criminal.

In any event, Pilate is unpersuaded but attempts to placate the accusers by having Jesus scourged. But Caiaphas and his allies want death. All four Gospels agree that Pilate attempts to grant Jesus amnesty by releasing a cutthroat insurrectionist named Barabbas to the hand-picked crowd Caiaphas has brought to the scene, “But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead,” reports Matthew.

Finally, Pilate caves and order Jesus crucified. But why?

For someone whom Caiaphas feared would decimate the whole country because of Jesus, Pilate seems awfully peaceable when he had the chance to get rid of Jesus. He had to be cajoled, even threatened, into it. In John, the Jews present tell Pilate that to release Jesus would be the same as opposing Caesar – actually accusing Pilate of incipient treason!

But Pilate might have been trying all along to shift the blame for Jesus's execution from himself onto the Jewish leadership. It was Passover week, remember, when Jewish religious-nationalist passions ran high. Passover was the Jewish celebration and commemoration of their liberation from chattel slavery in Egypt, and here they Jews were in their own ancient homeland, under foreign occupation and rule.

Pilate himself had personal experience with such passions. Unlike previous prefects, Pilate ordered the imperial standards into Jerusalem with the symbols and images of Caesar Tiberius and had them planted on the Temple Mount. The Jews naturally saw this as a direct affront to the Second Commandment (Exodus chapter 20), which was,

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them … .”

Being ruled by Caesar was bad enough, but for images, or idols, of Caesar (whom the Romans claimed was divine) was intolerable, period. A crowd of angry Jews gathered in Caesarea, where Pilate lived and did most of his work, to deman removal, which Pilate refused. After five days, he ordered his soldiers to surround the demonstrators and told them he would have them all slain if they did not disperse. The Jews replied they would rather die than submit to the desecration of the holy city. Finally, Pilate had the images removed.

Later, Pilate had gold-plated shields set up in Herod’s palace in Jerusalem, though not with graven images. Again the Jews protested and when Pilate refused to relent, they sent a letter of protest to Tiberius. Tiberius sent a letter to Pilate, rebuking him harshly for such offenses and violations of precedent, and ordering the shields' prompt removal to Caesarea.

On the day Jesus was brought to him, Pilate may have thought his standing with Tiberius was shaky. Jesus still had devotees, perhaps thousands, who were unaware that he had been arrested overnight. Might they riot in protest? It was a real danger, as Matthew explicitly records the chief priests realized; it was the reason they decided not to snatch Jesus during the daytime.

If a riot there might be, Pilate might have thought, best to preemptively divert its rage away from the Romans and onto Caiaphas and company. Pilate would not be able to sit it out but reporting to Rome that the people were rebelling against their own religious authorities, not Pilate, was infinitely better than the other way around.

But while Pilate was trying to play Caiaphas, the high priest, knowing well Jesus's popularity among the masses (as well as his allies among some members of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, for example) may well have been trying to set up Pilate to take the heat for him, also. Both men probably wanted to put the monkey on the other's back. This would help explain why Caiaphas gave Jesus such a cursory hearing before trundling him over to Pilate and the resistance to executing Jesus that Pilate gave right back to Caiaphas.

Caiaphas finally played his trump card. Caesar Tiberius was one of the greatest generals Rome ever produced, which, with family connections, led him to become Caesar in AD 14. But he had checked out of affairs of state in 26, moving to isle of Capri. He had left state affairs to Praetorian Prefect Lucius Sejanus. It was Sejanus who had appointed Pilate to his prefecture.

In 31, Tiberius learned that Sejanus was actively plotting to depose (meaning kill) Tiberius and seize the emperorship himself. Tiberius ordered Sejanus executed and began executing Sejanus' partners and political appointees, starting with the most recent appointees and working down to the earlier. Pilate owed his office to Sejanus but escaped the purge probably because his appointment was made very early in Sejanus' rule, long before Sejanus had turned traitor.

Even so, Pilate must have known that his own political, and perhaps physical survival depended on demonstrated devotion to Tiberius. This was Pilate's political Achilles' Heel and it was there that Caiaphas aimed a nearly-explicit threat: if you free Jesus we will report to Rome that you failed to defend Caesar against an insurrectionist, a pretender to the still-vacant throne of Herod the Great, who was a Roman vassal we did not recognize as legitimate in the first place, but matters not, for, "We have no king but Caesar," Pilate. How about you?

It is a grievous error to blame "the Jews" categorically for Jesus's death, but there is no way to get around Caiaphas's deep involvement. Pilate finally yielded to Caiaphas’s political machinations and attempted to announce that the whole sordid affair really had nothing to do with him or Rome (“he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood’ …” – Matthew 27.24).
 
He sent Jesus to be crucified and, over Caiaphas’ protest, ordered a sign affixed to Jesus's cross identifying him as "King of the Jews," a sign probably intended to implicate Caiaphas directly in Jesus's death, for whom else could have made such a charge?

Despite their antagonism, both Caiaphas and Pilate came to see that executing Jesus was win-win for them. By giving up Jesus to Pilate, Caiaphas would prevent the Jesus movement from getting out of hand before it was too late to prevent the unspeakable horror of Pilate's superior in Syria from sending a legion or two to teach Judea to stop raising up such troublesome sons. Jesus himself had showed he would not yield in his demands of religious and social reformation. When Caiaphas brought Jesus to his house Thursday night, Jesus swatted away any potential compromise with finality. Faced with such intransigence, Caiaphas handed Jesus over to Pilate and made sure that Pilate never gave him back.

As for Pilate, his win would be twofold:

1. Stop an incipient Jesus-centered political movement cold by the very simple, effective expedient of killing Jesus. After all, he could not continue to send taxes and goods to Rome by destroying the country that produced them.

2. His loyalty to the vengeful Tiberius would not be challenged.

Jesus, it seems, had become too threatening to be allowed to live. Both Caiaphas and Pilate had the motive and the opportunity that week to stop him but only Pilate had the means to stop him permanently. There was a meeting of minds between Caiaphas and Pilate, antagonists though they were, and Jesus got caught in the middle.

But here's the kicker: Jesus cooperated with what they had planned for him because he understood that his own fate was inextricably linked to the collusion between them. That Jesus could have effectively defended himself seems of little doubt; there are many clues in the Gospels of what he might have said. But instead, he let himself be found guilty because he knew that Golgotha was the reason he was there. And so, he carried a cross to Golgotha and the world has never been the same.
_________________________

My homiletics professor once said that one thing the Easter story proves is that sin, and the will to sin, is more deeply rooted in human beings than we really can imagine. Roman justice, he pointed out, was the best system of justice the world had ever seen until then; after all, it still forms the basis for most Western jurisprudence today. And among the lands and peoples of the empire, he said, the Jews were enormously respected for their religion, which was considered ancient even way back then. In the case of Jesus (his point being), the best justice and the best religion somehow, and not altogether clearly how, came together to cause the execution of a man entirely innocent of every capital charge brought against him - and for the best of putative reasons. "Even the best we can do has no promise of freedom from sin."

So Joseph of Arimathea and the women disciples of Jesus (the men having gone into hiding) took Jesus' corpse and began to prepare it for burial in Joseph's own tomb. They did not finish the job because of the beginning of the Sabbath, a day on which they could do no work. They laid the body in the tomb, had it sealed, and left. The women agreed to return on Sunday morning to finish anointing Jesus' body, that being the first daylight hours after the end of the Sabbath at sundown Saturday.

The sun set and mercifully brought an end to execution day.

How ISIS drove Muslims to Christian faith

NBC News: Life under ISIS led these Muslims to Christianity "If heaven is made for ISIS and their belief," said one convert, "I would choose hell for myself instead of being again with them in the same place, even if it’s paradise."

While residents are still dealing with the emotional scars left by the brutality of ISIS, Omar says many people in Kobani have been open-minded about Christianity.

Omar reads the Bible at the Church of the Brethren in Kobani, Syria.  NBC News

“Most of the brothers here converted or come to church as a result of what ISIS did to them and to their families,” he added. “No one is forced to convert. Our weapon is the prayer, the spreading of spirit of love, brotherhood and tolerance.”

Syria gas attack and "zero evidence"

Syria is not worth the trouble or treasure

This is not a strategy. And absent a strategy, it is not
even a decent warning.

Andrew Codevilla lays it out with elegance and precision, "What Is Syria to Us?" And the answer is pretty much a goose egg. The United States just wasted more than $100 million worth of precision weapons to accomplish exactly zero of military or strategic significance.

The U.S. strikes last week on suspected chemical weapons sites near Damascus and Homs exemplify how not to use military force. Their only consequence is to highlight the poverty of the foreign policy of which they are part: driven by questionable intelligence, the “CNN effect,” and an inability to come to grips with real problems.

The strikes did a little harm to Syrian leader Bashar al Assad, who is a dependent of Iran and Russia and who is nearly helpless vis à vis our newest enemy, Turkey. Iran is extending its reach to the Mediterranean and threatening war on Israel. Russia is solidifying hegemony over the Middle East. Turkey is making war on the Kurds, the only real allies the United States has had in the region in a generation. Instead of braking any of these ominous developments, the U.S. government, reverting to type, destroyed a few buildings and hyped its own virtues in garbled neo-Wilsonian lingo.

Read the whole thing.

Syria Sarin Attack a Hoax?

Update: A few readers have pointed out that the linked article herein actually refers to last year's sarin attack, not last week's. I regret my error. I plan to post a follow-up soon.

Is Trump being played by anti-Assad elements who staged the recent sarin attack in the hope that Trump would go his usual bananas at being defied?

Well, that would depend on the attack being a staged or hoaxed attack to begin with. And an MIT expert claims that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was staged.

A leading weapons academic has claimed that the Khan Sheikhoun nerve agent attack in Syria was staged, raising questions about who was responsible. ...

Theodore Postol, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [said] ... "I have reviewed the [White House's] document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria at roughly 6am to 7am on 4 April, 2017.

 Referring to the photo above,

His analysis of the shell suggests that it could not have been dropped from an airplane as the damage of the casing is inconsistent from an aerial explosion. Instead, Postol said it was more likely that an explosive charge was laid upon the shell containing sarin, before being detonated.

Read the whole article. Postol is a former science adviser to the defense department.

Among the credentials of my military career was that of nuclear and chemical target analysis. I was trained and qualified to determine the manner of attacking a target with chemical weapons, including sarin, attack calculations that would include amount of agent and technical attack profile.

Sarin is heavier than air. It has been many years since I worked such a problem, but I cannot recollect solving an attack profile with a ground burst. Lay persons simply do not know that enormous quantities of gas are required. Some of the problems we worked to attack Soviet formations actually required more nerve agent for one attack than the US had in its entire inventory.

Actually, sarin is not a gas, but a liquid. The warhead's charge is designed to explode the liquid sarin into basically a mist that is borne by prevailing winds over the target area, where the mist settles. Sarin can evaporate into a vapor, but doing so lessens it lethality by lowering the concentration in the air.

The linked article implies that a sarin delivery warhead explodes the way a high-explosive projectile would. That is not the case. Such an explosion would destroy much of the sarin content. Instead, a shell or bomblet would be designed to basically disassemble, releasing the interior container to dispel the sarin liquid in mist form.

However, the pieces  of the projectile simply drop to the earth. The article's photo shows what appears to be an intact casing, deformed in a crater in a concrete or asphalt street.

Um, no. First, while some delivery systems did retain an intact projectile (such as the US 155mm artillery projectile), cratering would be most unlikely in impact. There would be no HE to explode. Furthermore, having also been trained in crater analysis at the US Army Artillery Center and School, I absolutely guarantee that no such casing causing such a crater would conveniently remain nearly intact in the middle of the crater.

So I think that MIT Prof. Postol is correct. And sane heads within the defense department probably have been heard at the White House (I am guessing here) so that Trump has backed off his initial outrage.

Maybe they need to remember the old adage: "First reports are always wrong."

Panetta on Syria: We have never had a clue

The former Obama official referred to is Leon Panetta, one of the most sensible figures of Washington in either party. This is not a particularly well-written essay, but it does illuminate the fact that neither the prior administration nor the present one had/has a clue what the US objective is in Syria: Former Obama Defense, CIA Chief: U.S. 'Has Really Never Had a Strategy' on Syria

"And so, rather than developing that strategy, rather than trying to play a role in forcing Syria to figure out some kind of political settlement there that would get rid of Assad and allow Syrians to decide what their political future is, frankly, we have been hitting ISIS, on the side talking about Assad, but really don't have an overall strategy," he added. "And if we're going to strike Syria I don't think this ought to be a reflex action without a strategy. That's what this administration has to do, is figure out what is our long-term strategy in Syria going to be."

Which is to say that we do not like what Assad has done in using chemical weapons, but we have  no strategy to respond and no national objectives in responding. So to go to war with Syria would be like entering a dark room blindfolded in search of something that is not there.

Furthermore, absent specific Congressional authorization, a strike now against Syria would be an illegal war. Congress alone has the authority to declare war against a foreign power. That Congress' record of carrying out its Constitutional duties is one of abject failure and abdication, does not create a vacuum that a president may occupy to usurp Congress' authority.

Even if Congress did so declare, absent decisive and attainable national objectives to lead to a more just peace, the war would be unjust.

Yes, Assad is a monster. And his Russian sponsor, Putin, is a thug. And Iran is wielding strong influence in Syria also. That does not change the American domestic equation or our Constitutional requirements or the mandates of Just War Theory.

"Decide in hast, repent in leisure," said the ancient Greeks. It's long past time for Trump (and not only Trump) to take that to heart.

No war against Syria!

Related: "Just War and Syria Strikes"

So casting Yul Brynner as Rameses was spot on!

This actor is not African. But neither was Pharoah.

Study of mummies reveals they were Turkish and European | Daily Mail Online:

The first ever full-genome analysis of Ancient Egyptians shows they were more Turkish and European than African.

Scientists analysed ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies dating from 1400 BC to 400 AD and discovered they shared genes with people from the Mediterranean.

They found that ancient Egyptians were closely related to ancient populations in the Levant - now modern day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon.

They were also genetically similar to Neolithic populations from the Anatolian Peninsula and Europe.

So there is a blown up narrative.

"By his stripes we are healed" - Holy Saturday 2017

Today is called Holy Saturday, the day following Jesus' death on a cross outside Jerusalem. I posted a political-historical review of those events yesterday ("Why crucify Jesus?"). See also my post, "Execution Day," of 2010.

This is a theological inquiry into Jesus' death rather than an historical exploration. I am prompted to post this by Religion Dispatches' posting, "Rejecting Blood Sacrifice Theology, Again." This is a review of "a new Kindle-only book from Tony Jones: A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin" by Peter Laarman, who writes,

“Penal substitution” is the proper name for the viewpoint Jones wishes to challenge. The doctrine holds that God’s holiness is sufficiently offended by human sin, and by my sin in particular, that someone has to pay the punishment, someone has to clear the debt. Jesus’ willed sacrifice on the cross is what does it. His willingness to submit to humiliation and torture and death reconciles humans to God, and His perfect righteousness now becomes my righteousness before God’s judgment throne: it is imputed to me. The Lamb of God’s perfect sacrifice atones for my sinfulness; by His blood I am healed. That’s the general idea.

As Laarman points out the "full-blown Latin theory of atonement" (as my seminary professors put it) was developed by Anselm of Canterbury in the 12th century. Yet this is not by any means the only or even most compelling theory of how Christ saves. Anselm's objective, it should be noted by his critics such as Jones, was not mainly to promulgate a doctrine of salvation that was universal in applicability. It was, rather, to offer an explanation that was made sense within the contexts of the feudal societies of his day. He was trying to make sense to peoples steeped in feudal codes of honor, shame, retribution and redemption. Anselm would probably be quite surprised that his atonement theory has actually survived this long with such force. For in 21st-century, post-industrial, horizontally-organized societies, Anselm's explanation is really quite poor and does not appeal to people bathed in the soothing waters of self-esteem and do your own thing and all people are basically good.

From the beginning of the Christian movement, the Eastern churches have promulgated another soteriology (though not dismissing a theory of atonement, which is found in Paul's writings, just not as sharply drawn as by Anselm). Speaking Greek, not Latin, the Eastern churches knew all along that the Greek word for Savior, soter, means "healing." And this insight forms their soteriology significantly.

And so to that exploration:

The death of Jesus Christ was not unusual. In a long line of lethal violence stretching from Cain and Abel to Auschwitz, Hiroshima, New York, Baghdad, and Syria, Jesus’s personal fate was simply one of untold millions for which evil triumphed and goodness was buried. On the day he died, Jesus’ death seemed quite ordinary for his time and place. As Leander Keck observed of Jesus's execution day, “All three men [on Golgotha] were equally dead by sundown.”

Nor can we say that Jesus was the first person to give his life on the behalf of others. In fact, it is not readily apparent that Jesus died on anyone’s behalf. None of his disciples were arrested, for example, and there was no opportunity, hence no occurrence, of Jesus telling the Romans, “Execute me in place of them.”

Since the apostles’ day, though, Christian people have held it as an article of faith that Jesus lived and died to offer himself as a ransom for all, as atonement for our sins, as a blood offering and sacrifice by which we may be made right before God. How can this be? And even if we accept the scriptural claim that there are none of us who do good, no not one, and that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, then what made it necessary that God become man and die on a cross to redeem us from our sorry state?

For this there is, really, no answer, for it would require us to know the imponderable mind of God. As orthodoxy has held, we have the assurance that we are redeemed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, but there is no way for us to know why redemption comes this way and not some other. As the Catholic Church has explained, God could save by any means God chooses, for God is sovereign in power and decision. But this Christ is the way we know God chose.

And yet the question, “Why?” is not so easily dismissed and is answerable only from the perspective of love. For we know that God became man because of love, and that the purpose of God’s ultimate self-sacrifice was the fulfillment of love. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" (John 3:16-17).

I knew a man in the 1990s who had lost his son, 8, to cancer. The man said that when his son was first diagnosed, he knelt by his son's bed and prayed to God to heal his son. The cancer worsened until it was clear the boy’s illness would end in death. The man said when this fear gripped him, he started offering himself in prayer to God, kneeling by his sleeping boy and begging God with tears and anguish that if cancer there must be, to take the cancer from his son and put it inside himself.

To me, that’s what God concluded: there is no cure for human sin and its end in death except for me to be born of woman and take all the sin of the world to my death, even death on a cross.

We tend to think of sin judicially and see it dealt with in a kind of theological court, where we are found not guilty based on the pleading of Christ. But I think it is helpful also to see sin as a deep illness in the human being that we cannot cure ourselves. In the mind of God, healing this illness must be of ultimate value, the very perfection of creation. And out of love for his children, God became born of woman and took upon himself all the spiritual deficiencies of the human race. Jesus, “in whom dwelt the Godhead bodily,” who was without sin or spiritual sickness, took upon himself the sin of humankind, the deep illness of the human soul. And so we are made well. The prophet Isaiah put it this way:

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isa 53:4-6).

The apostle Paul wrote in Second Corinthians,

... God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting human sins against them. ... God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:19, 21).

The book of Hebrews offers this insight: "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death ..." (Heb 2:14).

And so Lent: when for forty days leading to Easter’s glory we are drawn to confront horror and to look inside ourselves, examine our souls and reconsider how we live and why. For even though Jesus’s death was ordinary in nature, it was extraordinary in character, for in his death we find our life. Old Testament scholar Gene Tucker, pondering Isaiah’s prophecy, wrote,

There are times when we must simply surrender because we can find no way forward without God’s grace and truth. There are times when we must surrender because the ways we have chosen to go bear only God’s judgment, and we know that. But there are also times when we must surrender because God has laid hold of us so dramatically that we can scarcely do else. When this happens, the speech we get is directly from God. It comes upon us and shows us a truth we never before could have entertained. And then our tongue is free for confession and release; our sins do not overwhelm us because we can see them clearly and report them freely, because they have been clearly and freely taken away from us and laid upon another.

The tragedy of the human condition is that this salvation cost God the life of his Son, but the deep mystery of the divine nature is that in Christ's death, God sacrificed himself, for the Son and the Father are the one and the same. By the wounds that we inflicted upon him, we are made whole. By his stripes we are healed. For the Lord has taken upon himself the iniquity of us all. Thanks be to God!

Why crucify Jesus?

As Good Friday and Easter approach, Christians across the  globe come to re-examine the events of Jesus's last week in Jerusalem, referred  to nowadays as Holy Week or Passion Week. The week began in triumph for Jesus as  he entered the city being greeted as a nationalistic hero by some of the people  who turned out to welcome him by laying their cloaks upon the road in his path,  waving palm fronds and calling out praises.

Yet before the week was out, Jesus had been brutally  beaten almost to death by the Romans, then driven to a place just outside the  city called The Skull, or in Greek, Golgotha (derived from Aramaic gulgaltā). There Roman soldiers nailed Jesus  to a cross, upon which he died a short time later.

But what exactly was the problem with Jesus? Crucifixion  was used by the Romans only for that worst of all possible crimes: sedition or  active resistance against the Roman imperium -- insurrection or treason by civilians or mutiny by soldiers. Both are always cooperative efforts. One person cannot commit mutiny. The crime  by definition involves conspiracy. Against non-Romans, crucifixion was much less restricted.

"Ecce homo" - behold the man! 

Absent conviction of a crime against the rule of Caesar,  Jesus might have been executed, but not by crucifixion. The Romans carried out crucifixions in very public, well-traveled places where the intense  suffering of the the victims would warn others not to get any  bright ideas. Those convicted of capital offenses not considered offenses against Roman rule died a quicker and more private death by ordinary hanging or by  beheading.

That Jesus was crucified rather than simply killed proves  that the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, found him guilty of an offense against Rome itself. But what?

There are no notes from the trial of Jesus before Pilate.  The accounts of the Gospels were written down many years later. I read them not as verbatim accounts of the procedures but as dramatic  accounts to tell the story of Jesus's death and how it came to occur.

But these the accounts of Jesus's arrest, hearings, trial  and execution are not only theological explorations, either. The Gospels'  writers seem to have possessed historical nuggets of the most important events and then tried to fill in some gaps by integrating what several threads of  traditions said. Thus, we can understand that the Gospels' detailed  conversations between Jesus and Pilate are not so much transcripts of what was said as dialog capturing their conversation that is intended to show how and why one event moved to another.

Some historical facts are not disputed. The Sunday  before Passover, probably between 30-33 c.e., Jesus and his disciples arrived in  Jerusalem. The crowd that greeted them joyfully soon dissipated. Jerusalem would  have been packed with Jewish pilgrims, perhaps as many as 200,000, from Judea and across the Mediterranean  world, come to the city to celebrate Passover and make sacrifices at the Temple. Having been under Roman (hence pagan) occupation for many decades, and the pagan Greeks  before that, the Jews' nationalistic fervor ran high during the holy season, so  high, in fact, that Pilate abandoned his government's center in Caesarea, about  75 miles northwestward, and came to Jerusalem along with a couple of thousand  soldiers. Whether Jerusalem was actually a tinderbox looking for a fuse, who  knows today, but Pilate certainly thought so then.

Pilate was a very violent ruler. He had little  compunction about sentencing people to death. Many hundreds of Jews, if not  more, had already died by his command, some put to the sword, others nailed to a  cross. The first-century Jewish historian Philo wrote that Pilate was not much worried about niceties of the law such as due process or a proper trial for the accused. Pilate was known to be very suspicious of crowds, having already loosed his soldiers against at least two large crowds of Jews, one instance killing a large number. The Gospels record without commentary a time when Pilate sent his cavalry, swords swinging, into a group (of unspecified size) of men gathered to make religious sacrifices, killing the lot.

This is the "Pilate Stone," a block (82 cm x 65 cm) of limestone with a carved inscription attributed to Pontius Pilate, a prefect of the Roman-controlled province of Judaea from 26-36. The stone is significant because it is the only universally accepted archaeological find with an inscription mentioning the name "Pontius Pilatus" there is. See here.

That Pilate was eventually fired by his direct boss, the governor of Syria,  for being too violent speaks volumes, since Roman rule  anywhere was lethally unforgiving of resistance. Pilate was sent back to Rome  where he disappears from credible historical accounts.

The level of collusion between the Jewish priestly high council  (the Sanhedrin) and Pilate is unclear. It was mediated by the high priest, Caiaphas, in any event. All four Gospels present Jesus as being hauled before  the Caiaphas - at his house, not at the Temple - and three say that there were  other Jewish leaders present; Luke calls them "the elders of the people, both  the chief priests and teachers of the law." Whomever they were, whether they were the Sanhedrin  properly convened or not (and I think not), they are only presented as an echo  board for Caiaphas.

What did Caiaphas have against Jesus? The synoptic Gospels indicate that Caiaphas's principal charge against Jesus was blasphemy, of which Jesus was undeniably guilty based on the facts as they were at the time, since the only proof of his divinity that Jesus could offer was his later resurrection from the dead. Mark records that early in his ministry, Jesus was accused of being in league with the devil, for which his miracle working was proof. This was a charge tantamount to sorcery, mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures only to denounce it (2 Chron. 33:6 and Nahum 3:4).

Matthew 26 records that after he was arrested and was brought before Caiaphas,

Then the high priest said to him, "I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God." 64 Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you, From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven." 65 Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "He has blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. 66 What is your verdict?" They answered, "He deserves death."

I think the Gospel of John's explanation, which differs from the others', gives important insights to the dynamics of Caiaphas's relationship with Pilate, showing that the high priest was primarily concerned with preserving the lives of the people. John presents a more nuanced case of Caiaphas against Jesus that makes Caiaphas more concerned with politics with Pilate than internal affairs of religion. Chapter 11 records that Caiaphas was deeply fearful of Pilate's propensity to violence (for excellent reasons, as we have seen). The chapter also says that  Caiaphas was willing to plot Jesus's death in order to prevent Pilate from  slaughtering the crowds who followed Jesus and then turning his soldiers loose  to ravage the country itself.

There was Roman precedent for this. Not long after Jesus was born, a would-be revolutionary band of the city of Tzippori (Sepphoris) in Gallilee had tried to throw off Rome's yoke. This was before Pilate became prefect, but the Roman response was  crushing. Roman soldiers laid waste to the entire city, crucified several  hundred men and sold a large number into slavery. The shock of this savagery  would have been vivid in Caiaphas's mind. It was the sort of thing, or worse,  that he reasonably feared Pilate would render to Judea if Jesus continued  unchecked.

The crowds Jesus drew were particularly worrisome because  they signified that Jesus was gaining a growing following. What if, with the  masses supporting him, Jesus attempted to claim the throne of David, to which he  was by descent from David entitled? No one at the time had clear title of the throne of David. Herod the Great had occupied it, but Judeans did not consider him truly Jewish although Herod himself thought he was. After his death in 4 bce, his kingdom was divided among his three sons and daughter, referred to as tetrarchs. One of them, Herod Antipas, figures in the Passion story as a minor and somewhat weaselly character.

Sepphoris today. After the Romans crushed a local rebellion about 4 bce,
Herod Antipas had it rebuilt with grandeur. 

Jesus could have been a rightful claimant of the throne of David since his adoptive, earthly father, Joseph, was descended directly from King David himself. Since Jesus had a huge following, it was not unreasonable for the Jewish council to suspect him him of coming to Jerusalem at the beginning of Passover week to make a power  play for the throne, one that could have only bloody results with very temporary success at best. After all, Jesus had entered Jerusalem in apparent fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah that says that Jerusalem’s king would come “triumphant and victorious ... humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey,” which is what Jesus did.

That Jesus had said and done nothing to demonstrate an intention of taking the throne would have been of no comfort to Caiaphas; as we say nowadays, "absence of evidence  is not evidence of absence." What insurrectionist or revolutionary  announces his goals before the optimum time? Jesus knew that such  suspicions were harbored against him. In Mark 14, when Jesus is arrested, he demands directly, "Am I leading a rebellion that you have come out with swords  and clubs to capture me?" Well, the only possible answer was no. But they arrested him anyway.

Caiaphas certainly knew that Pilate was deeply suspicious  of crowds and had already dealt bloodily with more than one. To both the Jewish  leaders and the Romans, a Jew with messianic intentions was foremost a political  figure and in the minds of many Jews (and certainly Pilate), a potential  military leader as well.

On Thursday evening of what would become known as Holy  Week, Jesus was arrested by Temple police at Gethsemane, just outside Jerusalem. The simplest narrative of events is John's. After being arrested, Jesus was taken to Annas, Caiaphas's  father in law. Whereas in the synoptic gospels Jesus appears before a council of some kind and is found guilty of blasphemy at a drumhead court, in John no such  council is present nor is there any sort of trial. Jesus, remaining bound, speaks only to Caiaphas, who instead of pronouncing  him guilty of some crime, "questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching." Jesus doesn't play along. An  official present struck him on the face for responding insolently to the high priest.

Caiaphas quickly sent Jesus to Pilate. John relates a long dialog  between Jesus and Pilate after Jesus' Jewish captors charge Jesus with nothing more  specific than that he was a criminal. Talking to Pilate, Jesus  admits that he is a king, although he says, "my kingdom is not of this world."  Pilate seems to seize on this confession (of sorts) as a challenge to Rome, but  nothing comes of it. Insisting that he finds nothing about Jesus justifying execution, he orders Jesus flogged. Finally, Pilate caves and  orders the crucifixion.

For someone whom Caiaphas feared would decimate the whole  country because of Jesus, Pilate seems awfully peaceable when he had the chance  to get rid of Jesus. He had to be cajoled, even threatened, into it. In John,  the Jews present tell Pilate that to release Jesus would be the same as opposing  Caesar. Now Pilate is the one being accused of incipient treason!

But Pilate might have been trying all along to shift the  blame for Jesus's execution from himself onto the Jewish leadership. It was  Passover week, remember, when passions ran high. Jesus still had thousands of devotees who were unaware that he had been arrested overnight. Might they riot in protest? It was a real danger, as Matthew explicitly records the chief priests realized; it was the reason they decided not to snatch Jesus during the daytime. If a riot there could be, Pilate might have thought it best preemptively to divert its rage away from the Romans and onto Caiaphas and company. Pilate would  not be able to sit it out, but reporting to Rome that the people were rebelling against their own religious authorities, not Caesar, was infinitely better than the other way round.

But while Pilate was trying to play Caiaphas, the high priest, knowing Jesus's popularity among the masses (as well as his allies among some members of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, for example) may well have been trying to set up Pilate to take the heat for him, also. Both men may have wanted to put the monkey on the other's back. This would help explain why Caiaphas gave Jesus such a cursory hearing before trundling him over to Pilate and the resistance to executing Jesus that Pilate gave right back to Caiaphas.

Caiaphas finally played his trump card. The Roman emperor was Tiberius, who had pretty much checked out of affairs of state in 26 ce, moving to isle of Capri and living la dolce vita. He had left state affairs to  Praetorian Prefects Lucius Aelius Sejanus and Quintus Naevius Sutorius Macro, neither of whom stayed loyal to Tiberius. By the time of Jesus' trial, Tiberius had taken power again after learning that Sejanus was actively plotting actual sedition and usurpation against him. He had Sejanus executed and began executing Sejanus' partners and political appointees by the dozens. Pilate owed his office to Sejanus but escaped the purge probably because his appointment was made in the very earliest days of Sejanus' rule, well before Sejanus began plotting against Tiberius.

Roman coin showing Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius was one of the best generals
Rome ever produced, but he was not a very good Caesar.

Even so, Pilate must have known that his own political, and perhaps physical, survival depended on demonstrated devotion to Tiberius. This was Pilate's political Achilles' Heel and it was there that Caiaphas aimed a nearly-explicit threat: if you free Jesus we will report to Rome that you failed to defend Caesar against an insurrectionist, a pretender to the throne of David, who would expel all four tetrarchs Rome set over us, Roman vassals all whom we do not recognize as legitimate in the first place, but matters not, for, "We have no king but Caesar," Pilate. How about you?

It is inexcusable to blame "the Jews" categorically for Jesus's death, but there is no way to get around Caiaphas's deep involvement. As for Pilate, his intelligence sources would have kept him informed of Jesus for quite awhile. Pilate would not have been caught flat-footed when Jesus appeared before him early Friday morning. The Gospels describe no prior collusion between Caiaphas and Pilate concerning Jesus, but I have to think  that they may have already outlined the kabuki dance  that began when Jesus appeared before Pilate, who was undoubtedly frustrated that his interrogation of Jesus elicited no actionable confession. Not being given the open-and-shut case that he probably presumed he would have, Pilate, over Caiaphas's protest, ordered a sign affixed to Jesus's cross identifying him as "King of the Jews," a sign probably intended to implicate Caiaphas directly in Jesus's death, for whom else could have made such a charge?

Despite their differences, Caiaphas and Pilate came to see that executing Jesus was win-win for them. By giving up Jesus to  Pilate, Caiaphas would prevent the Jesus movement from getting out of hand  before it was too late to prevent the unspeakable horror of Pilate sending a  legion or two to teach Judea to stop raising up such troublesome sons. When Caiaphas conversed with Jesus at his house, he may well have been trying to cut a deal with Jesus that would preserve Jesus's life at the price of Jesus agreeing to stop working all those miracles and raising such a following - in other words, to live the ordinary life of an ordinary man, get married, settle down and play nice. It is almost impossible to believe that turning Jesus over the Pilate to be killed would be an easy decision for any high priest, this one included.

Whatever Caiaphas actually talked to Jesus about, Jesus certainly swatted the approach away with finality. Faced with such intransigence, Caiaphas saw no recourse but to hand Jesus over to Pilate and make sure that Pilate never gave him back.

As for Pilate, his win would be to stop the Jesus movement cold by the very simple, effective expedient of killing Jesus. After all, he could not continue to  send taxes and goods to Rome by destroying the country that produced them.

Jesus, it seems, had become too threatening to be allowed to live. Both Caiaphas and Pilate had the motive and the opportunity that week to stop him but only Pilate had the means to stop him permanently. There was a  meeting of mind between Caiaphas and Pilate, and Jesus got caught in the  middle. But Jesus cooperated with what they  had planned for him because he understood that his own fate was inextricably linked to the collusion between them. That Jesus could have effectively defended himself seems of little doubt; there are many clues in the Gospels of what he might have said. But instead, he let himself be found guilty by default. And so he carried a cross to Golgotha and the world has never been the same.

The Three Crosses, by Rembrandt