Passion of Jesus

Passion of Jesus, final events in the life of Jesus as related in the canonical Gospels. The word passion is derived from Latin passio (“suffering” or “enduring”).

Compared with the Gospels’ sparse accounts of Jesus’ early years and occasional glimpses of his public ministry, the reports of his closing days are quite detailed and lengthy, an indication of the importance which the earliest Christian congregations attached to the events of his Passion and death. Although there is more chronological sequence to the narratives of these events than there is anywhere else in the Gospels, there are also major problems of chronology. Probably the chief issue is the fact that after centuries of harmonization it still remains unclear from a comparison of John’s account with those of the Synoptic Gospels on just what day of the Jewish calendar Jesus died.

Jesus’ last week

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Differ though they may in many details, the Gospels all begin their report of Jesus’ last week with the story of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the Sunday of that week, celebrated in Christian liturgy as Palm Sunday. The Synoptic Gospels represent him as spending the week teaching his followers and coming into conflict with scribes and Pharisees; because of its focus on Jesus’ interpretation of Jewish law, Matthew’s Gospel contains the fullest account of these disputes.

As the time of crisis drew near, Jesus gathered the Twelve Apostles for the Last Supper. Despite the great difficulties in chronology, many interpreters have come to conclude with theologian Joachim Jeremias that the Last Supper took place within the framework of a Jewish Passover meal where Jesus sought to prepare the disciples for what was to come. The church remembered this as the occasion when the new covenant was celebrated, a covenant established when Jesus offered up the sacrifice of that body and blood which the church received in this Supper. John’s Gospel has no account of this institution but has a lengthy series of discourses, unique to it, in which Jesus gave the disciples his last will and testament together with the promise of the Holy Spirit.

All four Gospels tell us that one of the Apostles, Judas Iscariot, put himself at the service of Jesus’ enemies as an informer. Christian piety and preaching have elaborated upon the story of Judas the traitor in an effort to probe his motives—greed, disappointment over the failure of Jesus to inaugurate the kingdom, or a desire to precipitate the kingdom by violence. Conversely, the apocryphal Gospel of Judas presents Judas as Jesus’ closest confidant, tasked with helping Jesus “sacrifice the man that clothes me.” In the New Testament the only elaborations of Judas’s story are the accounts of his remorse and violent end. Jesus is portrayed as knowing that Judas would betray him and predicting that all the other disciples would forsake him. To their protestations of loyalty Jesus replied with the further prediction that Peter would deny him three times, a prediction that Peter remembered (Mark 14:66–72) and that the church remembered when it was facing the temptation of apostasy and denial.

From the room where the Last Supper was held, Jesus and the disciples proceeded to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prepared himself for the coming ordeal by praying and submitting his will to that of his Father. Into the garden then came Judas, leading a band of men to arrest Jesus and arraign him before the authorities. In spite of their earlier insistence that they would not forsake him and their initial show of boldness, the disciples fled, and Jesus was led away to be tried.

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The trial of Jesus was twofold, religious and civil. First the Jewish religious authorities examined him on the charge that he had disobeyed the traditions of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and made blasphemous claims about himself. They adjudged him guilty. Although the punishment prescribed for the sin of blasphemy was death (Leviticus 24:16), the Jews did not execute the punishment; historians disagree about whether they had a right to mete out capital punishment. Instead, they referred the case of Jesus to the civil authorities, and it became necessary for him to have a second trial before the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. Like Judas, Pilate has been the subject of Christian speculation, some later accounts even telling of his conversion to Christianity. Closer to historical accuracy appears to be the view that against his better judgment, he yielded to the pressures of the populace and their leaders for reasons of political expediency, giving the command that Jesus be crucified.

Students of both Jewish and Roman law have raised questions regarding the legality of Jesus’ trial on the grounds that prescribed conditions for the trial of a capital offense were not present. Another question that has been raised, usually in the context of Jewish-Christian relations, is whether the Jews or the Romans were primarily responsible for Jesus’ death. Christian theology has generally replied that the joint action of Jew and Gentile in the crucifixion of Jesus is a symbol of the guilt of the entire human race.

Crucifixion and the Resurrection

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Jesus’ death came by crucifixion, a cruel and painful method of execution typically reserved for pirates, enslaved people, and those accused of political crimes. It was preceded by various tortures and indignities, recited in great detail by the Evangelists. The last words of Jesus reported in the Gospels show the reverence with which the early Christians dwelt upon the scene of the crucifixion. These seven statements include Luke 23:34 (“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”); Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”); and John 19:30 (“It is finished.”). The awe with which the early Christians recalled the scene is similarly evident from the portents associated with the death of Jesus—an earthquake, darkness, and the rending of the veil in the Temple. The Evangelists also associated the several events of the crucifixion story with prophecies of the Old Testament. They tell us that the body of Jesus was not permitted to hang on the cross overnight (Deuteronomy 21:23) and that he was buried the same day he died in accordance with Jewish law.

According to the Gospels, the cross was not the end of Jesus, for God rescued him from death. This was the universal conviction and consensus of the early Christians, although details of the Resurrection were often inconsistent or dubious. One of the leaders of the first generation of Christians, St. Paul, says nothing about the reports of the empty tomb, which are found in all four Gospels.