Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

In all probability Jesus did not merely pray the beginning of Psalm 22. He must have spoken parts of the whole psalm as his dying prayer, as far as his fading strength allowed, or stuttered it out in bits. At any rate, the opinion of some authors that the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” represents ultimate and final despair is contradictory to the practice of Old Testament prayer.¹⁷ It is not only that Psalm 22 is shot through with cries of trust (“since my mother bore me you have been my God,” v. 10), not merely that the end of the psalm speaks of the banquet of the nations in the reign of God (vv. 27-29); the beginning of the psalm is itself not a cry of despair, but a lament, and in the Psalms that is something completely different from despair. Psalm 22 contains both: that God is silent and yet replies, the horrible hiddenness of God and the showing of God’s face (v. 24), the ultimate loneliness of the one praying and the new gift of community.

According to Mark, Jesus died at the ninth hour, that is, around three in the afternoon, with a loud cry (15:34, 37). It is in itself surprising that he died only six hours after being crucified, because usually the death struggle of a crucified person lasted much longer. The inhuman horror of execution on a cross consisted precisely in that crucifixion was meant to cause a very long, drawn-out death that was repeatedly delayed. If it was desired to make the crucified person die sooner, his legs would be broken; then the weight of the body hung completely from the arms and suffocation quickly resulted. The only remains of a crucified person from antiquity thus far discovered, in a surprising find in Jerusalem in 1968, included a single rusted nail that had been driven through both feet at once, but it also showed that both shins had been broken at the same height by heavy blows. This gave archaeological confirmation to the custom of crucifragium, the breaking of legs, attested by the evangelist John (John 19:32). According to John the death of the two terrorists crucified with Jesus was brought about by this breaking of their leg bones, but Jesus’ legs were not broken because he was already dead. His quick death, after only a few hours, must have resulted from the severe flogging he had received and the loss of blood that resulted.

Burial

We have already seen that in antiquity burial was denied to those who had been crucified, and we also saw what Joseph of Arimathea’s approaching Pilate meant in this context (chap. 6: “The Many Faces of Being Called”). Joseph, one of Jesus’ sympathizers, also made sure that the shroud was purchased and Jesus’ body taken down from the cross. Then Jesus was wrapped in the newly purchased shroud and placed in a tomb. Women who were part of Jesus’ circle of disciples were present (Mark 15:42-47).

We can draw a vivid picture of Jesus’ tomb on the basis of many archaeological parallels in and around present-day Jerusalem and from the reports in the four gospels. It was close to the Golgotha rise (John 19:41); it was hewn in one of the bands of rock that ran through the abandoned quarry west of Golgotha; it was in a garden; it was a tomb chamber with benches on the sides for bodies; it had a relatively low door opening through which one could only enter by bending over and that entry door was closed with a stone that could be rolled back and forth (Mark 15:46); it was a previously unused tomb in which no one had yet been laid (John 19:41). So we may be certain that Jesus’ body did not remain on the cross, nor was it thrown into a common grave for criminals; it was placed in a family tomb whose location was known in Jerusalem. On the morning of the first weekday after the Sabbath, the women would go to this tomb.

Strategies

The events of the passion were crammed into a few hours: struggle in prayer, arrest, hearing before Annas, session of the Council, delivery to Pilate, condemnation by Pilate, scourging, mocking, execution, burial. All that took place in under twenty-four hours. Those who desired Jesus’ death knew why it all had to proceed so swiftly, and they knew their business. That business included the strategies applied by Jesus’ opponents. The Council internally considered Jesus deserving of death because he led the people astray and was a blasphemer. But before Pilate they made the religious seducer of the people into a political rebel, and Jesus’ confession of his authority became an admission that he was a messiah with a political purpose. It was this strategy, which completely twisted Jesus’ real claim, that brought him to the cross.