The Tragedy Of Jesus Just Gets Sadder And Sadder
Jesus Christ famously died for the sake of his followers, but his life was filled with even more suffering in the form of betrayal, massacres, and executions.
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00:00Jesus Christ famously died for the sake of his followers, but his life was filled with
00:04even more suffering in the form of betrayal, massacres, and executions.
00:09The Bible doesn't have much to say about the relationship between Jesus and Saint Joseph.
00:13In fact, Joseph doesn't have a single recorded line, probably because he died about a decade
00:18before Jesus began his ministry.
00:20Instead, their relationship is extrapolated from extra-biblical traditions, which stress
00:24Jesus' grief over losing his earthly father.
00:26The main source is the apocryphal text The Story of Joseph the Carpenter, which depicts
00:30a tender, loving relationship between Joseph and Jesus.
00:34As the 111-year-old Joseph lay sick and dying, Christ and the Virgin Mary prayed over him.
00:39After Jesus invoked blessings upon Joseph, he breathed his last breath, and then he was
00:44buried near his father Jacob.
00:46The tradition of Joseph's passing has survived for generations of painters to depict in vivid
00:50detail.
00:51Jesus endured a serious family tragedy when the Judean king Herod Antipas executed John
00:57the Baptist.
00:58According to the Gospel of Matthew, Herod beheaded John to impress his former sister-in-law
01:02and present wife Herodias.
01:04The Jewish historian Josephus confirmed this biblical version in his writings.
01:08Neither Josephus nor the Bible describe Jesus' personal relationship with his cousin, although
01:13the Gospel of Luke does confirm that they were related through their mothers.
01:17But it doesn't say if they were particularly close or even really knew each other.
01:21In fact, the Gospel of John says that John didn't know Jesus when the latter appeared
01:25for baptism, which is their only reported interaction.
01:28"...greater than all of us, one whose sandals I am not worthy to carry."
01:37Despite their seemingly distant relationship, the Bible makes it clear that Jesus was deeply
01:40affected by John's death.
01:42As the Gospel of Matthew recounts, when Jesus heard of it, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted
01:47place by himself.
01:49But was Jesus upset mainly because he had lost a family member or because an important
01:53holy man had died?
01:54Either way, despite the lack of biblical evidence, artists from across Christian history have
01:58imagined that the two of them grew up together from their earliest days, with multiple paintings
02:02depicting Mary with both John and Jesus as babies.
02:07Jesus' opinion of the Roman government of Judea is difficult to parse from the Bible.
02:11Considering Pontius Pilate's reputation for brutality and anti-Jewish sentiments, one
02:15would expect Jesus to have denounced him.
02:17Instead, he tells his disciples,
02:19"...repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God."
02:23The only mention of a massacre that might have affected Jesus personally appears in
02:27the Gospel of Luke.
02:28A group of Jews questioned him about Pilate's killing of a group of Galilean pilgrims.
02:33It's implied that they were massacred in the temple, Judaism's Holy of Holies, and the
02:37only place where the Mosaic law permitted sacrifices to take place.
02:41Jesus' reaction is quite muted in the text, with the massacre being secondary to a call
02:45for repentance.
02:47But if it indeed happened in the temple, a massacre at the hands of the pagan Romans
02:50would have been sacrilege, as the Temple of Jerusalem was God's house.
02:54Jesus made his attitude toward anything resembling sacrilege clear in the Gospel of John when
02:58he drove the money changers out of the temple.
03:01"...my house shall be a house of prayer, and you have turned it into a den of thieves!"
03:06It's fair to say that Jesus was targeted from the day he was born, as King Herod of Judea
03:10tried to kill him as a baby.
03:12Later in his life, the Pharisees tried to stone him, the high priest arrested him, and
03:16Pontius Pilate crucified him.
03:19Jesus' frequent brushes with death have much to do with the political and religious intrigues
03:22of his day.
03:23King Herod was a Roman ally, as were the Sadducees, the Jewish elite whom Herod consulted with.
03:29The Gospel of Matthew implies that Herod and the Sadducees saw Jesus as a threat to their
03:33positions.
03:34If Jesus was king of the Jews, that meant that Herod wasn't.
03:37Furthermore, the Pharisees opposed Jesus' claims of divinity, which they considered
03:41to be blasphemy.
03:43As for the Romans, they're barely mentioned in the Bible until the Passion narrative.
03:46Pontius Pilate likely had little interest in Jesus, while historians like Josephus and
03:51Philo both noted that Pilate hated Jews, and vice versa.
03:55As a pagan, Pilate had little reason to order Jesus' death on religious grounds.
03:59His priority was maintaining Roman rule in Judea.
04:01But when it seemed like the crowd in Jerusalem would instigate a revolt at Jesus' trial,
04:06he chose crucifixion to appease them.
04:08Are you the king of the Jews?
04:12So you say.
04:14Crucifixion was surely one of the worst ways to die in the Roman world, as it was meant
04:18to inflict as much pain as possible while also humiliating the victim.
04:22Hanging them from the wrists or hands from the crossbeam compressed their bodies downward,
04:26preventing them from breathing properly.
04:28To get air, they would have to push themselves up by the feet, which were also nailed, but
04:32that made the nails rub up on the bone.
04:35Death came slowly by asphyxiation.
04:37For Jesus, who had been brutally beaten before the ordeal, the pain was probably even worse
04:41from his wounds rubbing against the wood.
04:44This form of public execution was reserved for the lowest types of people, like slaves,
04:48criminals, and prisoners of war, whom the Romans wanted to make an example out of.
04:52The condemned could actually still survive for days, although merciful executioners might
04:56break their legs or kill them after just a few hours.
04:59In the Gospel of John, Roman soldiers break the thieves' legs so that they can be buried
05:03before the Sabbath.
05:05Jesus, however, is already dead, so he's spared that indignity.
05:08It is finished.
05:11The Eleusa icon shows the child Jesus cheek-to-cheek with the Virgin Mary, sometimes with his arms
05:16tenderly thrown around her neck.
05:18This style captures Mary's love for her only child, whom she saw die in agony.
05:23There are differences between the Gospels regarding Mary's presence at the crucifixion,
05:26though they're all pretty thin on details, if they mention her at all.
05:30The Gospel of Mark says simply that she watched it from afar, while Matthew and Luke omit
05:35John, however, places her at the foot of the cross.
05:38Perhaps the details of her suffering are unnecessary, as any mother would have suffered horribly
05:42while seeing her son dying such a painful death.
05:45Despite the lack of Biblical details, centuries of Christian art have portrayed her weeping
05:49in despair.
05:50While watching her son die was no doubt tragic, there's also a theological explanation behind
05:55it, as suffering is stressed as the source of new life.
05:58First-century Judaism was filled with religious and ethnic divisions that Jesus had to navigate
06:03throughout his ministry.
06:04Chief among his rivals were the Pharisees, one of several first-century Jewish factions
06:08primarily focused on living out Mosaic law.
06:11They viewed equality with God as blasphemy, and an offense that was punishable by stoning.
06:16In the Gospel of John 8, Jesus uses the divine name of God, Yahweh, to describe himself.
06:22And in chapter 10 of the same Gospel, he claims to be one with God the Father.
06:26In both cases, the Pharisees responded by attempting to stone him.
06:30Despite these encounters, Jesus and the Pharisees weren't purely enemies.
06:34He respected them as teachers of the law and exhorted people to obey their teachings, while
06:38some Pharisees warned him about King Herod's plot to kill him.
06:41Ultimately, he simply held Pharisees to a higher standard and called out those who failed
06:45to live up to it.
06:46"...your obsession with what is clean and unclean goes farther than God intended."
06:53As we said earlier, King Herod was after Jesus from right around when he was born.
06:57King Herod infamously ordered every male child under the age of two in and around Bethlehem
07:02killed in an effort to off a potential rival.
07:04While Herod carried out his massacre, the Holy Family fled to Egypt.
07:08According to Coptic tradition, they were generally well-received, as they made their way through
07:12a handful of towns from the Nile Delta all the way to Cairo.
07:16The last six months were spent living in a cave on a site that is still commemorated
07:19today.
07:20Copts believe that baby Jesus even left them a souvenir of his footprint on a piece of
07:25stone.
07:26When they died, the family was able to return home, but they opted to lay low by settling
07:29in the town of Nazareth in what is today northern Israel, rather than near Jerusalem, where
07:34Herod's successors could more easily find them.
07:37In the build-up to his crucifixion, Jesus spent time in the Garden of Gethsemane with
07:41his 12 apostles.
07:43According to the Gospel of Matthew 26, Peter told Jesus,
07:46"...even though I should have to die with you, I will not deny you."
07:50Approximately 40 verses later, Peter's resolve crumbled as he denied Jesus not once, but
07:55three times.
07:56"...I don't know what you're talking about."
07:59Jesus' reaction is all in the subtext.
08:02According to Luke's Gospel, after the third denial, he simply turned and looked at Peter,
08:06which was essentially meant to convey stone-cold silence.
08:10Peter's triple denial, including claiming not to know him in the Hebrew context, was
08:13a rejection of Christ.
08:15The expression that Peter used was the equivalent of saying that someone was dead to you.
08:20It's the same expression that Jesus used in Matthew 7 when he said,
08:23"...I never knew you," in reference to God's rejection of the wicked.
08:27In Hebrew and Aramaic, repeating thanks three times was a way of making it superlative,
08:32and it essentially amounted to rejecting God.
08:34The Bible emphasizes the betrayals of Peter and Judas, almost equating the two, but the
08:39other apostles weren't much better.
08:41Following Jesus' arrest, Matthew 25 simply says,
08:44"...all the disciples left him, and he fled."
08:47According to Catholic tradition, when Jesus was condemned to die, only St. John the Evangelist
08:52actually bothered to show up at the crucifixion, comforting the Virgin Mary as she watched
08:56her son die.
08:57The rest were nowhere to be found, despite their ostensible fidelity to Jesus.
09:01The Bible is silent on what exactly these disciples were doing.
09:05The crowd had attempted to arrest St. Peter alongside Jesus, after which the disciples
09:09fled, so the simplest explanation is that they were in hiding.
09:12There's a passage in John that specifically says they were in hiding.
09:16They may all also have felt ashamed about showing their faces before the dying Jesus
09:20after the refusal to stand by him during his arrest.
09:23And a final twist, those who fled paid their dues by suffering later on.
09:27The absent apostles, excluding Judas, all endured incredibly violent and painful deaths.
09:32St. John, on the other hand, is said to have enjoyed a long life, even making it to the
09:36century mark, according to some traditions.
09:40In Luke 18, Jesus tells his disciples that he is God in the flesh, and that he will die
09:44and rise again.
09:45True to his word, he suffers the most excruciating death possible for their sins, yet most of
09:50his followers don't even bother to show up.
09:52But then he encounters his apostles after his resurrection.
09:55As the Gospel of Mark recounts,
09:57"...as the eleven were at table, he appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief
10:01and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been
10:06raised."
10:07The Gospel of John offers more specifics, particularly about the apostle Thomas, who
10:10tells the others,
10:12"...unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the nail
10:15marks, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."
10:19Thomas reacted this way, despite the fact that Jesus was standing right in front of
10:22him.
10:23Instead of getting angry over yet another denial, Jesus lets Thomas feel his wounds,
10:28along with a rebuke, as he makes sure to note,
10:30"...blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed."
10:33"...stop your doubting and believe, my Lord."
10:38Ultimately, Jesus' reaction unmistakably illustrates the Christian belief that tragedy
10:42and doubt are teaching moments for strengthening one's faith.