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.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
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.