It’s unwise to rely on the Gospels for an accurate description of that first Good Friday
‘And yet we call this Friday good.’ So what actually happened on the first Good Friday? The balance of probability is heavily against those who would dismiss the whole affair as a mere addition to the literature of mythology. Beyond all reasonable doubt, we can be certain on two points. A man was crucified and His death had dramatic consequences.
Even though we are aware of the story’s ending, the Gospel narratives are a compelling read. Yet there is one difficulty: a childishly incoherent distortion of the historical record, which is in danger of undermining the four authors’ credibility, but which does tell us a lot about the Palestinian politics of the period. This all relates to Pilate.
We know quite a lot about the historical Pilate. He was tough, corrupt and ambitious, like most Roman governors. Like them, he had been trained in a hard school. He had been chosen for an important post. On the Mediterranean coast, crucial for Roman communications, Palestine was of considerable strategic consequence. In country, the governor had to cope with cunning and self-serving Herodian monarchs, who were as tricksy as Cleopatra without her compensations. He had to handle their truculent subjects. It is unlikely that a newly-appointed Roman official’s briefing material would have included the Old Testament, which was unfortunate. Jehovah could have told the Romans how difficult it was to deal with those proud and stiff-necked Jews.
Even so, Pilate was undaunted by difficulty. But the Gospels entirely misrepresent him, portraying an anxious, self-doubting figure: a likeable but weak man who sees goodness but cannot embrace it. None of that has any foundation in truth. John almost persuades us to be a New Testament Pilatean, when he gives him one of the greatest of all lines: ‘What is truth?’ Then again, the Hellenising Evangelist who starts his Gospel with ‘In the beginning was the Word’ could make even a Roman hegemon sound like a philosopher.
Matthew tells us that Pilate’s wife urged her husband to ‘have nothing to do with that innocent man, because in a dream last night, I suffered much on account of him’. Charming fiction, but did it have a literary offspring? Caesar’s wife Calpurnia had a troubled dream and begged her husband not to go to the Capitol. He succumbed to her pleading, until Brutus arrived to lure him to his death. When Shakespeare wrote that scene, might he have been influenced by St Matthew? His Caesar is fussy and vain: still capable of grandiloquence, but only as a fading echo of former greatness. The vacillating Pilate of the New Testament, though a much more attractive character, would not have lasted five minutes as a Roman governor.
In Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, there is a heart-rending scene in which, after the flagellation, Pilate’s wife and Christ’s mother kneel down to mop up the blood from the pavement of the Praesidium. Although that was a contribution to mythology, it also helps to reveal the truth about Pilate. Despite the Governor’s supposed agonisings, Christ was stripped, flogged and mocked by Roman soldiers before they led him off to his humiliating and excruciating death. As far as possible, the Evangelists wanted to exculpate the Romans and throw the blame on the Jews. By the time the Gospels were written, the Romans were secure in their power — and therefore worth appeasing — while the split between the Jewish Christians and the rest of Judaism had reached a murderous intensity, as is often the case in conflicts between formerly close allies. Hence gentle Pilate meek and mild; hence the raw material for the charge of deicide.
In reality, there was no reason for Pilate and the Jewish high priests to quarrel over Christ’s fate. Both had every reason to regard Him as dangerous and want him dead. Palestine was in a state of turbulence, political and religious, and Christ was part of it. All the existing authorities would have regarded Him as a challenge to their authority. However often He proclaimed that His Kingdom was not of this world; we do not need The Life of Brian to remind us how easy it is for messages to go awry in transmission. In the tribute money incident, was the Roman secret service trying to trap Christ? Or was it Jewish dissidents, trying to secure His endorsement? Whatever the truth, He was preaching in tense times — and even those who jib at the divinity or the miracles can surely accept that He was a formidable preacher.
According to the Gospels, Christ set out for Jerusalem, embracing his fate but also fearing it. The Agony in the Garden, ‘My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me’: there is nothing more moving in the whole of literature. But it is also clear that while Christ was bracing himself for the Cross, wild rumours were circulating: that He would be as immune to the nails as the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda claimed to be to bullets: that He would descend from the Cross, overthrow the Temple and proclaim Himself as the heir to David’s kingdom. Can we be certain that all of His own closest supporters knew better?
This brings us to the second great event, and its implications. It is safe to assume that the day after Christ’s death, His disciples would have been emotionally shattered, their souls filled with horror, their faith in their leader tested to the brink of destruction — and fearful for their own survival. Peter would not have been the only coward. Yet within a few years, Christ’s Gospel was being proclaimed all across the Eastern Mediterranean. Christianity was gaining a momentum which it would never lose. There is no natural progression from a man dying in agony to the splendour of a world religion. That leads to the inevitable question. What about the supernatural explanation? Would Christ’s followers have had the strength to do what they did; to follow their dead leader even if it meant their own martyrdoms — unless they had believed that He was not dead? It is clear that the early Christians believed in the literal truth of the Resurrection, and in Christ’s ascension to Heaven to reign at the right hand of God.
This is not proof that they were right. After all, many of them also believed that His return was imminent. In his recent book on Jesus, the Pope tries to substitute immanence for imminence. That might not have worked as well in the 1st century. The history of Christianity does not prove the truth of the Resurrection, any more than the exsurgence of the warrior-poets of the Arabian deserts, to conquer half the known world in a few decades, proves that Allah is God and Mohammed is his Prophet. But that original Good Friday was the most profound event in all history.