The Conspiracy Against Jesus

This series of posts considers, in detail, the gospel reading from Mark for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. This is the first post in the series.

There is much that occurs between the entry gospel on Palm Sunday and the gospel proclaimed during the Mass. If one wanted to give a moniker to what falls between it may be best described as a “conflict between the kingdoms.” The passages (11:12 – 13:37) between include:

• Arguments surrounding the authority of Jesus, taxes to Caesar, the Resurrection, the greatest commandment, and the nature of the Messiah
• The parable of the vineyard and the widow’s mite
• The Markan discourse of the things to come and the end time.

The readings on “Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion” move from the triumphal entry (Mark 11:1-11) directly into the lair of Jesus’ antagonists – the “chief priests and scribes.” (Mark 14:1)

The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to take place in two days’ time. So the chief priests and the scribes were seeking a way to arrest him by treachery and put him to death. They said, “Not during the festival, for fear that there may be a riot among the people.” (Mark 14:1-2)

At this point in the narrative Jesus’ reputation is well known to Jerusalem authorities who were not only responsible for ensuring orthodox practice and beliefs, they were also responsible to the Roman authorities that the religious practices of Judaism were not the cauldron of resistance against the rule of Rome. There was already a history of would-be Messiahs coming to Jerusalem at Passover with a resulting response from the many pilgrims who came to the Holy City. The response ranged from unrest, to riot, to outright revolt.

Within and among the disciples Jesus has already predicted his death and persecution three times. Those words moved closer to realization as the leaders actively plot to put Jesus to death. None of this should come as a surprise. Jesus was quite clear:

They were on the way, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went ahead of them. They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. Taking the Twelve aside again, he began to tell them what was going to happen to him. “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him, spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death, but after three days he will rise.” (Mark 10:32-34)

Mark gives us a point of reference for time: “The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to take place in two days’ time.” There are some scholars who speculate that since so many things have happened since Jesus entered the Holy City in Mark 11:11, that perhaps Jesus has been in and around the city for weeks. Be that as it may, we now have a time marker. Not necessarily a perfectly clear marker, but one nonetheless.  William Lane [The Gospel of Mark, 489-90] offers:

In this context “the Passover” designates the festival of redemption celebrated on the 14th of the month Nisan (April/May) and continuing into the early hours of the 15th (between sunset and midnight; cf. Exod. 12:6–20, 48; Num. 9:2–14; Deut. 16:1). This was followed immediately by the Feast of Unleavened Bread on the 15th–21st days of the month (Exod. 12:15–20; 23:15; 34:18; Deut. 16:1–8). In popular usage the two festivals were merged and treated for practical purposes as the seven-day “feast of the Passover.” The distinction between the two phases of the feast found in verse 1 is rarely attested in first-century Jewish sources but reflects OT practice (Lev. 23:3f.; Num. 28:16f.; 2 Chron. 35:1, 17; Ezra 6:19–22). Since the day on which the paschal lambs were sacrificed (the 14th of Nisan) was sometimes loosely designated “the first day of Unleavened Bread,” it is difficult to determine whether the two days should be reckoned from the 15th or the 14th of Nisan. It is probable that the combined phrase indicates the 15th of Nisan, and that the reference here is to some time on the 13th of that month.

Whatever the case, Mark’s assertion that the preparations for the meal were made on the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread is inaccurate. The Preparation Day does not belong to the feast. The simplest solution is to assume that Mark considers days to begin in the morning, rather than in the evening, as was the Roman custom. Hence the preparations during the day and the Passover meal eaten in the evening belong to the same day. However, the hasty burial of Jesus on the afternoon of the crucifixion indicates that Mark does know that the sabbath begins at sundown. The confusion concerning when the feast began may have been heightened by Mark’s use of the same Greek word (pascha) to describe the festival, the slaughtering of the lamb, and the meal that followed. Mark’s references to the pascha (vv. 12, 14, 16), however, all refer to the sacrifice or the meal. He reflects the confused usage typical of the first century but primarily thinks of the feast as Passover. [Pheme Perkins, The Gospel of Mark, 697]