A big ask: Elizabeth Coleman thinks Friends should have their own understanding of the crucifixion

‘Modern Quakers might have to deal with this differently.’

The Hebrew Bible is made up of a number of different books, giving different messages. But there is one theme to which I would like to draw your attention.

God promised David that a descendent of his would be on the throne for ever (2 Samuel 7:12-16; Psalm 18:50; Psalm 89). So it was a huge shock when the Davidic monarchy ended with the Babylonian exile. People were bewildered as to why God seemed have broken the promise, and they looked desperately for explanations and hope for the future. Prophets told them that God would bring better times (Isaiah 60; Isaiah 65:17-25), and some said that the monarchy would be reinstated (Zechariah 9:9).

The Dead Sea Scrolls carry an expectation of a Davidic ruler. In the 4QFlorilegium (sometimes referred to as ‘A Midrash on the Last Days’) it says, ‘He is the Branch of David who shall rise with the Interpreter of the Law [to rule] in Zion [at the end] of time. As it is written, I will raise up the tent of David that is fallen (Amos 9:11).’

The word ‘messiah’ means ‘anointed’, and kings were anointed. In the Psalms, David is referred to as ‘messiah’ (Psalm 18:50). In the hard times after the exile, when the Israelites were dominated by foreign powers, people waited expectantly for good times of peace and plenty. Some said there would be a king/messiah from David’s line, others that God would rule directly. Jerusalem would be the centre of a worldwide empire, and Gentiles would come to Jerusalem to give tribute (Isaiah 60).

Around the time of Jesus, several different people aimed to lead the Jewish people against their oppressors and become king/messiah – some through force of arms, and some expecting God’s intervention so that force would not be required. Josephus (who wrote after the Jewish wars ended in 70CE) tells of the Egyptian and Theudas, who were such leaders; the New Testament book of Acts (5:35-37) refers to Theudas and Judas the Galilean. A hundred years after Jesus, the rebel/freedom-fighter Bar Kochba was thought to be the messiah.

My view of Jesus is that his concern was to prepare people for the imminent coming of the kingdom of God through repentance, and his riding into Jerusalem on a colt was a declaration of his kingship. He had no intention of dying on a cross. There is nothing in the Hebrew Bible that would lead you to believe that the messiah would die and be raised on the third day. Jewish people, who know the Hebrew Bible much better than we do, do not believe that Jesus is messiah, but their expectation does not include a messiah who dies and rises again. There is one passage in Isaiah (52.13 to 53.12) that speaks of God’s servant apparently dying for the sins of his people, yet (confusingly) enjoying long life and seeing his children’s children, but that’s about it.

The disciples were hugely shocked and upset at Jesus’ terrible death. According to Luke, when the women told the disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead, they thought it nonsense, and did not believe them. (Luke 24:10-11). But something happened that led the disciples and many others to become absolutely convinced that Jesus was still alive. In some way, they experienced him as a living person. After the ascension, Luke records that angels told the disciples, ‘This Jesus, who has been taken away from you up to heaven, will come in the same way as you have seen him go’ (Acts 1:11). The coming of the kingdom was still imminent. This was the main point of the resurrection in the Gospels: all is not lost. Jesus is still alive, and will shortly return to inaugurate the kingdom where he will rule as king.

There were varying beliefs about the afterlife in Judaism in Jesus’ time. Until the Babylonian exile, Jews had believed only in a very-limited existence after death, and their hope was for a long life, peace and prosperity, a respectful burial, and to leave many children. At the time of Jesus, the Sadducees, the privileged priestly class, did not believe in the resurrection (Mark 12:18). But the idea had gained ground that the dead would lie in their graves until the end times, the coming of the kingdom, when they would all be raised from the dead. When Jesus says to Martha, ‘Your brother [Lazarus] will rise again, she responds ‘I know that he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.’ The resurrection of Jesus could be seen as the beginning of the coming of the kingdom and the general resurrection of the dead.

(For Jews who did believe in the resurrection, the rewards they expected were lots of good food, respect, power and status, new clothes, and to see their oppressors punished – the things that the poor and oppressed lack. When we think of the afterlife, much of it is about being reunited with loved ones who have died.)

Paul the apostle was faced with people who found it difficult to believe that someone who was crucified as a criminal could be a great religious leader, but he had answers to these questions. Jewish people may think of the Garden of Eden as like childhood, and the expulsion – the knowledge of good and evil – as a growing maturity, so do not wish to return to Eden. But Paul interpreted the expulsion as the beginning of enslavement by sin and death, and only Jesus could liberate us from this, by taking the punishment himself (Romans 5:12-15; 1 Corinthians 15:3). This is difficult for us to swallow. Would God require someone to be tortured to death to solve the problems of sin and death, when Judaism already had its solutions (repentance and the forgiveness of God to deal with sin, and the general resurrection to deal with death)?

Modern Quakers might have to deal with this differently, and some have offered their own ways of thinking about it. While believing that ‘the cross in some way frees us from sin’, the Quaker theologian Mark Russ says that ‘In Jesus, God suffers and dies on the cross, and so it is with those who suffer and die on all crosses throughout history. The cross demonstrates God’s solidarity with the oppressed.’ Similarly, in the Friend (‘Come to Jesus,’ 8 December 2023), Cap Kaylor said, ‘For Jesus’ crucifixion to make sense, we don’t have to accept theories like substitutionary atonement. It is God’s final act of sympathy with humanity – “I will suffer with you”.’

I myself have not found the idea that Jesus’ death was an identification with the oppressed explicitly in the Bible, though perhaps Matthew 20:25-28, where Jesus says that he does not come to be served but to serve, is verging in that direction.

To sum up: at the time of Jesus, the Jewish people had a hope for a future kingdom of peace and justice, possibly inaugurated by a king descended from David. Jesus fits into this model, but the crucifixion, one of the few facts about Jesus that we know for certain, was completely unexpected. If Paul’s reasons for this horrific event do not speak to us, we must find some for ourselves: Why was Jesus crucified? Paul had his explanation, but do we have our own answer?

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