Bill Petro

HISTORICAL CLIMATE OF EASTER

What was the historical climate surrounding the last week of the life of Jesus of Nazareth? This man born to die, not just in the normal sense, but in some special sense, entered Jerusalem amidst a torrent of political, social and economic turbulence. The events in Palestine at this time are rarely linked to the larger context which controlled the province: the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the culmination of Jesus’ career was really a tale of two cities - Jerusalem and Rome. In these historical notes we will examine this climate. Some of the subjects we will examine include:

THE CHARACTERS:

• Pilate: who was he, what were the pressures he faced, did he fly a plane?

• Herod: the “fox”, was he as clever as his father, Herod the Great?

• Pharisees & Sadducees: how were they related, which held the greater power, and how were their names spelled?

• The Sanhedrin & the High Priests: what was the makeup and jurisdiction of the council. Who was the current High Priest, Annas or Caiaphus, the New Testament calls them both High Priest?

THE EVENTS:

• Palm Sunday: what was the climate of the city when Jesus entered?

• The Trial: what took place during the trials, what laws were involved?

• The Crucifixion: what was involved on Good Friday?

• The Resurrection: what do we know about it?

Our story begins during the last week of March, A.D. 33. The relationship between the Jews and Rome went back at least 100 years. In 63 B.C. a dispute arose between two factions of the high priestly family. One of the factions appealed to Rome for assistance. The result of this was that General Pompey arrived in Palestine during his reorganization of the East and made Judea a Roman client kingdom. Herod the Great was appointed king (remember him from the Christmas story?). Upon his death in 4 B.C. the kingdom was divided into 4 tetrarchies among his sons. His son Herod Antipas (we’ll meet him again) was given Galilee and Pereae. Archelaus received Judah, Idumea, and Samaria which he ruled so poorly that he was banished and replaced by a succession of Roman governors or prefects. Judea was neither one of the more important, nor more illustrious provinces and for that reason was not ruled over by a member of the more noble ‘senatorial‘ class. Instead, a member of the equestrian class (equus=horse Lat., ‘knight’ or official), the middle class which made up an important part of the Roman bureaucracy and military. The sixth of these governors was Pontius Pilate.

For centuries the Jewish people had awaited the coming of a Messiah, “the anointed one” of God who would rule on the throne of King David and deliver them from their oppressors. This expectation ran throughout the Old Testament, with a number of themes attached: God’s vice-regent on earth, a deliverer from political oppression, a suffering servant who would deliver the people from their sins, an eternal ruler. During the period between the Old and New Testaments, ca 400 B.C to A.D. 65, a large amount of literature surfaced, called apocryphal and apocalyptic literature, repeating and embellishing the concept of the Messiah. (The Greek word of the Hebrew Messiah is christos, or “anointed one”, from which we get the word Christ. Christ was not Jesus’ name, but rather a title, Jesus the Christ.) Before the Romans, the Jewish people had suffered under a number of occupying oppressors, including the Greeks, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Medeo-Persians. After almost a hundred years under the Romans the expectation for the Messiah had reached almost a fever pitch. This was the condition when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

Inspired in part by Paul L. Maier’s In the Fullness of Time

PALM SUNDAY

The week we now call Holy Week, started with Palm Sunday. Why was this week so important that three of the gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) devote a full third of their contents to reporting this week, and The Fourth Gospel (John) dedicates its entire last half? Jerusalem, which had a normal population of about 50,000 at this time, had at least tripled in size because of the influx of pilgrims celebrating the Jewish holiday Passover. Early Sunday morning Jesus made his baldly public entry into the city. This was the end of all privacy and safety, and the beginning of what would be an inevitable collision course with the religious and political authorities. Crowds began to gather to see the rabbi from Galilee. The procession began accompanied by shouting and singing from the throngs as they threw down their garments on the pathway to cushion his ride - an Oriental custom still observed on occasions - as well as palm fronds, the symbol of triumph. The Old Testament prophet Zechariah had foretold the arrival of the Messianic king in Jerusalem via the humble conveyance of a colt. Here the crowd hailed Jesus as “the son of David”, a loaded name used at a loaded time. The priestly establishment was understandably disturbed, as the palm was the national emblem of an independent Palestine. These were Jewish flags. What if Jesus should claim to be the heir of King David?

Recent archiological excavations have turned up Roman coins, which have the head of Emperor Tiberias (idolatrous to the Jewish subjects) but overstamped with a palm.

The “conspiracy” against Jesus had been building for at least 3 years, and the sources record seven instances of official plotting against him, two efforts at arrest, and three assassination attempts before this time. This intrigue was no spur of the moment idea. A formal decision to arrest Jesus had in fact been made several months earlier. The Jewish religious officials were afraid that if Jesus were to continue performing his signs, he would win over the people and the Romans would come in and destroy the Temple and nation. According to legal custom at that time, a court crier had to announce publicly or post an official “wanted” handbill in the larger towns of Judea about forty days prior to a trial. Small wonder that there was some debate over whether Jesus would dare appear in Jerusalem for the next Passover. This discussion ended abruptly on Palm Sunday.

There were political reasons for dealing with Jesus. There had been a dozen uprisings in Palestine in the previous 100 years, most of them subdued by Roman force. Another Messianic rebellion under Jesus would only shatter the precarious balance of authority, break Rome’s patience, and might lead to direct occupation by Roman legions.

Religiously, Jesus was a dangerous item. The people were hailing the Teacher from Galilee as something more than a man, and Jesus was not denying or blunting this blasphemous adulation. Personally, the Pharisees had been bested by Jesus in public debate, being called vipers, whitewashed tombs, and devourers of widow’s houses. Humiliated, they would be only too happy to conspire with the scribes, elders, and chief priests. There were economic motives for opposing Jesus as well. Seeing the commercialization of the Temple, Jesus had driven the dealers and animals out, as well as turning over the tables of the moneychangers causing a major disruption in business. There were many reasons for dealing with Jesus.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

from Paul L. Maier’s In the Fullness of Time

HISTORY OF THE IDES OF MARCH

According to the ancient Roman calendar, the ides fell on the 13th of the month with the exception of the months March, May, July, and October, when it fell on the 15th.

It was on March 15, 44 B.C. that the Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated. Contrary to popular belief, including William Shakespeare, Caesar was not assassinated in the Capitol, meaning the Curia Hostilia or Senate House in the Roman Forum at the foot of the Capitoline Hill (pictured at top), but rather near the statue of Pompey at the Theatrum Pompeium (pictured at right in the Largo di Torre Argentina in modern day Rome), where the Senate used to meet at that time. This precinct is now a Cat Sanctuary (as you can see the cat in the center of my photo) where I counted over a dozen homeless cats. They are regularly fed by local women.

Marc Antony would have delivered his Shakespearean speech

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears”

from the Rostra of the Forum, directly across from the Curia (pictured at left).

Dead bodies could not be kept inside the City, and Caesar was cremated in the Forum (at the location pictured on the right).

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF EASTER

The most joyous of Christian festivals, and one of the first celebrated by the Christians, commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. The English word “Easter” corresponding to the German “Oster“, reveals the association of many Easter customs with those of the Teutonic tribes of central Europe. When Christianity reached these people it incorporated many of their heathen rites into the great Christian feast day. Easter month, corresponding to our April, was dedicated to Eostre, or Ostara, goddess of the spring. There was in common the time of spring and the triumph of life over death.

The practice of eating eggs on Easter Sunday and giving them as gifts to friends and children probably arose because, in the earlier days of the church, eggs were forbidden food during Lent (the 40 days before Easter) and were therefore always eaten on Easter Sunday. But the custom of coloring eggs goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians, who practiced this custom during their spring festival.

The Easter hare, or bunny, comes from antiquity as well. The hare is associated with the moon in the legends of ancient Egypt. It belongs to the night when it comes out to feed. It is born with its eyes opened and, like the moon, is “the open-eyed watcher of the skies”. Through the fact that the Egyptian word for hare, “un”, means also “open” and “period”, the hare became associated with the idea of periodicity, both lunar and human, and so became a symbol of fertility and of the renewal of life. As such, the hare became linked with the Easter, or paschal eggs. In the U.S. the Easter rabbit is fabled to lay the eggs in the nests prepared for it or to hide them for the children to find.

Although Easter was celebrated very early in the church, its date was not established until A.D. 325 when Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicea, where it was decided that it should be observed on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox, to be fixed each year at Alexandria, then the center of astronomical science. The date is an approximation, and may vary. This means that its date may vary as much as 35 days!

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

ST. PATRICK’S DAY

Although much of the life of the patron saint of Ireland is shrouded in legend, he was probably born around the year 389. What we do know about him comes from his book, “The Confession”, which he wrote near the end of his life. It begins,

“I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated and least of all the faithful…My father was Calpornius, a deacon, a son of Potitus, a presbyter, who was at the village of Bannavem Taberniea.”

He was born it seems in the Severn Valley in England. He was British, not Irish. He was doubtless educated in pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain under a Christian influence with a reverence for the Roman Empire, of which he was a citizen. His father was a landowner and together with his family he lived on their estate. At the age of sixteen, when he claimed he “did not then know the true God,” he was carried off by a band of Irish marauders. Irish tradition says he tended the herds of a chieftain in the county Antrim. His bondage lasted for six years during which time, as he wrote, “turned with all my heart to the Lord my God.”

He fled 200 miles to the coast of Wicklow, and encountered a ship engaged in the export of Irish wolf-dogs. After three days at sea the traders landed, probably on the west coast of Gaul, and journeyed twenty-eight days through the desert. At the end of two months Patrick parted company with his companions and spent a few years in the monastery of Lerins. After returning home from the Mediterranean the idea of missionary enterprise in Ireland came to him. He seems to have proceeded to Auxerre where he was ordained by Bishop Amator and spent at least fourteen years there.

While in Ireland Patrick was both an evangelist of the gospel of Jesus and an organizer of the faithful. He battled heresy as well as engaged in trials of skill against Druids. There is some evidence that he traveled to Rome around 441-443 and brought back with him some valuable relics. On his return he founded the church and monastery of Armagh. Some years later he retired, probably to Saul in Dalaradia.

As one travels through Ireland, there are many stories and legends about Patrick. One in Dublin has it that the St. Patrick Cathedral (pictured at the top) is situated at the site of an old well where Patrick would baptize converts into the faith. There is a stone tablet in front of the church commemorating the location (pictured at right).

Other legends report him ridding Ireland of snakes, though it is unlikely that post-ice age Ireland had snakes. For another view on this, see my three articles on the history of St. Patrick at this link.

In modern times the feast associated with his death on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, has become primarily an ethnic holiday celebrating Irish heritage in much the same way as Columbus Day is a celebration of Italian ethnicity in the United States. Indeed, major Irish celebrations of the day in the United States predated large public celebrations in Ireland itself! In Chicago, there are two St. Patrick’s Day Parades. However, you can’t close down the schools on St. Patrick’s Day without showing ethnic bias. So Massachusetts’s Suffolk County, among other counties, closes the schools to commemorate March 17, 1776, the day the British troops cleared out of Boston in the American Revolutionary War. For the record, they call it Evacuation Day.

Update: Due to Holy Week occurring this year unusually early in the calendar, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in some cities has been moved to March 14 or 15. Especially in cities where traditional parades take place the Sunday before March 17, which this year coincides with Palm Sunday. This calender conundrum will not occur again until 2160.

Bill MacPetro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF PRESIDENTS’ DAY

During my lifetime, two American holidays got consolidated into one. In 1971, both Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12) and Washington’s Birthday (February 22) became a single Federal holiday, Presidents’ Day to be observed on the third Monday in February, to honor all the past presidents of the United States. Both Washington’s and Lincoln’s pictures were typically displayed prominently in school rooms. School children in many states have felt cheated out of an extra day off of school ever since.

George Washington was known even during his lifetime as “the father of his country” though between him and Lincoln, Abraham looked more like the father and George’s long hair made him look more like the mother. Nevertheless, George was a natural leader, standing 6′4″ amongst troops that stood 5′9″. He appeared at the Continental Congress in uniform, the natural choice for military leader. He had experience in battle in the French and Indian War in America, fighting for the English King George III, but the American Revolutionary war saw him fighting for independence against the same King that he had earlier served.He served only two terms as President of the new United States of America, though many would have supported his rule for life. Napoleon of France was amazed that Washington would step down when he didn’t need to.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the most popular, best remembered, and most oft written about Presidents in American history. He too served during a time of bitter warfare, again with brother fighting brother and neighbor fighting neighbor, this time though during the American Civil War, or what became known in the South as the War Between the States. While this great conflagration had many economic and political causes, Lincoln’s name remains associated with the abolition of slavery.

Two great wars, one for freedom of independent government, one for a different kind of freedom. More Americans died in that second war than all other wars Americans were ever involved in… because the dead were counted on both sides. Two great Presidents. The first remembered for selfless deeds who served as first President when he might have been king. The other for his great words that began to heal a nation after the largest battle ever fought on American soil. As he remembered those who fought and died at the Battle of Gettysburg he concluded:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY

Valentine or Valentinus, is the name of at least three martyred saints. The most celebrated are the two martyrs whose festivals fall on February 14, the one, a Roman priest, the other, bishop of Terni. It would appear from the legends that both lived during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (Gothicus); that both died on the same day; and that both were buried on the Via Flaminia, but at different distances from Rome. A third was a martyr in the Roman province of North Africa about whom little is known. It seems that the first celebration of the feast of St. Valentine was declared to be on February 14 by Pope Gelasius I in 496. Many authorities believe that the lovers’ festival associated with St. Valentine’s day comes from the belief that this is the day in spring when birds begin their mating. There is another view held, however.

In the days of early Rome a great festival was held every February called Lupercalia, held in honor of a god named Lupercus. During the founding days of Rome the city was surrounded by an immense wilderness in which were great hordes of wolves. The Romans thought they must have a god to watch over and protect the shepherds with their flocks, so they called this god Lupercus, from the Latin word, lupus, a wolf. One of the amusements on this festival day was the placing of young women’s names in a box to be drawn out by the young men. Each young man accepted the girl whose name he drew, as his lady love. Whether the customs of Lupercalia are perpetuated in Valentine’s Day remain unknown.

In any event, customs have changed throughout the years, during Christian times the priests put the names of saints and martyrs into the boxes to be drawn out. The name that was drawn out was called one’s “valentine” and the holy life of that person was to be imitated throughout the year. It was at one time the custom in England for people to call out “Good morning, ’tis St. Valentine’s Day”, and the one who succeeded in saying this first expected a present from the one to whom it was said, making things pretty lively on St. Valentine’s Day.

Paper valentines date back to the 1500’s but it took the enterprise of America to make a buck at it. Esther A. Holland, who produced one of the first American commercial Valentines in the 1840’s sold $5,000 worth - when $5,000 was a LOT of money - in the first year.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

ASH WEDNESDAY

In the western church the first day of Lent is called Ash Wednesday from the ceremonial use of ashes, as a symbol of penitence, in the service prescribed for the day. The custom is still retained in the Roman Catholic Church as well as the Anglican, Episcopal and Lutheran Churches. The ashes, obtained by burning the remains of the palm branches blessed on the previous Palm Sunday, are placed in a vessel on the altar and consecrated before High Mass. The priest then invites those present to approach and, dipping his thumb in the ashes, marks them as they kneel with the sign of the cross on the forehead, with the words:

Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

This ceremony is derived from the custom of public penance in the early church. When the custom was extended to the entire congregation is not known, although it seems to have been in common use by the late 10th century.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

MARDI GRAS

In French, Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday” and is celebrated the day before Ash Wednesday as a last “fling” prior to the 40 days of Lent which precede Easter. Lent is a word that comes from the Middle English word “lente” which means “springtime” - so named for the season of the year in which it usually occurs. While the practice of Lent is not mentioned in the Bible, it has been a tradition in the Christian world since the mid 4th century. It seems to parallel the 40 days of fasting in the wilderness that Jesus experienced following his baptism.

Historically, Lenten fasting became mandatory, especially abstinence from eating meat. While recommended by St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in 330 AD, by the Middle Ages Lent was enforced throughout Europe, especially the forbidding of meat during the final weeks before Easter.

The word “carnival” comes from an old Italian word that means to “go without meat” or “removal of meat.” Festivals like Mardi Gras sprang up throughout parts of Europe as a means to prepare for the coming times of self-denial. Venice especially was a “party town” for centuries with its Carnevale di Venezia and it’s elaborate masks. The three days before Ash Wednesday is also known as “Shrovetide,” where shrove is an Old English word meaning “to repent.” In England, the Tuesday just before Ash Wednesday is called Shrove Tuesday and is celebrated by eating of rich food, that won’t be used during Lent.

As the Protestant Reformation spread throughout Europe, Lent became regarded more as a Roman Catholic institution, and was increasingly ignored by Protestants as a traditional observance. This tendency did not reverse, especially in the US, until the 1980s. Today, more Protestant churches participate in Lent with devotions and Scripture readings, as well as special Ash Wednesday services.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF GROUNDHOG DAY

Groundhog Day comes from Candlemas Day, observed for centuries in parts of Europe on February 2 where the custom was to have the clergy bless candles and distribute them to the people. This seems to have derived from the pagan celebration of Imbolc — the Feast of the goddess Bridget, or in Christian Ireland St. Bridget’s Day and alternatively “The Purification of the Virgin” commemorating the time when St. Mary presented Jesus at the Temple at Jerusalem. It comes at the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. The Roman Legions, it is said, originally brought the tradition to the Germans.

In more modern times, says the old Scottish couplet:

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear

There’ll be two winters in the year

By the 1840s the following idea caught on in the U.S., particularly in Pennsylvania whose earliest settlers were German immigrants. If the groundhog sees its shadow on a “bright and clear” day, six more weeks of winter are ahead.

Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania is the headquarters of the celebration where the groundhog “Punxsutawney Phil” regards his shadow at Gobbler’s Knob, a wooded knoll just outside the town.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com