Sandy Curnow Reflection

Soldiers, ‘Justice’ and ‘Keeping the Peace’ in the Time of Jesus

When King Herod the Great died in 4 BCE most Jews must have heaved a great sigh of relief.

He was loathed.

While Herod called himself Jewish, this was not universally accepted; he came from Idumaea in the south, down below Masada and the Dead Sea, and from the hated tribe of Esau.  He had been a shrewd if merciless king and a spectacular builder – think of the Temple in Jerusalem – but as he aged Herod had become increasingly brutal.  Justice depended on his whim, and he saw treachery everywhere; he even killed (amongst the many others) the best loved of his multiple wives and two of their sons.  He had been a reliable ‘client king’ of Palestine as far as Rome was concerned, for over 30 eventful years, but made one bad political mistake backing Antony and Cleopatra in the battle of Actium, and so he needed some clever maneuvering to convince the victor, 

Augustus, to support him.  It was in Rome’s interest to do so.  The Palestine Herod ruled as part of the Empire was possibly less productive than it was politically important; but it lay between the rich and vital provinces of Syria and Egypt and held them together, and so he managed to maintain friendship with Rome.  In fact, after Cleopatra’s suicide Augustus gave Herod her 400 Gallic soldiers to act as part of his 2000 strong bodyguard.  They served him efficiently but were hardly interested in administering social justice to Jewish subjects.  Years later and fully armed, they played a spectacular role at Herod’s funeral. 

The mind boggles. 

This was the political world into which Jesus was born.  And had to live among these people and the pressures they exerted, especially as he became better known.  Because this world was so familiar to the gospel writers they presumed that the people for whom they wrote needed no explanations or re-telling.  They were right at first but today their political reality needs a deal of explanation.

If Herod’s death was messy, so was his will and its aftermath.  Jesus’s birth is accepted as being a few years later, by which time the power structure had settled, but many of the non-Jewish soldiers had stayed on to maintain law and order for the next generation of his (pretty awful) family: there was Herod Antipas who ruled Galilee; his capital was Tiberias on the west shore of sea of Galilee only 15 miles from Nazareth; this was the area where John the Baptist probably preached, and where Jesus certainly spent much of his life.  Then there was Herod Philip who ruled north-east of the Sea of Galilee and up towards the Golan Heights, his capital was Caesarea Philippi; and finally Herod Archelaus who briefly governed Judea, which was the southern part of the country with its capital Jerusalem, but he was so brutal/incompetent that after 10 years ‘marked by excessive cruelty’ Rome exiled him to southern France.

By now the emperor Augustus had had enough of the Herodian family, and put Judea under direct rule with a procurator who was answerable straight to Rome.  This area of Judea including Jerusalem increasingly became the focus of Jesus’ final months.  In the last years of his life it was governed by Pontius Pilate. 

Pilate was a civil/military administrator, but he also selected the chief priest – an appointment crucial in maintaining order (and possibly some semblance of Justice) in the city.  He obviously worked effectively with Caiaphas because he held the post for 10 years.  The latter, with the backing of the 71 men of the Sanhedrin council and the Jewish Temple guards, kept control both in the sacred area and in the city’s flow of pilgrims at times of special feasts.  Pilate had some of his own legionaries for emergencies tucked into the Antonia Fortress not far from where he held court when in Jerusalem, but he tried not to antagonize the locals by displaying military standards, and mostly he stayed in Caesarea Maritima with around 5000 soldiers – a Legion – of auxiliaries who were possibly Samaritan, more probably Syrian Greek.  At times when Jerusalem’s population more than doubled such as at Passover, Pilate brought all his forces, structured exactly as Roman legions and with Roman senior officers, to town as civil defense.  

These soldiers were the law-enforcement agents and law was a pretty brutal affair.  In the political tensions after the end of Herod the Great’s reign, 2000 rebels were crucified in Galilee alone; a decade or so later another two thousand or more met the same fate under Archelaus in Judea over minor tax revolts.  Bearing that in mind, the soldiers discussed in the Gospels seem to come off fairly lightly.  They are not especially vicious.  The ones who come to the desert to see John son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, preaching baptism and repentance were told “Rob no one by violence or by false accusation and be content with your wages”.  Not so easy in a society where any official was expected to take his cut.  John the Baptist mostly preached in Galilee; if so then the soldiers were probably not Jewish, as they were exempt from compulsory military service, so possibly outsiders.  Their ruler and immediate superior hardly set any example of justice; he was the Herod Antipas who eventually gave the enchanting Salome John the Baptist’s head on a dish as a reward.  The preacher had condemned his marriage.  It was dangerous to criticize authority in such a ruthless world. 

Jesus’ arrest, trial and execution all occur in Jerusalem and was in part carried out by auxiliary Roman legions raised in the eastern Mediterranean of specifically non-Jewish men who often had a tense relationship with the local population.  But the soldiers were not solely legionaries.  Jesus was initially arrested by the high priest’s guards with, in John’s gospel, some Roman soldiers as support.  Once they were in the Temple area and in discussion/judgment before the Sanhedrin only Jewish troops would have been involved.

The exchange between Pilate and Antipas becomes understandable as an exercise in shifting responsibility – especially in the light of recent history.  Pilate was accountable to Rome and could not afford any disturbance much less insurrection, moreover he needed to keep the religious establishment placated.  Herod Antipas was out of his area of responsibility and wasn’t interested in getting involved – or in justice – but was always interested in miracle workers.

The right of capital punishment – executions – was restricted to Pilate’s jurisdiction.  Carrying out executions fell to the lot of the legions.  The gospel writers wanted their accounts to circulate through the Roman world; their accounts of the trial and crucifixion are relatively straightforward, and don’t particularly blame the Roman rule.  The three synoptics register the Centurion’s “Truly this man was the Son of God”, finally correcting the Roman wrong.

There was another Centurion, however, much earlier in the gospels of Matthew and Luke (and perhaps the account is paralleled in John), who was an entirely different figure. 

He was a man of justice, generosity and faith, the ideal gentile administrator and peacekeeper.  He was posted to Capernaum, a fishing village and trade hub on the Sea of Galilee at the border between Herod Antipas’ and Philip’s administrations, and so probably at a custom point needing official presence.  Possibly not a centurion in a Legion’s official terms, with 80 men under him, but able to have built the local synagogue in sympathy with the locals, and with a reputation for decency.  The man approached Jesus to ask help for his sick servant, Jesus turned to the soldier’s house to see the ailing man and is halted by that extraordinary proclamation of faith – all the more startling because it has overtones of the occupier soldier speaking to the occupied– “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, only say the word and my servant shall be healed”.   

In the Mass today our Communion prayers begin with John the Baptist’s earliest greeting to Jesus at the outset of his public life:- “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” and ends with an adaptation of the foreign soldier’s – another outsider’s – prayer “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, say but the word and my soul shall be healed”. 

Distributing Communion around hospitals and nursing homes in Melbourne today, it’s strange to think that you are quoting a Roman Soldier.

By Sandy Curnow

Image 1: No graven image was acceptable under Jewish law. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Image 2: The End of King Herod. 11th century, unknown painter. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Image 3: Detail of a terracotta frieze from Civitalba (Marches, Italy) in the region of the battlefield of Sentinum, depicting Celtic warriors. Image from Ancona Museum Public Domain
Image 4: Map of Israel at the Time of Jesus. (Source: www.conformingtojesus.com)
Image 5: This bronze relief for one side of the baptistry font in Siena’s cathedral shows Donatello’s masterpiece of Herod’s Feast and the moment of presentation of John the Baptist’s head on a platter. It is a moment of horror: figures crowd away from the gruesome object on both sides of the image (they almost explode outwards) — so that the focal point of the scene, right in the light-reflecting centre is empty space. Where there should be something there is nothing. A tour de force. (Source: Author’s photo)