Mockery

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

MOCKERY. —The Evangelists relate in the Passion history a series of narratives describing the brutal mockery of Jesus by the authorities and by their soldiers and servants. The passages are the following: ( a )  Mark 14:65 =  Matthew 26:67-68 =  Luke 22:63-64; ( b )  Luke 23:11; ( c )  Mark 15:18-20 =  Matthew 27:27-31 =  John 19:2-3.

There is no necessity to ‘regard these stories as duplicates. A person who was condemned for the claims that Jesus was supposed to put forward was likely to meet with derision and brutality at every turn. Of course, it the story that Jesus was sent to Herod, which is peculiar to Lk., is unhistorical, the second of the stories would have to be struck out. If, however, that narrative is historical, and there is no cogent reason for doubting it, it was perfectly natural that Herod and his guards should mock one who claimed to be king. It is possible, indeed, that the narratives may have exerted an influence upon each other, but nothing compels us to affirm that any of them is unhistorical.

The first narrative records the mockery and ill-treatment inflicted on Jesus immediately after His. condemnation by the Sanhedrin. Two stages are mentioned in Mark. The first consisted of spitting, blindfolding, buffeting, and the request that He should prophesy. Then, following this, we have a statement as to the attendants, the meaning of which is not perfectly clear. The better reading in  Mark 14:65 is ἕλαβον. Several Manuscripts, however, read ἔβαλλον or ἔβαλον (see Field). It is not quite clear how we should translate or explain the better reading. Swete renders ‘they caught Him with blows,’ others ‘they took Him in charge with blows.’ ῥαπίσμασιν, means blows with the open hand, not blows with the rod. Another question touches the authors of this outrage. According to Mt., it is the members of the Sanhedrin. This seems to be Mk.’s meaning also, except that he limits it to ‘some.’ He mentions the servants at the close. Lk. represents the attendants who had charge of Jesus as alone concerned. Difficulties are also raised by the command to prophesy. Mt. and Lk. both explain it as a challenge to Jesus to prophesy who it was that smote Him. This in itself is perfectly natural, but it implies that Jesus was blindfolded, though there is no reference to this in Mt., and it is omitted by D [Note: Deuteronomist.] and Syr [Note: yr Syriac.] sin in Mark. Even if original in Mk., it may imply that Jesus was condemned to death (cf. ‘they covered Haman’s face,’  Esther 7:8), rather than that He was blindfolded so that He might be asked to prophesy who struck Him. Accordingly, the meaning may be ‘foretell the future,’ either generally or with a specific reference to His own fate, or to the destruction of the Temple, which He had been accused of predicting.

The second mockery, that before Herod, is free from the element of physical ill-treatment. Jesus is simply arrayed in royal garments, and a mocking homage is paid to Him; then He is sent back to Pilate.  Luke 23:10-12 is omitted, it is true, in Syr [Note: yr Syriac.] sin, and is regarded by Wellhausen as a later addition (see his note on the passage and on  Luke 23:15).

The third mockery is that by the Roman soldiers after the condemation by Pilate. This narrative is omitted by Lk. but recorded by John. The soldiers take Jesus into the Praetorium and summon the whole of their company. Then they clothe Him in purple and put a crown of thorns upon His head; then they do homage to Him, saluting Him as king of the Jews. They keep on striking Him on the head with a reed, spitting upon Him, and bending the knee to Him in mock homage. To this account (of Mk.) Mt. adds, first, that before clothing Him in the robes they divested Him of His garments, and that they put a reed in His right hand, and subsequently took it from Him and struck Him on the head with it. Here Mt.’s account deserves preference, for it is intrinsically probable that the reed should have been given Him as a sceptre before it was used to smite Him. Jn.’s account is brief; lie does not mention the reed, but says that they gave Him blows with the hand. It is a mark of historicity in the Gospel narratives that the Sanhedrists are represented as mocking the claims of Jesus to be a prophet, whereas the Roman soldiers, quite uninterested in His prophetic character, mock His claims to be a king, which would not be so ready a subject of jesting with the Jews, though they mocked Him for His pretensions to be a king of Israel as He hung upon the cross.

In recent years quite new significance has been attached to the mockery. Wendland in his art. ‘Jesus als Saturnalien-König’ ( Hermes , xxxiii. 175–179) put forward the view that the Roman soldiers ridiculed Christ’s royal and Divine claims by attiring Him in the dress of king Saturn. J. G. Frazer urges as an objection to this that, while it is possible that the Saturnalia may have been celebrated in Jerusalem at what seems to have been its original date in March, it is much more likely that it was really held in December, which, of course, does not harmonize with the time of year at which the Crucifixion took place. Frazer himself thinks that it resembled much more closely the treatment of the mock king of the Sacaea. He translates Dio Chrysostom’s description as follows: ‘They take one of the prisoners condemned to death and seat him upon the king’s throne, and give him the king’s raiment, and let him lord it and drink and run riot and use the king’s concubines during these days, and no man prevents him from doing just what he likes. But afterwards they strip and scourge and crucify him’ (Frazer, Golden Bough 2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , iii. 187).

Frazer argues that the Jewish Feast of Purim was a continuation of the Sacaea, and he conjectures that the Jews regularly compelled a condemned criminal to play a tragic part in that festival, and that Jesus perished in the character of Haman. He admits the difficulty caused by the fact that Purim fell a month before Passover, but he puts forward various suggestions to mitigate this difficulty. He thinks that possibly the Christian tradition may have shifted the date of the Crucifixion to coincide with the Passover, though he admits that this is perhaps not possible. He points out that the Bab. [Note: Babylonian.] festival seems to have fallen near the time of the Passover, and that the date of Purim was altered to a month earlier so as not to clash with it. He conjectures that the Jews may have sometimes, for a special reason, celebrated the Feast of Purim, or at least the death of Haman, at or near Passover. A further suggestion is, however, that possibly the licence of thirty days allowed to the mock king of the Saturnalia was allowed to the human representative of Haman. Yet as the mockery in question was not by Jews but by Roman soldiers, the question arises whether they would have been likely to take part in a Jewish celebration. To this Frazer replies that they may have fallen in with the local customs, but, quite apart from this, it was natural that without sharing Jewish beliefs they would be quite ready to join in the sport. He points out, however, that according to Lk.’s account, it was Herod’s soldiers who mocked Jesus, and they were presumably Jews. Thus the Crucifixion on this view was not a punishment specially designed for Christ, but merely the fate which annually befell the malefactor who played Haman. It is argued that certain difficulties in the narrative thus gain relief. Pilate was reluctant to give up Jesus and yet acquiesced, though he had the power to release Him. This is due to the fact that someone had to be given up to play the part of Haman. Again, would Pilate have ventured to put over the cross the inscription declaring that Jesus was king of the Jews with a tyrant so gloomy and suspicious as Tiberius, unless it had been a formula of long standing and regarded as quite innocuous? Since Jesus represented Haman, it is suggested that Barabbas represented Mordecai; and if so, he was probably released in order to play the part of a buffoon king (cf. the story of the mockery of Carabas in Philo, adv. Flaccum , ii. 520–523, and the ‘Ride of the Beardless One’ in Persia, referred to by Lagarde in his Purim ). The name Barabbas, Frazer suggests, was an official title mistakenly regarded as a personal name. Originally Haman and Mordecai were the same, but one personated the dead and the other the risen deity. The same person probably played both parts, he who was Mordecai one year was Haman the next.

This ingenious theory is open to the most serious objections. Some of these have been stated by Mr. Andrew Lang in the very elaborate investigation he gives in Magic and Religion . It is very difficult to make good the identification of Purim with the Sacaea even if Frazer’s interpretation of the Sacaea could hold good, which is very doubtful. It is also very improbable that a victim was actually crucified in the character of Haman by the Jews. There is not a shred of evidence to make such a suggestion plausible. And when we come to apply it to the Gospel history, the theory becomes more improbable than ever. The licence allowed to ‘the Beardless One’ was such that he was permitted, if the shopkeepers did not give him what he wished during his ride through the city, to appropriate everything they had in their shops. It is not easy to see any real parallel between this and the overturning of the money-changers’ tables and driving out of their sheep and oxen from the Temple by Jesus. There is all the difference between a raid on the shopkeepers for personal plunder and the cleansing of the Temple from an intolerable abuse. Jesus would not have been asked by the authorities by what right He did these things, if it had been a perfectly legitimate exercise of a power He possessed as the representative of Haman. Moreover, Frazer’s theory involves our rejection of the Johannine date for the cleansing of the Temple, although that date has much that can be said in its favour. Apart from this, however, one insuperable difficulty remains. It is quite possible that Jesus should have suffered in any character chosen for Him by those who compassed His death. In that respect He was a passive victim. But it is quite incredible that He should have participated in these ceremonies of His own free will, or have given any colour whatever to superstitions of that kind. It is accordingly out of the question to interpret the cleansing of the Temple as Frazer does, since that would imply that Jesus lent Himself to this festival. Moreover, unless the Gospel narratives are altogether misleading, Jesus was not in the hands of His enemies till the night before His death, and therefore His triumphal entry and His attack on the desecration of the Temple could have been no part of the programme of a Purim festival. There would have been no need for secrecy through the fear of the people, or for the services of the traitor, if the mockery and death were but the last acts in a longer drama. Nor are the difficulties in the Gospel narratives really mitigated by this hypothesis. The ordinary explanation of Pilate’s vacillation and surrender is perfectly adequate. The procurator was so unpopular that he dared not risk the charge of treason that might have been launched against him before Tiberius if he had let a claimant to Messianic dignity go free. However convinced Pilate may have been that Jesus was harmless to Rome, nothing would nave been easier than to bring a very damaging charge against him before the emperor. Nor is the title over the cross to be interpreted along Frazer’s lines. To have let Jesus go would have constituted a much more valid basis of accusation than to write the title ‘This is the king of the Jews’ over His cross, for that meant ‘This is the king of the Jews, and thus I serve pretenders to the throne.’ It mocked Jesus and exasperated the Jews. To imagine that by one course Pilate would have escaped the charge of treason which he would have incurred by the other, is indeed to strain out the gnat and swallow the camel. If, as Frazer says, Pilate was obliged to give up a prisoner, and all he could do was to choose him, he had others whom he might have chosen besides Jesus and Barabbas. It was a choice that was dictated by his position. He was in the grip of his past and of his dread of Tiberius. Another point that deserves mention is that the mockery of Christ’s prophetic claims is precisely parallel to the mockery of His royal claims. In the one case they bid Him prophesy, in the other they dress Him up as a mock king and pay Him a ribald homage. The parallelism shows us how unnecessary it is for us to seek for far-fetched reasons to explain the conduct of the Roman soldiers. Nothing was more natural than that the supporters of an alien empire should mock royal claims put forward by one who belonged to the subject people, and no derision was more effective than the dressing up of their victim as king. The sceptre served to beat Him, and the jest of the coronation was all the more piquant that the crown was studded with thorns. As Mr. Lang reminds us, ‘Wallace was crowned at his trial with laurel’; and Atholl, who was a pretender to the crown, ‘was tortured to death with a red-hot iron crown’ ( Magic and Religion , p. 203).

Lastly, it should be observed that the passage from Dio Chrysostom will not bear too much weight. There is a resemblance in the clothing with royal robes, in the stripping, the scourging, and the death, but there is no resemblance to the royal privileges accorded to the condemned prisoner, and it is also not clear that the victim was crucified. The Greek word used (ἐκρέμασαν) may mean simply that he was hanged, though the other view is more probable. No stress can be laid on the scourging in the case of Jesus, for it was the usual preliminary to crucifixion, and crucifixion was unhappily among the Romans no exceptional form of execution.

Literature.—In addition to the Commentaries and Lives of Christ, see Frazer, Golden Bough 2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , iii. 186–198; A. Lang, Magic and Religion , 76–204, 295–305; Vollmer, Jesus und das Sacœenopfer  ; Reich, Der König mit der Dornenkrone .

Arthur S. Peake.

Webster's Dictionary

(1): ( n.) Insulting or contemptuous action or speech; contemptuous merriment; derision; ridicule.

(2): ( n.) Subject of laughter, derision, or sport.

(3): ( n.) The act of mocking, deriding, and exposing to contempt, by mimicry, by insincere imitation, or by a false show of earnestness; a counterfeit appearance.