The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem
There are many difficulties with the account of Jesus' "Triumphal Entry" into Jerusalem.
- Mark again showed his ignorance of Palestinian Geography in the passage.
- Matthew in his zealousness to make Jesus fulfil Old Testament prophecies made Jesus sat on two donkeys at the same time!
- Many of the details of the Triumphal Entry could easily have been taken from the Old Testament.
Mark's Geographical Error
The account of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem as narrated by Mark looks fairly straightforward:
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Mark 11:1-11 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt there which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, �Why are you doing this?' tell him, 'The lord needs it and will send it back shortly.'" They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, "What are you doing, untying the colt?" They answered that Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had out in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming of the kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!" Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late he went out to Bethany with the twelve. |
This is the comment from the biblical theologian D.E. Nineham:
| The geographical details make an impression of awkwardness, especially as Bethphage and Bethany are given in reverse order to that in which travelers from Jericho would reach them...and we must therefore assume that St Mark did not know the relative positions of the two villages on the Jericho road...[2] |
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Matthew 21:1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives... |
This oversight, although minor, shows us that Mark�s traditional source for this passage cannot be fully relied on.
Map of Judaea circa 30 CE
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Jesus Sitting on Two Donkeys
Both Luke (19:29-35) and John (12:12-16) also mentioned that in his entry to Jerusalem, Jesus sat on a young donkey. The sitting on the donkey fulfils an Old Testament prophecy about the manner of how the messiah will enter the holy city:
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Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass. |
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Matthew 21:1-7 As they approached Jerusalem...Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away." This took place to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet:
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That Jesus could negotiate his way by sitting on two animals at the same time is obviously absurd. [b] But Matthew's treatment of the episode gives us an insight into the mindset of this evangelist. We know from our previous analysis that Matthew incorporated a large portion of the gospel of Mark into his own gospel. We must conclude therefore that Matthew considered Mark to be a reasonably reliable document. That being the case, why would Matthew here deliberately alter the Markan account by deliberately replacing a natural account of the triumphal entry for a more absurd one?
The answer to this is simple. Matthew, like most Christians of his era, believed Jesus to be the Christ or the messiah. This belief was fundamental to their outlook. Following this they believed that any Old Testament passages which they interpreted as prophecies of the coming messiah must therefore have been fulfilled in Jesus' life. The Old Testament therefore becomes a kind of historical source for events of the life of Jesus. In the case of the triumphal entry, Matthew understands the passage in Zechariah to mean that the messiah will be riding on two donkeys. That Mark says otherwise is inconsequential to him. Mark at the moment of Matthew's writing had not yet achieved canonical status. Thus to Matthew, Mark's narrative, of having Jesus just sitting on one animal, must be wrong because the scripture said that there were to be two!
This episode will illustrate why a level of skepticism must be applied to any event narrated in the gospels that deliberately and directly fulfilled an Old Testament prophecy. It was more likely that the evangelists, convinced of his belief that Jesus was the messiah, constructed the episodes based solely on the Old Testament prophecies and not on any historical fact.
Fundamentalists like to point out that the sheer amount of Old Testament passages fulfilled in Jesus' life proves that he was the messiah. [4] What we have seen here shows that the fundamentalists has had their whole understanding turned upside down. The conviction that Jesus was the messiah came first. Then the early Christians began to ransack the Old Testament for passages referring to the messiah to find out more about his life on earth.
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Old Testament as a Source of the Story
If we look back into the passage in Mark 11:1-11, we find that almost every detail of the passage could be traced back to the Old Testament.
The Mount of Olives
First, the statement about the Mount of Olives (Mark 11:1). There was widespread Jewish belief current during the first century AD that the Messiah would will come to the Mount of Olives. This is based on an interpretation of a passage from Zechariah:
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Zechariah 14:4 On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives which lies before Jerusalem on the east. |
The Unridden Colt
The additional detail about a colt �which no one has ever ridden� (Mark 11:2) is also found in Zechariah 9:9 for the Septuagint gives the description of the colt as polon neon (a �new�-i.e. unridden-colt). This gives rise to two problems. One, Mark did not take into account the obvious difficulty Jesus would have had sitting on an unbroken and untrained animal. [5] Second, it is highly unlikely, that Jesus would have relied on the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible when figuring out how to fulfill Old Testament prophecies.
The Exclamation of the Crowd
The exclamation of the crowd, far from being a natural outburst, is taken from the book of Psalms. [6] Given below are the relevant verses:
| Mark | Psalms |
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11:9 Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
11:10 |
118:25-26 Hosanna, O Lord... Blessed be he who enters in the name of the Lord.
148:1 |
I have left the Hebrew word Hosanna in Psalms untranslated above, in order to show the relationship with Mark�s passage. The word actually means save us, we implore you. It is obvious then that Mark�s phrase Hosanna in the highest! (Mark 11:10) has no meaning! Mark had obviously misunderstood the term and thought it meant something like praise the Lord. In other words, he misunderstood a cry for help as an expression of joy! [7]
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Notes
| a. | The Authorized Version (or King James Version), a seventeenth century translation (inaccurate by the standards of modern translations), and the "official" Bible of most fundamentalists, translated Matthew 21:7 as "he sat thereon". This obscures the intention of the author, for the original Greek went epekathisen epano auton which is correctly translated by most modern Bibles as "he sat on them." | ||||||||||
| b. | In the Catholic New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Prentice Hall 1999; p664), the authors suggested that if their Catholic lay reader finds it "difficult" to imagine Jesus sitting on two animals simultaneously they may choose to assume that the last "them" in Matthew 21:7 refers to the garments (or the cloaks) instead of the donkey and its colt! The tentative nature of the suggestion shows that the authors really do not have much to stand on as far as that interpretation goes. However since this interpretation is also favored by fundamentalist we have to see why it is wrong. Firstly we note that even if we allow, for the sake of argument, that the final "them" refers to the garments, it does not follow that Jesus sat only on one donkey. For just the line before that we are told that the disciples places the garments on them-meaning the two donkeys:
However we do not even need to concede this. There are many reasons why the natural reading, that the final "them," refers to the donkey and its colt, is the correct one.
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References
| 1. | Helms, Gospel Fictions: p103 |
| 2. | Nineham, Saint Mark: p294-295 |
| 3. | Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls: p151 Cadoux, The Life of Jesus: p180 Fenton, Saint Matthew: p330 |
| 4. | McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict: p141-177 |
| 5. | Helms, Gospel Fictions: p103 Wells, Did Jesus Exist?: p118 |
| 6. | Helms, Gospel Fictions: p104-105 |
| 7. | Craveri, The Life of Jesus: p285 Wells, Did Jesus Exist?: p117-118 Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus: p178 |
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