One Cannot Learn About the Deep Aspects of Christ Unless We First Understand His Crucifixion

Misunderstanding Jesus’ Crucifixion: a Kernel of Truth

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

Over the centuries, as Christianity has gradually been bent towards the interests of organized religion (or Religion Inc. as I call it), the story of Jesus’ final fateful week in Jerusalem prior to his crucifixion was reshaped to minimize his overturning of the money tables at the Temple at Jerusalem. This single act by our Lord and Savior was actually a challenge to the merging of religious and political power. It was this very event that took place the day after He arrived that set the stage for his arrest and crucifixion. Palm Sunday, which ‘Religion Inc.’ celebrates as the entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem, is described in slightly different ways in various Biblical translations. In the King James as well as the Catholic versions of the Bible, it states in the Gospel of Luke chapter 19 (verses 28–40) that people broke branches off the palm trees that lined the road, laying them across the road as Jesus passed by on a donkey. But in the New International and New Living translations, the Bible says people removed their coats and laid them across the road before the Lord. (If the Catholic or KJV Bibles are to be taken literally, they sure must have killed a lot of palm trees that day!)

Moreover, our modern calendar gets the date for Jesus’ resurrection all wrong. Remember that Jesus walked the earth as a Jewish man, and since the Jewish Sabbath extends from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, by the western calendar he would have had to enter Jerusalem on a Friday. The real Good Friday, which in historical context actually took place on a Wednesday by our modern calendar, takes us through His mock trial and his death of horror on a Roman Cross. “Easter” is the Christians’ triumphant celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Except, of course, that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead on Easter Sunday. The only translations of the Bible that use the word ‘Easter’ are the King James and Catholic Bibles. Jesus rose on the morning of the traditional Jewish Sabbath, which would be a Saturday morning by today’s Western calendar. Since he was in the grave for three days and nights, and he rose on a…