Over the weekend I was a virtual attendee at the New Insights on the New Testament Conference 2025. I saw four good presentations by outstanding Biblical scholars, and one half a good presentation when the presenter’s internet connection from Europe lagged too much to understand him.
Two of the presentations were particularly relevant to my page on this website about the Execution of Jesus. Paula Fredriksen gave a thorough discussion of the episode of Jesus’ disruption at the Temple. Helen Bond talked about the last 24 hours in the life of Jesus. I was gratified that neither of these presentations conflicted with the findings on my page! I did slightly revise the page and added a bit of new material to it in light of what they had to say.
Helen Cook emphasized that we don’t know for sure that the Jewish council that condemned Jesus was an official gathering of the full Sanhedrin, and that Jesus’ hearing before Pilate was not a formal “trial” in the way we are accustomed to think of them. Pilate could have condemned Jesus simply on the basis of reports about him if he deemed it necessary; he brought Jesus in for questioning to get a better sense of the person he was dealing with.
I thought both points were sound and so revised my page to remove references to the Sanhedrin and to change the word “trial” when it appeared to “questioning” or “hearing.” Small change but I don’t want my page to have even small inaccuracies when I become aware of them.
Paula Fredriksen had a lot to say about Herod’s Temple and how it functioned. She doubted that Jesus would not have been arrested right away if his disruption actually happened, as there were soldiers watching everything from easy vantage points around the court of the nations where the financial transactions were taking place. As the gospel accounts of the incident conflict on when it happened–John moved it way back to the beginning of Jesus’ public life rather than at the end–she regards it as a separate story from the narrative of Jesus’ final days which the gospel authors placed where they did for literary purposes. Specifically, she suggested Mark inserted it between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his arrest as a transitional device between Jesus’ conflict with Pharisees in Galilee and his conflict with the high priests in Jerusalem. She said it made more sense for Jesus to be arrested quickly after his entry into Jerusalem to avoid any potential problems before they happened. She also used this to explain why Jesus’ disciples were not also arrested.
I thought that was an interesting suggestion and incorporated some of it into my own discussion of the arrest of Jesus, as you will see if you take another look at the final paragraphs.
Unfortunately, none of the presentations were on the resurrection, which I am currently working on. Yeah, I know I keep promising it will soon be ready to publish, but it is getting close. Stay tuned.
Alan
Jesus Reconstructed 