Fr. Ralph Gorman - The Last Hours of Jesus: From Gethsemane to Golgotha

Fr. Ralph Gorman, C.P.

The Last

Hours

of Jesus

From Gethsemane
to Golgotha

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2017 by Sophia Institute Press

The Last Hours of Jesus was formerly published by Sheed and Ward, New York, in 1960. This 2017 edition by Sophia Institute Press includes minor editorial revisions.

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Coronation Media.

On the cover: Altarretabel von San Zeno in Verona (1459), by Andrea Mantegna; image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Scripture citations are taken from the Confraternity Version of the Bible.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Nihil obstat : Richard Kugelman, C.P., S.T.L., S.S.L.
Imprimi potest : V. Rev. Canisius Hazlett, C.P.
Nihil obstat : John R. Ready, Censor Librorum , November 22, 1959
Imprimatur : Robert F. Joyce, Bishop of Burlington, November 23, 1959

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gorman, Ralph, author.

Title: The last hours of Jesus : from Gethsemane to Golgotha / Fr. Ralph

Gorman, C.P.

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2018.

Originally published: New York : Sheed & Ward, 1960. Includes

bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017044646 ISBN 9781622824700 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 9781622824717

Subjects: LCSH: Jesus Christ Biography Passion Week.

Classification: LCC BT431.3 .G67 2018 DDC 232.96 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044646

Contents

Biographical Note:

Preface

I have not written this book for Scripture scholars, who have the same access as I have to sources of information on the Passion of Jesus Christ. I have directed it to nonspecialists who would like a fuller treatment of the Passion than is found in the great lives of Christ, such as those by Lagrange, Prat, Lebreton, Fillion, and Ricciotti. I have used their works, of course, as well as the best commentaries on the Gospels and various treatises on aspects of the Passion in English, Latin, French, German, and Italian. It has been my effort to tell the story of the last hours of Jesus accurately and in a manner interesting and intelligible to the ordinary reader. The description of some scenes may appear fictionized but is based on information concerning the period, places, and persons involved.

The four Gospels are the main source for the history of the Passion. New Testament quotations are from the Confraternity edition and are used with the permission of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. Background information is provided by the Mishnah and by early historians. For archeological data, I have used freely the lectures and writings of Pre Vincent, greatest of all Palestinian archeologists and my former professor at the cole Biblique in Jerusalem, where it was my privilege to do postgraduate studies for three years.

I wish to express my gratitude to my friends and fellow religious, Fathers Richard Kugelman, C.P.; Hilary Sweeney, C.P.; and Barnabas Aherne, C.P., for valuable and constructive criticism. Special thanks are due Miss Claire Foy, editorial assistant of the Sign, for typing the manuscript and for many helpful suggestions.

Prologue

Chapter 1

The Background

The story of Jesus last hours properly begins at the Garden of Gethsemane. Here begins His Passion, in that frightful agony wherein the God-Man almost seemed to have been rejected by His Father even as He was neglected by His sleeping Apostles.

And here, too, strengthened at the end of His agony, Jesus confronts His enemies, the antagonists in the tragic yet soaring drama of His suffering and death: the religious leaders of His Chosen People and Judas Iscariot, one of his chosen Twelve, who had betrayed Him for a price.

How could such a thing come to pass? How could anyone harm a man who traveled around the country with a few poor disciples, teaching about the Kingdom of God, working wonders in healing the sick, proclaiming a doctrine of love of God and neighbor? How could such a man be betrayed by one of His closest followers, arrested like a thief in the night, condemned by the highest court of the Jews, condemned again and sentenced to death on the cross by the highest Roman authority?

That mystery needs some explanation. To understand how such a thing could happen, it is necessary to know something of the ideas and institutions of the Jews at the time of Christ, and especially to understand two Jewish sects, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. It is also necessary, against this background, to probe the psychology of Judas, that enigma of perfidy.

The military threat from their neighbors was not the only menace to the Jews during several centuries before the birth of Christ. Pagan Greek culture and philosophy threatened to destroy the monotheistic religion of the Chosen People. Hellenizing influences pressed in upon them from all sides. The Sadducees and Pharisees owed their origins in large measure to the varied reaction to this threat.

The Pharisees reacted strongly against the pagan influences and clung tenaciously to the Mosaic Law. As the name itself indicates in Aramaic, the language of Palestine at that time, the Pharisees were separatists. This may have been a nickname given them by others. They called themselves Haberim (comrades), or the pious. They were called separatists because they kept themselves apart from anything that might render them legally impure, even the people of the land who were impure because they found it impossible to observe all the legal purifications practiced by the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were probably the descendants of the Assideans, mentioned at the time of the Maccabees. They were a religious rather than a political party, and their religion was strongly nationalistic. We have little information on their organization, but it is likely that candidates passed through a period of trial before becoming full-fledged members.

At the very heart of the party were the Scribes, although it is a mistake to identify Scribes and Pharisees. There were Scribes who were Sadducees. For the most part, however, the Scribes were Pharisees trained in the knowledge of the Law and its application. In fact, the most important characteristic of the Pharisees was their claim to know the Law better than anyone else, their rigor in practicing it, and their determination to impose it on others. They emphasized three points of the Law in particular: observance of the Sabbath, legal purifications, and the payment of tithes to Levites and priests.

By the time of Christ, the Pharisaical Scribes had developed an extremely complex and detailed oral law that, theoretically, expounded and applied the Torah. This mass of legal tradition was declared to be as binding as the Torah itself. Finally, a point was reached where it was considered more blameworthy to teach contrary to the precepts of the Scribes than contrary to the Law of Moses. The observance of the dictates of the Scribes became an end in itself, to which all other moral and religious considerations were secondary. Toward the close of the second century after Christ, the rabbis began to consign the teaching of the Scribes to writing, in works that developed into the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds. A cursory reading of the Talmuds reveals the casuistic hair-splitting of the Scribes, as well as the complicated mesh of man-made traditions and observances in which they entangled their followers. Nevertheless, it was the knowledge and observance of these legal minutiae that constituted the perfection to which the Pharisees aspired.