(wind blowing) (birds squawking) (Hugh) This is a place where history and faith come together.

Tradition has it that in a tomb like this, the body of a Jewish healer and preacher from Nazareth called Jesus was laid to rest in about 30 A.D., nearly 2,000 years ago.

He had been crucified at a place not far from here, known as the Hill of the Skull, Golgotha, or you might know it as Calvary.

Whether you are a person of faith or of none, you cannot escape the fact that the last six days of this man’s life, and his death, changed the world.

I’m not going to chart the religion that grew out of these events.

I’m interested in the events themselves: what happened in that final week of Jesus’s life, how he died, why he died, and who killed him.

Because 2,000 years later, here at what is traditionally said to be the site of his crucifixion and burial, the legacy of those final few days is unavoidable.

(solemn music) ♪ For Christians, what played out on this stage, Jerusalem, over the six days after Jesus’s arrival became their holy week, the first Easter, but at the time, it was a political power play.

In that one week, Jesus provoked the city’s political and religious authorities.

The response was they saw him as a threat that needed to be taken out, but why?

Why, over the course of just a few days, did one man go from hero to troublemaker, from preacher to problem, arrested and publically humiliated?

Tradition tells us that Jesus arrived here on a wave of populism on a Sunday, yet by the following Friday, he was dead on a cross.

Did he have any idea, when he first entered the city, that the countdown to Calvary had begun?

♪ (ticking) (soft music) I’d been to Jerusalem just once before, 30 years ago, as a backpacking student about to start my theology degree at Cambridge.

The city fascinated me.

It is so important to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

And now I’m back, I’m looking forward to rekindling my youthful curiosity.

Now, I brought with me some ancient texts, ancient insofar as I haven’t opened most of these for 30 years.

The Dead Sea Scrolls by Géza Vermes, History of the Early Church, God in Patristic Thought, the big one, the common Bible, RSV version, Siegfried Herrmann Israel in Egypt, The Nubian Chancellor, Birth of the New Testament, The Synoptic Gospels, and this was the go-to book for any student of theology, Peake’s Commentary on the Bible.

I eventually exchanged one passion for another, but as a student, I was drawn to the drama of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels, from the Greek meaning they look the same.

They tell a similar, occasionally identical tale, while John’s Gospel has a more reflective take on the same story.

I was gripped by the differing, sometimes contradictory threads of the narrative, forensically trying to piece together what actually happened in that final week.

Whatever the difference is, the story they’re telling is a simple one, and they all agree on it.

They’re spreading the word about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, made man.

But I also want to try to put this crucial part of the Gospel story in its historical context.

I’d like to know more about the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest, and perhaps the most intriguing of them all, Judas Iscariot.

All these fascinating characters who were actors in this sequence of events that led to the birth of an entirely new religion, and it all took place here on this extraordinary stage of Jerusalem.

2,000 years ago, like today, Jerusalem was a place of pilgrimage, especially at Passover, an annual Jewish celebration of liberation from tyranny and oppression.

Tens of thousands converged on Jerusalem and its Great Temple, all under the watchful eye of the city’s recent conqueror, the Roman Empire.

But around 30 A.D., Passover in Jerusalem witnessed one of the greatest stories ever told.

Helen Bond is a professor of Christian origins and has brought me to the Museum of Israel to show me the impressive scale model replica of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, and its centerpiece, the Temple.

-Oh, my goodness.

-The Temple is amazing.

(Hugh) I hadn’t realized the footprint of the Temple was quite that massive.

(Helen) That’s right, and it’s the size of 12 football stadia.

So, I mean, it is huge, and the fact is that it’s on high as well, I think.

It must’ve just absolutely dominated the whole place.

You see the Antonia Fortress just over there on the corner?

-With its four towers.

-And you can see, actually, the difference really clearly.

That’s the upper city there, where you’ve got the large houses, the wealthy people, the mansions, and then down there you’ve got the lower city where the poor people live.

(Hugh) This is even better than Legoland, if such a thing is possible.

So, within this walled area, it’s estimated 30,000 people lived normally, and this swelled to how much at Passover?

(Helen) It’s difficult to know-- 200,000 to 300,000, so maybe even as much as 10 times its ordinary size.

Not everyone is necessarily staying within the city.

Some are in tents outside, or places like Bethany where Jesus is said to be, but certainly you were absolutely crowded to bursting here.

(Hugh) The museum also has one tiny corner, which allows me to connect with the historical reality of the story and the characters involved.

(Helen) If we start with this, this is the so-called Pilate Stone.

It’s the only inscription that has Pilate’s name in it.

So you can just make it out there.

Half of the stone is obliterated, but there, "...ius Pilatus," and it’s the only really tangible link that we have with Pilate.

But another important thing about it is "Praefectus," it says there, so it shows that he’s in charge, sort of, of troops and his main task is to maintain law and order.

In the same way that that’s our one tangible connection with Pontius Pilate, this is our one tangible link with the High Priest Caiaphas.

And this is actually a bone box.

When the High Priest Caiaphas died, his body would have been laid out for a year or so and then his bones gathered together and put in a box.

And it’s actually got a carving on the side that gives his name.

It says--very hard to read, it’s in Aramaic, "Joseph, son of Caiaphas."

So Joseph Caiaphas, and that’s exactly the same name as the man in the New Testament who is the High Priest of the Jews -at the time of Jesus.

-Right.

(Helen) There’s another interesting object as well.

This time not so much to do with the rulers of Judea, but this is a heel bone, and it’s got this iron nail stuck through it.

And what’s really important about this is that it’s the only remains of a crucified victim that we have from this time period.

(Hugh) It’s quite peculiar, I wasn’t expecting to-- that relics would have any impact on me, they don’t normally, but to have these three elements brought together in one place, it does seem to take the story out of the literature that I’m used to into something that is historical and tangible.

(Helen) Yes, I mean, we know from these objects that Pilate and Caiaphas did exist.

This is something that we can actually touch and be connected to that first century setting through those things.

(piano music) (Hugh) Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, was, as the Gospels tell it, a weak and malleable man who was pressurized by the Jews to crucify Jesus.

His base was Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast.

He and his solders only came to Jerusalem for festivals, like Passover, to remind the locals who was really in charge.

So Pilate and his train-- do you get it, his train-- are coming all the way from Caesarea, which is 90 kilometers that way, into Jerusalem, this way.

What’s the local Jewish population going to make of his arrival?

(Helen) I think they would have hated it.

Most of the time the Roman presence is actually quite small around here.

You’re not really aware of Roman soldiers and such, and certainly you don’t see much of Pilate, but at the feasts, Pilate is gonna come in.

It’s Passover, he’s there.

The whole point of him coming in is to make his presence felt.

♪ The Jews have only been a Roman province for about 20 years, so it’s still in that sort of state of flux, they’re getting used to Roman occupation, and it’s really Pilate’s role to make sure that everything is quiet.

I mean, the point is to show military might.

"This is Rome in all its glory.

Don’t mess with us."

(soft music) (Hugh) Judea was a remote outpost of the Roman Empire.

For Pilate, if trouble broke out, reinforcements were weeks away, so he depended on rule by collaboration.

He needed eye and ears and muscle on the street.

The troops he brought with him were garrisoned in the Antonia Fortress, which overlooked the Great Temple.

It’s a key location in the story.

This is the site of the Roman Antonia Fortress, where a cohort, 400 to 600 troops, were permanently garrisoned, and traditionally, it’s where Pilate would have stayed during Passover, and therefore where he sentenced Jesus to death.

And that’s why today it marks the start of the weekly Via Dolorosa walk, the Way of Sorrow, for pilgrims to follow the final journey of Jesus from condemnation to crucifixion.

From the fortress, the Romans kept their eye on the Jewish Temple.

You still get a sense of that, but now, on the same site, you’re actually looking down on one of the holiest sites in Islam, and the place where Muslims believe Muhammad ascended into Heaven.

♪ Some modern scholars question whether this is where Pilate stayed and, therefore, whether judgment on Jesus was passed here, but nevertheless, it’s a perfect example of the relationship between the Romans and the Jewish authorities.

The tower of the Antonia Fortress looked out over the whole Temple Mount so the Romans could keep an eye on what was going on there day and night.

And also, the High Priest’s ceremonial robes that were only worn on special feast days, like Passover, and without which the High Priest didn’t have any authority, were locked here in the Antonia Fortress.

So the Romans literally held the key to Jewish power in the city, which meant that the governor, Pontius Pilate, controlled Caiaphas, the city’s religious and political leader.

When Pilate wasn’t in town, Caiaphas, the High Priest, was the boss.

In principle, at least, he was in day-to-day charge of the city and, of course, the Temple, but he understood how his own power and wealth depended on collaboration with the Romans.

To appreciate his status, you have to go underground.

In the late 1960s, excavations in the southwest part of the city, known as the Upper City, revealed this.

These first century ruins were home to Caiaphas and Jerusalem’s élite class.

Impressive houses with ornate mosaics, running water, ritual baths, and courtyards.

♪ Paula Fredriksen, a professor of scripture and comparative religion, has a rich insight into the Jewish politics of the time.

(Paula) This is a neighborhood that has dimensions.

It was developed initially by Herod The Great, who put his own palace here.

It’s where the chief priests, who are aristocrats themselves, live, and it’s where the High Priest lives, so these are people who are not only aristocracy within their own societies, but they are Temple aristocracy, too, because they have positions of premier responsibility for the smooth running of the Temple.

In the Roman period, these people have to be able to cooperate with the Roman governor, and they had a good working relationship.

Caiaphas and Pilate were together for almost 10 years and that meant that they were on the same page.

Both of them wanted to minimize bloodshed and that’s what they cooperated in order to do.

(Hugh) So, in the balance of power between the Jewish authorities and the Romans, how easy is it to tip one way or the other?

(Paula) The Roman Prefect kept his job by keeping the peace, but Jerusalem at Passover is a pressure cooker, and it doesn’t take a lot to get it out of equilibrium.

(Hugh) So, even before Jesus arrived, Jerusalem was tense-- people on the streets angry at their religious leaders for colluding with the Romans and angry with the Romans for--well, for being there.

And now we’re in the middle of a festival celebrating the Jews’ liberation from tyranny.

The population of Jerusalem, usually around 30,000, has swollen tenfold.

And you’ve got religious pilgrims yearning for freedom from the yoke of Roman rule, praying for divine intervention.

It’s not going to take much to start a riot.

Security forces in the city were watching everyone from everywhere, which brings into play one of the most important characters in our story, the mob.

The crowd swarming into Jerusalem for Passover, turning up the religious and political heat.

One independent source that corroborates the Gospels’ story is the Jewish-Roman historian, Josephus.

His eyewitness accounts depict this period as a time of chaos.

(mellow music) Dr. Zuleika Rodgers, an expert on Jewish life at the time, sees him as a crucial witness.

(Zuleika) His works are a veritable Who’s Who of New Testament characters.

He has Caiaphas, Pilate, but also John the Baptist and Jesus.

He’s building up a picture of a society that is completely and utterly divided politically.

Of course, much of the division is about Roman rule, is about attitudes towards the Romans.

♪ The Romans cannot tolerate any possibility of the disintegration of law and order by political unrest, and they would see militant unrest the same way as prophetic teachers gathering a group around them, promising deliverance.

They’re all a threat to security and stability, and that’s what the Romans want, stability.

They realize, especially around festival times, that Jerusalem is a flashpoint for political unrest.

♪ (Hugh) Sunday, the day Jesus arrived in Jerusalem.

He would be dead by Friday.

Did he appreciate that the city was a political tinderbox?

A time bomb?

Jesus and his followers were approaching the city from the southeast, the opposite side to the Roman governor, Pilate.

By now, all of Jerusalem would have been pumped up for Passover.

Father Gregory Tatum from Jerusalem’s École Biblique is an authority on the early Jesus movement.

What was different about Jesus as a teacher and how would his message have been received in the city?

(Father Gregory) The first thing that would be unusual among your average preacher or teacher would have been, first off, that he was a miracle worker.

The second thing that would have been remarkable would have been that his focus was so clearly eschatological.

-Meaning?

-The end of time, the definitive outworking of God’s plans for history, referring to the end of days, and therefore focused on national repentance and being prepared for Judgment Day, basically.

(Hugh) So bringing that message through that gate in the eastern side of Jerusalem at a time of Passover with a military controlling force like the Romans, that’s a pretty dangerous thing to be preaching at a time like this in these circumstances, isn’t it?

(Father Gregory) Your expression of "tinderbox" is spot-on, because the crowds, it being Passover, and the preaching of the eschatological kingdom of God are certainly a combination of features that make it very likely that Jesus could set off a riot.

And a riot can escalate into an uprising and an uprising can escalate into a revolt against Rome.

(Hugh) According to tradition, Sunday was the moment of Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the first Palm Sunday.

But perhaps it wasn’t so much his actual arrival that was considered a threat, it was the message he brought with him.

In Galilee, Jesus had talked about the power of God working within him, about a new Kingdom of God being established based on social justice, love, compassion.

Now, the word "Kingdom" would have made the Romans and the Jewish authorities sit up and take notice.

For the Romans, anything that undermined the absolute authority of Caesar was treason, and for the Jewish establishment, preaching that seemed to challenge its power or even hint at religious reform meant danger.

(suspenseful music) But it’s the crowds flocking to Jesus, euphoric at this time of a festival of liberation, alive with Messianic expectation, who identified Jesus as a king, fulfilling a prophecy from their own scriptures: I’ve always thought that this is a crucial twist in the story.

It’s not Jesus who was calling himself the Messiah, literally "the anointed king," it’s the crowds, the mob.

So who is really stirring up the tensions here?

♪ And it seems the Roman authorities had a reputation for dealing harshly with those who attracted popular support.

There’s one ominous passage in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus about a cousin of Jesus, the man the Gospels know as John the Baptist.

(soft music) "When others too joined the crowds about him, because they were aroused to the highest degree by his sermons, Herod became alarmed.

Herod decided therefore that it would be much better to strike first and be rid of him before his work led to an uprising.

Though John, because of Herod’s suspicions, was brought in chains to Machaerus and there put to death."

Now that’s really, really interesting because the idea of putting down the noisy mob seems to be not dissimilar to a lot of the discussion about what happened in Jesus’s case.

Not necessarily what he was saying or what claims may or may not have been made about his status-- religious status or political status, but it’s just the fact that where lots of people are gathered together, it’s potentially dangerous for law and order.

(Zuleika) Well, according to Josephus, it is.

What he wants to show is that society is disintegrating and, slowly but surely, moving towards chaos.

And he also names Jewish individuals that attract followers and that Roman authorities are very nervous about and want to deal with immediately.

(calm music) ♪ (Hugh) Even on the day he entered the city, people were proclaiming him a messianic savior, a new king, and as such a direct threat to Roman rule.

But would he, as a good observant Jew in town for Passover, dare to confront the Jewish authorities in the house of God?

♪ (ticking) (string music) ♪ (yelling and cheering) In the time of Jesus, the entire reason for the Passover pilgrimage was to visit the Temple, the house of God, and sacrifice an animal for the Passover meal.

Today, the Western Wall of what was that Temple is still the most important place in Judaism.

But imagine what this would be like with hundreds of thousands of people all trying to get into the Temple for the Passover festival.

(soft music) ♪ The archaeologist, Professor Ronny Reich, has spent much of his career leading excavations to uncover first century Jerusalem.

Jesus was one of tens of thousands of pilgrims who walked through these triple arches which led into the Temple, climbed these southern steps, and walked these actual streets.

This is the pavement, these are the streets of first century Jerusalem.

These are the shops, these are where the money lenders would have had their stalls.

Our colleague from 2,000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth, would have walked here.

I mean, this is Downtown.

♪ Here, people used to buy things, used to change money.

For example, for the Temple tax, people came from all over the country and also from abroad with their money in various denominations, and they used to change it into the half shekel as Temple tax.

(Hugh) So, if you’re going to the Temple, you’re going to pay the Temple tax.

So, when we have the incident in the Temple of Jesus overturning the tables, he’s not complaining about the principle -of the tax, is he?

-No, no, but I can imagine-- this is now my interpretation-- that, you know, money changed hands here, and when rather naive people come from the country and here are some corrupt changers, it might happen, right?

(Hugh) Fiddle the exchange rate a bit.

(Ronny) He just probably stood from the side and saw how these occasionally cheat on the farmers who came from outside, et cetera, and this probably turned him mad.

Because it’s the cheating which disturbed him, right?

Cheating in the place of God, so I see it.

(Hugh) He said to them: Maybe the statement is really about being the purist Jew you can be, and should be as you approach Passover.

(ethereal music) And it has become commercialized.

Sounds fairly familiar.

(chuckling) So, the idea that power and a privileged status quo breed corruption is nothing new, that society needs those who are prepared to stand up and be counted.

Interestingly, 2,000 years ago, Jesus wasn’t the only voice critical of the Temple.

♪ The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered 60 years ago in Qumran, not far from Jerusalem, prove that there were many who considered the Jewish authorities to be corrupt at the highest level.

They would feel God’s wrath and punishment at the end of the world.

(Paula) I think it’s safe to say that there never was a single form of Judaism.

There isn’t now, and there wasn’t in antiquity.

So this is a group that’s actively against the current administration of the Temple, and they come up with their own-- Josephus calls them a (unintelligible), a school, their own--their own sect of Judaism.

(Hugh) The Qumran community abandoned Jerusalem, not to start a new religion, but simply to preserve and protect their spiritual purity.

Is it fair to say that one could say the same of Jesus?

He was not trying to create a new religion, far from it.

His message seems to be, "Everyone pull their socks up and focus on what is at the heart of Judaism."

-Is that fair?

-I think putting Jesus against the wallpaper of first century Jewish diversity makes us appreciate how Jewish his message was.

Like the Dead Sea Scroll community, he’s convinced that his version of Judaism is the one that really makes the most sense and is truest to the Bible.

So, what we have when we look at the traditions about Jesus is somebody who, like all these other different sects of Judaism, are looking at the same Jewish biblical sheet music and playing improv off of that sheet music.

(string music) ♪ (Hugh) Jesus had only been in Jerusalem for a few days, but already his words and actions were making waves.

The question has to be asked: Isn’t it likely that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing?

♪ (ticking) (soft music) ♪ Tuesday morning, Jerusalem is waking up.

In just a few days, Jesus will be under arrest.

♪ According to the Gospels, after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the so-called Temple incident, the Jewish authorities became fixated on one thing: killing Jesus.

Surely today is the day for Jesus to keep his head down.

But he didn’t.

He returned to the Temple to preach and to be challenged.

"By what authority are you doing these things?

Who is it gave you this authority?

Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor?"

The priests were trying to catch him out, to make him blaspheme or criticize Caesar.

Either would have sealed his fate.

But Jesus, a good Jew, understood the power of debate.

It’s been a part of Jewish culture for thousands of years.

(tense music) ♪ This is a yeshiva, a type of Jewish school that explores traditional religious texts and truths through group debate and argument.

♪ Never having been to a yeshiva before, this is quite an eye-opener.

To see the sheer numbers of people learning this technique of interpretation and scholarship, delving into the scriptures.

The Gospels say that Jesus, a passionate and opinionated Jew, spoke with power and authority.

You get a real sense of that spirit here.

One guy was telling me they start at seven in the morning, then go until late in the evening.

He said, "It’s great, you just debate and you learn and you dig into the scripture."

(mixed conversations) Not unlike the debates that would have taken place in the Temple in the first century.

♪ But crucially, the Gospels tell us, Jesus also spoke that day, and not for the first time, about one specific thing: the destruction of the temple he was standing in and the end of the world.

Forty years after Jesus’s death, the Temple was actually destroyed by the Romans in retaliation for a Jewish uprising.

The historian Josephus saw it as a punishment by God for the sins of the people.

The Gospel writers saw it as the fulfillment of the prophecy made by Jesus.

(orchestral music) And the historical reality is still here.

Those first century Temple ruins have now been uncovered.

Now, this isn’t just a pile of any old stones or rocks.

(Ronny) This is the destruction of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount as done by the Romans after the sack of Jerusalem, and I’ve seen here people, religious orthodox people, turn very emotional and weep when they--when they see this, because here is the wall complete.

Here it is destroyed.

(soft music) (Hugh) Of all the sites we’ve visited, actually, I find this the most moving, because it is a symbol of one culture stamping out another’s.

The symbolism of it speaks for itself.

The Temple and its ruins are still a vital touchstone, and not just for Jews.

You have to remember the Christian Gospels were written after the fall of the Temple, so the Gospel writers knew about its destruction and were aware of the sense of brokenness and hopelessness among the Jewish people.

But these Gospels could offer their readers good news, a way forward, despite the ruined Temple: not initially a new religion, but a new movement, and crucially, one that was on offer not only to Jews, but to everyone, even the Romans.

(solemn music) The Romans really were expert at showing who was in charge, and one of the ways they did that was by the humiliation of those who did not conform.

The humiliation and degradation of Jesus on the cross is matched by the complete destruction of the Temple.

Clearly, any type of insurrection or disturbance of the Roman authority was met with zero tolerance.

♪ Three days in, and I’m left in no doubt that Roman rule in this city was uncompromising, and certainly Jesus was on their radar.

Equally, he had provoked the Temple authorities.

Perhaps it was time to rest and regroup.

(soft music) At the end of that Tuesday, rather than make the journey all the way back to Bethany over the top of the hill, Jesus and his disciples, we’re told, spent the night here on the Mount of Olives.

With the city full to capacity, pilgrims would camp anywhere they could find a space.

And across the valley, over there in the city, everyone seemed to have an issue with Jesus.

At least he had the loyalty of his disciples.

Didn’t he?

♪ (ticking) (string music) ♪ In our timeline, today’s Wednesday, the day that Judas, the thief, the traitor, the devil agrees to betray Jesus.

But was his intention to betray him or to help him?

Bear with me, but I’m fascinated by one particular word from the Gospels, which were first written down in Greek.

That word is "paradidomi."

(ethereal music) It means "to pass on" or "hand over."

In the Gospels, the word is used about Judas more than 40 times, but over the centuries, it has been translated, not as "to hand over" but "to betray."

(Father Gregory) The way in which modern scholarship would approach Judas is that he was the disciple who handed Jesus over to the authorities.

And the verb "paradidomi" and the agent noun "prodotes" means "someone who hands someone over."

And so, that’s taken on the coloring of betrayal because he was one of Jesus’s inner circle.

(Zuleika) The way in which one could rehabilitate Judas is by seeing that he has a part to play in the divine plan.

For the salvation of humanity, Jesus Christ has to be sacrificed, and he plays a role in that divine plan by handing over or betraying Jesus.

(Hugh) I have an appointment with one of Israel’s greatest writers, Amos Oz.

In his novel Judas, he explores the role of betrayal and treachery in Jewish culture.

One of his characters, Shmuel, reaches a radical conclusion about Judas’s role in the birth of Christianity.

(Amos) Judas is the secret hero of the entire story.

Were it not for him, there would be no Christian Church, there would be no Christianity.

In a sense, he was a fanatic, a very impatient fanatic.

He wanted redemption right now.

Instant redemption.

And the only way to achieve this was for Jesus to walk off the cross in front of the entire world.

And Shmuel would probably suggest that, were it not for Judas and the betrayal, Jesus Christ would have been forgotten, like many other Galilean healers and miracle workers.

There were so many of them, history is full of them.

So, in a strange way, Judas is the real founding father of Christianity.

He is the real founding father of the Church.

I know these are very, very provocative words to Christian ears, but these are the words of my protagonist, not mine.

Don’t crucify me!

(Hugh) Yes, the novelist’s get out, that’s very good!

Whether Judas was working with Jesus to fulfill his destiny, or plotting against him, the authorities needed a way to confront this rebel preacher, because tomorrow, Thursday, was the Eve of Passover, and nobody wanted trouble then.

(soft music) ♪ On the streets of Jerusalem, people were preparing for Seder, the traditional Passover meal.

For Caiaphas and the Temple priests, it was the busiest day of the year.

Standing in rivers of blood, thousands of animals to be sacrificially slaughtered for that meal.

Pilate and his entourage just needed the city to remain calm so he could get back to his palace on the coast.

The entrance gates, alleys, and markets would have been heaving with the daily arrival of pilgrims.

Among them, coming from the direction of Bethany, Jesus and his followers.

On a day like today, Caiaphas couldn’t afford to have Jesus make another public display of himself.

He needed him to back off and simmer down or else.

And from the Roman point of view, Pilate and his travelling courtroom were only in town for the festival week.

With Caiaphas and Pilate thinking, "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?"

time was of the essence.

(suspenseful music) ♪ Tradition has it that Jesus and his followers had their Passover meal here.

♪ This room is at Mount Zion, just outside the Old City walls, and this was to be their Last Supper.

♪ (ticking) (orchestral music) I want to better understand what was stirring on that night 2,000 years ago, the underlying political tensions at work while all across the city, people dined together.

How popular would you have to be to get-- -Killed?

-Well, yeah, yeah!

I mean, how much of a, you know, ruckus would you be having to cause to get Pilate and Caiaphas really edgy?

(Paula) It doesn’t take a political genius to think that this man is going to upset the applecart.

And particularly, when you think also of the religious libretto of the holiday, which is a festival of liberation, I mean, the whole mix is so combustible.

(Helen) Yeah, particularly if you’ve been in the Temple and you’ve said something negative about the Temple and you’ve done something in the Temple.

I mean, that Temple incident, I think, would be enough to make Pilate and Caiaphas take note, and particularly if you’ve got a following.

And is it usual to arrest people at night in this society?

(Paula) Mark says specifically that the chief priests decide that he has to be ambushed in secret, "lest there be a riot among the people."

Arresting in the night is clearly so as to avoid massive bloodshed.

No one wants that, that’s bad for business.

(Paula) They knew that if they decapitated the movement, the popular enthusiasm would stop.

Turns out they were wrong.

(laughing) (solemn music) ♪ (Hugh) After the meal, Jesus led the band of 11 across the Kidron Valley to a secluded grove called Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

But one of their number was missing.

Judas had remained in the city to alert the authorities of this unique opportunity to hand over Jesus, away from the potentially volatile crowds of his supporters, and grab him under the cover of darkness.

♪ Here in Gethsemane, while his followers sleep, the Gospel writers paint a picture of Jesus isolated and in anguish, about to be betrayed and denied by those closest to him.

It’s powerful drama.

♪ Apparently the only one aware of the danger he was in, Jesus could have fled, but he didn’t.

It was not the path he was to follow.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us of the arrival of a posse of priests, elders and scribes, and guards.

St. John’s Gospel adds a Roman contingent.

But on a hillside crowded with pilgrims camping at night, an arresting force, who didn’t necessarily know this one man out of thousands, would need to identify their suspect, and identify him they did.

There’s one very telling line in the Gospels at this point.

Jesus asks: Now banditry was traditionally the one catch-all charge used by the Romans to deal with troublemakers, and there was at least one bandit already in custody awaiting trial before Pilate.

His name was Barabbas.

And the penalty for banditry?

A punishment unique to the Romans at this moment in history: crucifixion.

(somber music) What happens in the next 12 hours from late Thursday night until dawn on Friday is crucial.

The three Synoptic Gospels, the ones which look the same or tell a similar story, are Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

They have Jesus being brought at night for a Jewish trial to the Upper City, home to the High Priest Caiaphas and the other leaders of his religious court.

But there’s a problem with that version of events.

(Paula) Trials, in Jewish law, aren’t permitted to be held at night, so there’s a sense in which, if there were a night trial the way Mark, and following him, Matthew and Luke depict, they were breaking every rule in their own book.

And so, no night trial is the most plausible thing.

(Hugh) So what did happen that night?

Matthew and Mark insist the authorities attempted to try Jesus here for blasphemy.

But Luke, and certainly John, aren’t so sure.

(Laura) The charge of blasphemy isn’t sustained by the synoptic narratives.

Claiming to be the Messiah, saying that something might happen to the Temple, something that-- that’s not blasphemy.

A charge of blasphemy doesn’t lead to the cross.

There’s no necessity for a Jewish trial to get Jesus on a Roman cross.

And also, in the Gospel of John, given that Roman soldiers are already involved, it’s really a straight through shot, logically, from the Roman soldiers to the Roman crucifixion.

(Hugh) If there was no trial, why was Jesus handed over by Judas to Caiaphas?

One radical theory is that Judas was trying to broker some kind of peace.

Not to betray Jesus, but to save him.

(Paula) Judas is realizing that there is going to be a bloodbath if popular enthusiasm doesn’t damp down.

And it’s out of fear of that that he goes and speaks with Caiaphas.

Caiaphas doesn’t want any problems either, and perhaps Jesus was refusing to leave the city, just "No, I won’t."

And he had to be passed on to Pilate.

(soft music) (Hugh) At dawn, the Jewish authorities handed Jesus over to the Romans.

But where was Pilate?

Tradition puts him beside the Temple at the Antonia Fortress along with his troops.

That’s why the Via Dolorosa begins there.

It’s where the Praetorium would have been, the spot where Jesus was sentenced to death.

But recent archaeology challenges this tradition.

On the opposite side of town, closer to Caiaphas’ house in the Upper City, is Jerusalem’s citadel, the Tower of David.

While Amit Re’em and his team were carrying out what they thought was a standard excavation, they discovered something remarkable: a palace.

(Amit) It was amazing, nobody expected it.

We find a huge system of walls, and then we understood, we are looking at the foundations, at the retaining walls for Herod’s Palace.

Gold, silver, fountains, swimming pool.

His royal palace was absolutely amazing.

(Hugh) So in the first half of the first century, if I’m the Roman governor and I come to Jerusalem, where am I likely to station myself?

(Amit) Wow, this is the big question.

If I was Pontius Pilatus, and I came to Jerusalem, I seek for a royal accommodation.

Where you could achieve that?

In Herod’s Palace.

What is the alternative?

To stay together with your soldiers in the filthy and noisy fortress.

You would do that?

So, combine all this evidence, and I think you have a theory.

-But only a theory.

-Only a theory.

The theory being that this is where Pilate stayed, and therefore, this is where the Praetorium would be-- -would have been.

-This is the theory, yeah.

(Hugh) So this more than likely is where the trial of Jesus actually took place.

What would be on the charge sheet from a Roman point of view?

(Helen) Well, all the Gospels say that the charge, actually on the cross itself, was "King of the Jews."

And I don’t think Pilate thought that Jesus was a serious threat as a king, but it’s kind of--in many ways it’s sort of mocking his kingly aspirations.

And I think he probably didn’t care what Jesus’s message was, he didn’t care that he was another prophet, you know, that’s fine.

It’s the gathering of the crowds that’s really worrying.

It was easier altogether just to get rid of Jesus.

(Hugh) The Gospels paint Pilate as a weak man, easily pressurized by the Jewish leaders and the crowds.

But it seems the reality of the man is starkly different.

(Helen) You get a really different picture from Jewish writers, particularly Philo of Alexandria, who was a contemporary, actually, of Pilate himself.

And Philo gives a really negative character assessment of Pilate.

He says he was vindictive, he was cruel, he was spiteful.

He put people to death without any kind of a trial, who dealt with situations quickly as they arose.

(Hugh) Why do you think the Gospels go to such lengths -to soften the image of Pilate?

-I think it’s fairly clear.

It’s because the Gospels are written in the late first century and the new people coming into the Christian movement are largely Romans.

But there’s a big problem there in that Jesus was executed by a Roman governor.

And so what the Gospel writers want to do is to say, "Yes, okay, he was crucified, but the Roman governor involved didn’t want to send him to the cross.

He was actually pushed into it by the Jewish authorities."

Washing your hands and saying, "I am not responsible for this man’s death," and that’s essentially what Pilate does in Matthew’s Gospel.

He says, "I am innocent of this."

It’s all part of that late first century urge to put as much blame as possible onto the Jewish people and to absolve Rome.

(mellow music) ♪ (Hugh) You cannot escape the legacy of blaming an entire people for the death of Jesus, for being "Christ killers."

It became an excuse for centuries of persecution, culminating in the most un-Christian atrocity of all.

(sirens blaring) I happen to be in Jerusalem for Yom Hashoah, the annual Holocaust remembrance.

For two minutes, the city comes to a complete halt.

(siren continues) (soft music) ♪ (Amos) I think this particular story is responsible for more bloodshed than any other story in human history.

Persecutions, inquisition, pogroms, Holocaust.

In fact, I believe the story in the Gospels is the Chernobyl of Christian anti-Semitism over the last 2,000 years.

So, the Gospels, especially the story of the betrayal, the story of Judas, they were written in a cold-blooded intention to incite anti-Jewish feelings.

(solemn music) ♪ (Hugh) Whether individually or in cahoots, Caiaphas and Pilate had achieved their aim, ridding themselves, Jerusalem, and the status quo of a troublesome presence in an overcrowded city.

Now, Jesus was being led away to his crucifixion.

♪ (Father Gregory) The Roman ritual for crucifixion was quite clear.

Before you were crucified you were were scourged, and that would also often be extremely bloody so that you might not even survive the scourging.

Then you would be attached to the cross either by ropes or by nails.

♪ The death by crucifixion was not death by losing blood, it was death by asphyxiation.

You’re basically fighting to breathe against your nailed ankles and trying to pull yourself up on your nailed wrists.

♪ This could take days to die from this.

♪ Also, if the Roman authorities were in a hurry, they’d break your legs.

And so your broken legs would immediately fall down and then you’d asphyxiate very quickly.

♪ It’s a punishment that you would do to slaves.

Notice that the title on the cross is "King of the Jews."

That’s not only accusing Jesus of a claimant to the royal throne, it’s also saying, "This is what you Jews look like to us Romans.

This is what we do to your king."

♪ (Hugh) And this is the legacy of that one death, in that one week, 2,000 years ago.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the traditional site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

♪ (ticking) We’ve known for 2,000 years that Jesus died.

Now, I think I have a better understanding of how and why he died and who killed him.

But of particular interest for me has been putting into focus the political drama that was being played out here during that Passover.

♪ Caiaphas and the Jewish authorities were clinging to whatever fragile power they had, while trying to cope with the busiest festival of the year.

Pilate and his Roman army were watching for any flashpoint with a brutal policy of zero tolerance.

That’s what killed Jesus.

And now I really appreciate the Temple, the scale of its importance in Jewish life and just how visible Jesus would have been here.

And also the scale of the catastrophe when it was destroyed 40 years later by the Romans.

For Jerusalem and the Jewish people, the future must have seemed hopeless.

And in the context of that hopelessness, here come the Gospel writers saying, "You, the Jews, brought this destruction on yourselves.

Your faith had become corrupt and impure.

And, what’s more, you betrayed and sent to his death the divine figure, who prophesied it.

But," they say, "there is light in the darkness.

There is good news.

There is hope.

Just listen to this."

(indistinct chatter) Now "Gospel truth" depends on which account you follow.

Like any reporter, each writer, consciously or unconsciously, filters and shapes the narrative to suit their own point of view.

One man’s fake news is another’s mainstream media.

One man’s militant is another’s messiah.

The point about the Gospel writers is that this was the truth as they perceived it.

(soft music) And at the center of their story is one man, Jesus, a Jew.

But he’s quite elusive.

Now, whether you think he was a political agitator, a religious reformer, an idealist in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the son of God fulfilling his destiny, the simple fact is he was crucified by the Romans.

♪ But for his followers, salvation was at hand, because his death was just the beginning.

♪