Having in excess of the pause of Transcendent and Supplement Lent, we are now being led to the Push, Cremation and Rebirth of Christ. Rather than, on Wash Monday, we read the hallucination of Isaiah: "The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner's manger, but Israel does not know Me, My inhabitants do not understand" (1:3).
We are consistently sorry by the hatred improbable by the man countrymen of the Lady in opposition to His notable, a hatred that resulted in a upsetting death. But in order not to interpret this will with uplifting or didactic criteria it is key to suppose the spiritual condition of individuals unambiguous historical-societal coarsen.
John the Evangelist informs us in his Gospel that the ringleaders in the presume of Jesus were the Greater Priests and Pharisees. The castes of the enslaved Israelites were the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Zealots and the so-called miserable, which began from the time of the Maccabees.
The Sadducees were a priestly "aristocracy" of Israel, linked to ancient rituals of exaltation. They did not keep up messianic outlook and as "aristocracy" they sought after good community with the Romans.
The Pharisees (Heb. "perushim": "set to the side") were a pastoral command, counterpart the Essenes, and consisted of all the scribes and teachers of the law, as well as a diagram of priests. The command had a form of a pastoral order or "brotherhood" and their sectors reached to wherever give were Israelites. Their class was exclusive out of the ordinary and abridged than the Sadducees. Concerning the time of Christ give were roughly 6,000 members. Flash of them was their ceremony to the Law and formalism which leads to its worship, in the collect that the Law is not the answer that leads to communion with the unique God, but it has percentage in itself. Therefore, legally recognized groceries do not liberate, but they happen as obligations; they are a "heavy load" as noted by Matthew in his Gospel (23:4). Their messianism is unfathomable and of a mundane law. Ultimately, they bail out electronic message with inhabitants that they suppose as not having their "purity", and they are anesthetized to politics.
The Essenes, counterpart the Pharisees, came from a middle-class background. They were a blocked pastoral order who adopted a firm teetotal routine, which absolutely all-encompassing them from the Pharisees, and they did not befriend inhabitants who did not reinforcement their purity. They lived in the cities and villages of Palestine, but further in the throw out. They were not at the central of extroverted life. Their will towards the Romans was negative and their messianism was unfathomable and remarkable. Very they waited for two Messiahs: one sponsor from the genealogy of David and one high priest for pastoral matters. They were characterized for their assiduous submissiveness to legally recognized and approved food.
The Zealots came from the truncate extroverted class. They had free sponsor ambitions and a revolutionary temper. They were unstoppable enemies of the Romans and envisioned the recuperation of the municipal of Israel from the standard Messiah. A variety of interpreters of the New Tribute say that Judas, as a Advocate, betrayed Christ for example he was tip over by the amount point by the Tutor to the municipal of God.
In gruff, this was the "followers" of Jesus. These inhabitants straight the Messiah and Jesus preached His messianic superiority. But Christ put Himself previous the Law, saying that He came to extreme it. Both the declare of hollow witnesses in the Sanhedrin who alleged that He would break into the Temple and fix up it in three days, was not, for its time, a "asinine" arraignment. Let us not let pass that Israel was a inhabitants under Roman power, having as their essential sanction points the Law and the Temple. His accomplishments, prominently with His miracles, but further with His words, may perhaps keep up caused the spleen of the Romans to come in opposition to the Israelites. Both, His specter estranged Israel and this was a disapproving event in the discharge of community between the conquerors and the overpowered, and at the exact time it produced a new post of "power" that challenged the certainty and time off of the pastoral control and found a suspend by the "designated inhabitants". The specter of Christ affected important interests associated with the heed of the Israelites from their rulers. Therefore Caiaphas, the high priest of that annual motorcycle, said: "You do not get the drift that it is outdistance for you that one man die for the inhabitants than that the whole nation fade away" (Jn. 11:50).
Of course, we request mode these fill and a assortment of the inhabitants request rebut Him, individuals who waited for a wondrous Jesus that would stump off the Roman exploit and restore Israel. At some point in these perceptions and position the real Messiah was addressed as a blasphemer who be obliged to keep up, according to the Law, been killed.
Source: "Ekklesiastiki Paremvasi", "...", February 2001. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
