ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9604010046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: JERUSALEM
SOURCE: THE BOSTON GLOBE
note: above
THE FAMOUS FOLIAGE likely was a conscious symbol of Jewish nationalism and resistance to Roman occupation.
For many people, the palm branches displayed on Palm Sunday are a welcome sign that Easter is only a week away, and a reminder that the original followers of Jesus Christ welcomed him to Jerusalem with just such foliage and cries of ``Hosanna!''
But some biblical scholars have been putting forth a new theory about those palm branches: They were a conscious symbol of Jewish nationalism and resistance to Roman occupation, and Jesus of Nazareth was seen by many of his fellow Jews not only as a spiritual savior but as a political one, too.
Local coins from the era that show a palm branch stamped over the image of the Roman emperor are among several clues that have led researchers to believe the branches had a significance not mentioned in scriptural accounts of Jesus' entry to Jerusalem.
The theory is one of many new ideas emerging from two decades of unprecedented cooperation between Jewish and Christian scholars and from a new set of digs in and around the Old City of Jerusalem that will soon make a Christian pilgrimage here more illuminating than ever before.
The roads and footpaths that Jesus is likely to have walked, the gardens and villages mentioned in the Scriptures, the enormous stones that once held up the temple where Jesus overturned the tables of money-changers are all being unearthed and brushed off, making the palpable link with Christian history here more real and exciting - as well as more accurate.
Already this season, a first-ever exhibit on Roman crucifixion, including a pair of ankle bones with a spike through them - the only physical evidence of crucifixion still in existence - makes clear that religious art portrays the punishment somewhat inaccurately.
Crucifixion took place on trees, and the cross the prisoners had to bear was the crossbeam, not both vertical and horizontal parts, the new exhibit at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem shows. Moreover, feet were probably nailed to the side, not the front, and the condemned may have had a saddle on the cross to sit on, keeping them conscious and in pain longer.
Much of the new thinking deals specifically with Jesus' last week.
``Jesus spent only one week in Jerusalem, his last week, but it takes up large portions of all the Gospels,'' said Jim Fleming, director of the Biblical Resources Study Center in Jerusalem. ``A quarter of Luke, a third of Matthew and Mark and one half of John deal with that one week.''
Fleming says that many of the new approaches to understanding scriptural references come from a more rigorous study of Jewish sources than Christian scholars had engaged in previously.
Scholars, for example, have turned their attention to the matter of the palm branches.
The last period of Jesus' life was a time of enormous upheaval for the Jews, who suffered under the boot of Roman occupation. Hundreds of would-be saviors were being crucified by the Romans.
But in the Galilee of Jesus' day, ruled by Herod Antipas, the Jews had won a small victory. The coins of the Romans had been imprinted with the face of Tiberius, the Roman emperor. This contravened Jewish laws against graven images, and the Jews insisted that the coins be changed.
They were. Galilee coins from around A.D. 24 that have been found show they were restruck with the image of a palm branch imprinted over that of Tiberius' face.
``For the Galilee Jews, the palm branch was a symbol of people power because with it they had made the governor change the coins,'' Fleming said. ``Palm Sunday was in all likelihood a political demonstration.''
Further support for this theory has been found on the Herodian road outside the Western Wall, where archeologists Yaakov Billig and Ronny Reich are leading a dig expected to be finished by this summer. They have unearthed 80 coins in the sediment covering the paving stones of the old road where Jesus most likely walked.
Some 80 percent of those coins, Billig said, were from after the A.D. 66 revolt against the Romans and carry markings of Year 1 or Year 2 after the Redemption of Jerusalem, meaning after the revolt. Each coin bears a palm branch.
The last coins found were from A.D. 70, when the Romans sacked the temple and the city. The first coins the Romans minted after the destruction showed a palm tree and the words ``Judea Capta,'' or Judea captured.
Today, the archeologists plan to leave in place some of the seven-ton stones that came crashing down on the road from the parapets of the Temple Mount at the time, dramatic evidence of the destruction.
``Until now, there have only been small peepholes into the period of Herod and Jesus Christ here,'' Billig said on a recent walking tour of the site. ``Much had to be excavated. But now it is really starting to come to life.''
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