XCVII.

"...all the Gospel writers want to go out of their way to say Jesus was not mounting a violent revolution. He was not a criminal, this was not an armed rebellion, he is completely innocent of any political charge of insurrection. But if Jesus' disciples were armed with swords at his arrest, in the middle of the night, at the Passover in Jerusalem, that's insurrection, folks. The Romans did not allow Jews just to go around in the middle of the night in gardens carrying swords. For a Jew to be armed, at the Passover, an especially dangerous time, that the Romans were really worried about, for a Jew to be armed following around a guy who some people were saying was the King of the Jews, you can be arrested for that, you can be crucified for that."

© Dale B. Martin
Yale Lectures on Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature
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