Had Judea been a self-governing country, Jesus would probably have been stoned to death for blasphemy. The Romans, while reserving permission for the death penalty, de facto limited it to crucifixion for participation in a conspiracy. It was reserved for the Zealots’, says prof. Bogusław Górka for onet.pl.

Professor, for what reason did Jesus die?

As a result of revealing that he is the Son of God. But in the optics of the New Testament Jesus is the Son of God not only as God but first of all as a man. John in the Prologue speaks of him as Man: ‘of God he was born’ (1,13). But this truth somehow eludes us because of the neo-Platonic corset of a worldview that suffocates Christian theology and mentality. The motive for Jesus' life and work was therefore the fulfilment of the will of God as Father, until his last breath on the cross, where the full revelation of his double sonship of God took place.

This is how it stands in the account of all the gospels. In the Gospel of John, for the first time, Jesus' opponents reveal their intention to kill Him following the confession: ‘My Father works until now, and I work’. (5,17). This is Jesus' official comment on the act of healing the lame man on the Sabbath at the Pool of Bethesda. The intention to kill Jesus is indeed linked to the revelation of his self-awareness of his sonship of God, which opponents obviously regard as a criminal usurpation. If the opponents saw in this statement only a usurpation of messiahship, they would probably seek to punish him by beating him with 40 strokes without one.

So what do the Romans have to do with the death of Jesus?

Generally speaking, without the approval of the Romans, it was not possible to take the life of a Jew in the territory of Judea, over which they had direct supervision at that time through the prefects.

Pilate's prefecture did not then include Galilee. Jesus was a Galilean.

Indeed, he was a Judean because he was born in Bethlehem. He was called a Galilean because of his residence in Nazareth after his return from Egypt. And for this reason, he was subject to the authority of the Galilean king, Herod Antipas. On the other hand, He was captured in the Judean area of Jerusalem by the Judean guard with the support of a Roman cohort (John 18:12). He was eventually handed over to the Romans on the pretext of organising a plot against the emperor.

Pilate, however, was reluctant to give his consent to the death sentence.

At one point, he tried to evade the decision and sent Jesus back to the Galilean king, Herod Antipas, who was in Jerusalem for the Passover festival (Luke 23:7).

Why did Jesus die on the cross? Why was he not, for example, stoned to death?

This also has to do with Jesus' Galilean environment. When Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feasts, he left Galilee as a free man, but a subject of the Jewish king; when he crossed the border of Judea, he entered an area occupied by the Romans. For Jews, especially Galileans, this was an unbearable situation. And on the occasion of the pilgrimage festivals, they gave expression to this in Jerusalem in many ways.

Because of this, the Galileans could be seen in Judea as revolutionaries.

As a high-risk group. Because of the influx of crowds of pilgrims on pilgrimage festivals to Jerusalem, the manning of the Roman garrison was increased. The Romans well remembered the revolt at the beginning of the century initiated by the Zealots, a national liberation party with revolutionary characteristics. The Zealots aimed to fight against the Romans and the Jews who collaborated with the occupying power. To grasp in full the circumstances of Jesus' death, the works of Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, should be read carefully: ‘On the Jewish War’ and ‘The History of Israel’.

What was the rebellion?

Quirinius - the imperial legate - ordered a census of estates for the province of Syria in 6 AD to assess the tax. Judea received this census as a particular humiliation because it was announced shortly after Herod Archelaus, king of Judea, was sent into exile. The revolt was started in Judea by outsiders: the scholarly man Judah, nicknamed Galilean, together with the Pharisee Sadoc (War 2:118; Acts 18:1-8.23; 20:102). Judah is regarded as the founder of the Zealotic party, indeed the Zelotic dynasty. As the tension between the Jews and the Romans increased over time, it was with it that the popularity of the Zealots in society grew. In the works of Josephus Flavius, we find zealots hailing from the circle of Pharisees, priests and even Essenes. In fact, Josephus Flavius, while a priest, joined the second Zelotic uprising, which turned into a tragic war against the Romans (66-73).

Was Jesus a zealot?

He was a zealot (zealot) in the deepest religious dimension - to which the Zealot party also appealed. For example, because of his zeal, he drove the traders and bankers out of the temple courtyard (John 2:13-22). Lest this extreme zeal of Jesus is interpreted in Zealoc-revolutionary terms, it is illuminated by a quotation from Ps 69:10: ‘zeal for your house devours me’. Indeed, with this act, Jesus inaugurated the messianic era, for according to messianology, the Messiah was to begin the new order from the temple in Jerusalem. And according to the Targum to Isaiah (53:5) - the Messiah was to erect the temple anew.

Hence the witnesses to the event ask Jesus for a sign?

For an authentication sign as the Messiah. And how did Jesus respond? He said: ‘Destroy this tabernacle, and in three days I will raise it up’. The Evangelist John mentions that the meaning of this expression was understood by the disciples only after the Resurrection. Jesus' utterance was prophetic and referred to a situation in which, on the one hand, the Zealot rebellion would lead to a war with the Romans (66-73), during which the temple was burned, and on the other hand, Jesus, after the resurrection, would build a new temple in the Risen Body. The worship offered to God in this temple will not be subject to the danger of profanity and degeneration.

After this ‘excess ‘, Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.

A member of the Sanhedrin and cordially warned Him: ‘give yourself up with these Messianic usurpations, for according to our findings you are an honorary doctor of Torah and no one else’. That is, neither a Messiah nor even a prophet. Jesus responded to this dictum with a speech about the new birth - in the Messianic era he was about to inaugurate...

Were there zealots among the apostles?

One of them - Simon - is identified by Luke with the Greek nickname zealotes (1:13). The other two Synoptics (Mt and Mk) use another Greek term - kananaios. Many scholars incorrectly identify it with Canaan and not, as it should be, with the transcription of the Semitic word: qana'i (zealot). The other apostles, the brothers James and John, sons of Zebedee, intended, according to Luke, to use arson to take revenge on the inhabitants of a Samaritan town for refusing them hospitality (9:54). Peter, during the capture of Jesus, resorts to violence with a sword in his hand. Jesus immediately cut off Peter's zealotic defensive strategy (Mt 26). Many of Jesus' disciples, if they did not have a Zelotic past in their biography, probably existed within the circle of popular Zelotic ideas and viewed their Master in these terms. This is why certain of them, after Jesus' death on the road to Emmaus, spoke with bitterness: ‘And we expected that He was about to liberate Israel’. (Lk 24:21).

So, to get rid of Jesus at the hands of the Romans, the best thing to do was to make him out to be a Zealot.

Exactly so. The Judean authorities were well aware of this, and from a certain point onwards they set so-called Zealot traps for Jesus. For example, the Pharisees and Herodians, who were generally in conflict, posed the trick question to him: ‘Is it permissible to pay tax to Caesar, or not?’ (Mt 22:15-21). Either of the two suggested answers was dangerous for Jesus. Jesus would say yes - he would compromise himself in the eyes of all pious and patriotic Jews; he would say no - the Herodians would denounce him to the Romans.

Then Jesus asked for a denarius. Why this coin?

For two reasons. The denarius was a one-year tax coin; secondly, there was the emperor's bust on the obverse and a blasphemous inscription for the Jews on the reverse. For these and other reasons, the denarius was a thing hated by the pious Jew who would not take it in his hands. Someone of the less pious, however, had it with him... The operation that Jesus performed with this coin is a symptom of genius. He entered into an elaborate dialogue with the schemers: ‘Whose is this image and inscription? They answered: of Caesar. Then he said to them: render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's’. (Mt 22:20). This is one of those places in the New Testament that is fatefully explained in catechesis and at the pulpit.

As an act of loyalty by Jesus to secular authority...

Exactly. What is decisive in Jesus' statement is the expression: eikon (image) and epigraph (inscription), which evoked the following association: what belongs to God and where is the inscription of God? What then belongs to God? That on which he has stamped his seal. Who is the seal of God? Man is the image of God. On his heart, mind, freedom, dignity, God has stamped his seal. Where is God's inscription found? The Torah is God's epigraphy. It contains an authentic commentary on the idea of the image, a commentary directed towards the messianic future.

We are at the heart of Judaism's religious argument.

Naturally. And no legitimate authority, secular or religious, represented here before the Herodians and Pharisees, is allowed to appropriate God's property. Jesus is not at all demanding submission to an illegitimate, occupying power. Moreover, he relativises the aspiration of every legitimate authority to monopolism and despotism before the eyes of the respondents. Every legitimate authority must render man to God. Political power - on the political plane, religious power - on the religious plane.

Why, then, was Jesus accused before Pilate of ‘forbidding to pay tax to Caesar’?

Because non-payment of tax was called for by the Zealots. In fact, the schemers correctly recognised the intention of Jesus' statement that he was against paying the tax. But by not accepting the payment of the poll tax, he was not calling on the Jews to rebel because of it. He was calling on the Jewish authorities, religious and secular, to surrender the man-image-God in all sectors of life. For where God is realistically in the first place, everything else will be in its proper place.

Before Pilate, the Judean superiors brought three charges against Jesus: ‘he incites the people, he dissuades them from paying taxes to Caesar and he considers himself the Messiah-King’.

These are extracted from the ‘anti-Jesus criminal code’. These three accusations were invoked to pressure Pilate into agreeing to put into action a resolution passed by ‘the chief priests and elders of the people’ to put Jesus to death (Mt 27:1). The content of this resolution is quoted by John: ‘according to the Torah, he should die, because he made himself the Son of God’. (19,7).

But before this resolution was made, the high priest Annas - retired but influential - insinuated Jesus as a conspirator during an unofficial interrogation. ‘The high priest asked Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Jesus answered as follows: I have spoken openly before the world. I taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews gather, and in secret I said nothing. Why do you ask me? Ask the hearers what I have said to them’ (John 18:19-20). The high priest's question supposes that Jesus was a Zealot and as such must have been practising conspiratorial teaching. In response, Jesus immediately counters this insinuation by claiming that he presented his doctrine in the synagogues and the most public place in Judea, the temple.

Before this resolution was passed, the Sanhedrin in a secret session decided to kill Him after raising Lazarus (John 11:45-53).

And the chief priests and the Pharisees ordered that His whereabouts should be reported to arrest Him (11:57). They tried to carry out the execution before the Passover. Then Jesus hid to survive until the Passover!

When do you think Jesus realised that He was going to be murdered?

In the Gospel of John - after his reaction to the first revelation of his sonship of God (5:17-19). I repeat that for insisting on His messiahship, He was only facing 40 lashes without one.

And that it would be execution on a cross?

If Judea had been a self-governing country, Jesus would probably have been stoned for blasphemy. The Romans, while reserving approval for capital punishment, de facto limited it to crucifixion for participation in a conspiracy to commit political subversion by armed struggle. Crucifixion was a punishment almost reserved for the Zealots. Jesus immediately realised that there was only one execution scenario left for him. And the shadow of that cross accompanied Him throughout His public ministry. He announced this kind of death during a discussion with the apostles Philip and Andrew in Jerusalem: ‘And when I am exalted above the earth, I will draw everyone to myself’. (J 13,32).

Hence the cross appeared in the announcements of the passion, death and resurrection?

Yes, except that in these announcements Jesus mentions the cross of the followers, which is significantly different from the cross of Jesus. Still, this must be taken into account that the expression ‘bear the cross’ was borrowed from the Zealot dictionary. The Zealots, aware of the rightness of their cause, heroically accepted numerous torments and mocked their tormentors and even witnessed the executions. At one point in the parable of the shepherd and the gate (John 10:1-18), Jesus alludes to this zealot's willingness to sacrifice and dissociates himself from it: ‘No one takes it (life - B.G.) from me, but I give it from myself’. His readiness for martyrdom is a disposition of a different order than the Zelock disposition.

What was the difference?

If the zeal of the Zealots was a zeal for a certain idea, let us say the radical veneration of the name of God at any cost, even the physical elimination of enemies and opponents, the zeal of Jesus was a zeal for the mercy of God, based on the direct and saving action of God.

Is it possible to identify in the Gospels such a moment in which Jesus moves in a determined way towards death on the cross?

He anticipated this death in many ways. I am most impressed by the scene in Bethany, in John's Gospel, when Mary anointed His feet with the oil of lard and wiped His feet with her hair. Jesus then came out of ‘hiding’ in a desert place and decided to go to Jerusalem for the Passover. He visited the house of the resurrected Lazarus. Jesus took this act of Mary, Lazarus' sister, as an anointing for his burial. Only a proper reading of the halakhic provisions in the Mishna for the ritual burial of a Jew reveals the meaning of Jesus' statement and the significance of this episode. According to these regulations, someone who shed his blood in the process of dying was not washed and anointed with oils after death. The body was wrapped in clean linen with spices. On the other hand, the walls of the burial chamber were anointed with oils. Jesus in Bethany knows that his body will not be anointed because of the shedding of blood and therefore treats Mary's anointing as a ritual anointing of the body going to death.

Amazing. And were the walls of His tomb anointed with oil?

Not in time. Although it was not an essential ceremony but an integral one, there was no intention to avoid it. During the great rush between 3 p.m. (death) and 6 p.m. on Friday (after 6 p.m. - sunset), no one bothered to buy oils for the walls. The first thing to do was to seize the body of Jesus so that it would not be thrown into a common grave with criminals, to organise a temporary burial chamber and gather linen and fragrances. Under the pressure of the approaching Sabbath eve, they did not manage to procure oils to anoint the walls of the burial chamber. However, John reports that the burial took place ‘according to the Jewish way of burial’. (19,40). Luke accurately records that after Jesus was placed in the burial chamber, the women carefully inspected the site and location of his body. On their way home, they had arranged for oils, but could not use them because of the Sabbath rest.

It is now clear to me why the women ran to the tomb on Sunday morning.

Before sunrise, when it was still dark. To warn the others. When the first mourners arrive, the ritual of burial will already have been completed and there will be no scandal. Meanwhile, they did not find Jesus in the tomb. In the house of Lazarus, Jesus, knowing that he would rise from the dead before the ritual was completed, treated the anointing of his feet by Mary as the anointing of his own body for burial.

On the occasion of this anointing, Judas, driven by an alleged concern for the poor, spoke out in Bethany.

He was the only Judean among the apostles. He was the treasurer and on that occasion, he was exposed by the author of John's Gospel as a thief, because he robbed the apostles of their donated funds.

Why did he betray them?

The Evangelists do not articulate the inner motives of this betrayal (e.g. disappointment with the form of Jesus' public mission). I had the opportunity to give an opinion for the award of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland entitled 'The Image of Judas and His Relationship with Jesus in Contemporary Hebrew Literature' by dr Anna Piątek from the University of Warsaw. This solid and original work shows that Hebrew literature contains a multiform portrait of Judas, as opposed to the Christian, monotheistic one.

Didn't greed for money play a major role in Judas?

According to the evangelists, in general, greed drove him to propose denouncing the Master. On the other hand, there is an intriguing element in his tragic biography, overlooked by hermeneutics, although brilliantly highlighted by Matthew: ‘Then Judas, who had delivered Him up, seeing that He was condemned, repented, and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in giving innocent blood. But they said, 'What do we care? It is your business. Having thrown the pieces of silver into the tabernacle, he went away and hanged himself’ (27,3-5).

What is the meaning of this behaviour?

Matthew here shows Judas as a man who did not fully realise the consequences of his act and did not intend it. When it became clear that Jesus had been condemned to death, he was immediately awakened by a conscience formed on the fifth norm of the Decalogue: ‘Thou shalt not murder’. Correctly judging his act as complicity in murder, Judas tried to avert its consequences by dramatically crying out that the Betrayed One was not guilty of the death penalty. When this desperate attempt to save Jesus fails, he gives up the money and executes the death sentence on himself by hanging himself for violating the fifth disposition of the Decalogue. The expression: ‘to shed innocent blood’ in the biblical tradition is an authentic interpretation of the commandment: ‘thou shalt not murder’!

It is fascinating how much can be read from the gospels. But let us return to the via Dolorosa. Did Pilate really care about releasing Jesus?

The Evangelists point to several of Pilate's behaviours that give rise to the claim that Pilate did not care about convicting Jesus. After all, he knew that the Judean rulers had delivered him into his hands through envy (Mt 27:18). His gesture of washing his hands shows that he lacked determination. The best assessment of the degree of his guilt is given by Jesus himself in the Gospel of John: ‘Greater sin hath he than he that delivered me unto thee’ (19,11). The greater sin presupposes the lesser one of Pilate.

Did Pilate break the rules of Roman law?

There have been some publications on this subject. He unjustifiably had Jesus scourged without proving Him guilty of anything. Then he led the famous 'amnesty contest' between the scourged Jesus and Barabbas, etc.

Who do you think Barabbas was?

In my opinion, he was an exposed zealot, a member of the special forces, the so-called sicarios from the short sica knife. The sicarios carried it in the folds of their clothing and used it to viciously execute their enemies. Matthew calls him a substantial prisoner (27:16). Mark states that he was imprisoned together with the rebels who, during the riot, committed premeditated murder on an innocent man, for their act was described by the word murder (15,7). In Luke, the one who struck the murderous blow was Barabbas, and it happened during a riot in Jerusalem (23,19; in v. 23,25 Luke attributes to Barabbas the provocation of the rebellion and the murder).

Jesus lost the ‘amnesty contest’ to the zealot!

Facing each other were an unremarkable zealot, selected by Pilate from a group of rebels, and a bloodied Jesus, deliberately made out to be a dangerous zealot by his opponents. The paradox of the scene is not exhausted in this alone. The name Barabbas is of Aramaic origin and literally means son of the father. A group of codices in the Gospel of Matthew give Barabbas the name... - Jesus. As we know, the name Jesus is theophoric and means: ‘God is salvation’. So the two Jesus stood against each other as sons of the Father... Jesus could not emerge victorious from such a ‘contest’.

What did Pilate want to achieve?

Playing the game of provocation and arrogance with the Judean superiors, Pilate was less interested in the fate of some provincial Jews who did not have Roman citizenship. Finally, complying with the demands of the inflamed mob, he handed Jesus over to be crucified, also yielding to the pressure of sophisticated blackmail (‘If you release him, you are no friend of Caesar’: Jn 19:12). By contrast, he then went to great lengths to ensure that the cause of death, nailed above the Condemned One's head, was motivated by imperial interests: ‘Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews’. The inscription informed that Jesus was claiming the title of King of the Jews, obviously without the approval of the occupying power. The figure of Pilate was also portrayed negatively by the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius.

The last act of the drama took place on Golgotha. Who was the so-called good villain?

As a rule, Zealots were crucified, and they mocked death and insulted others during the execution. According to Luke's account, one convict insulted Jesus, for which another rebuked him: ‘For we receive just punishment, fitting for the deeds we have done. But this one has not done anything wicked’ (Lk 23:39). It is possible that this second Zealot, in the face of rubbish, ‘awoke’. And by placing his actions in the context of God's merciful justice, he acknowledged their reprehensibility. Jesus then promised him an immediate place in paradise.

Is it true that Jesus became doubtful on the cross, as evidenced by the cry, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me’?

I am familiar with this ingrained but flawed interpretation. Psalm 22 begins with these words, a prayer that a pious Jew would recite before retiring to bed. By praying this psalm, Jesus, as it were, redefined his death as sleep. Secondly, it is a messianic psalm that so adequately reflects the life of Jesus with his last breaths. I suggest a close reading of its contents. It ends with the hope of resurrection and the promise of a great seed. The Gospel accounts show that Jesus recited it in its entirety. What is even more noteworthy is that he recited the psalm in Aramaic: ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani...’ (in Hebrew it would be, ‘Eli, Eli, lama azawtani...’).

I read recently that death on the cross occurred as a result of suffocation.

I consulted the medical circumstances of death with medics. According to them, death on the cross lasted from a few hours to tens of hours (or even days), depending on the condition of the condemned - and occurred as a result of suffocation. The crucifixion technique made it difficult for the convict to breathe. When he was hanging, he could not exhale fully. To breathe out, he had to lift himself up by straightening his knees - but at the cost of terrible pain to the nerves in his hands and feet, irritated by the nails. As a result of asphyxiation, the person goes out like a candle covered with a lampshade - slowly losing consciousness. We see none of these symptoms in the accounts of Jesus' agony. On the contrary, Jesus remained fully conscious until the moment of his death.

If not suffocation, what do you think was the immediate cause of Jesus' death?

Medical friends suggest a ruptured heart following an acute myocardial infarction. There is then pumping of blood into the pericardial sac, which can hold up to 2 litres of blood. If the body hung on the cross after death for up to two hours (Jesus died at 3 pm, and Joseph of Arimathea received Pilate's permission to remove the body from the cross in the evening), the so-called Biernacki reaction described by this Polish doctor may have occurred by then. The red blood cells sink to the bottom and a light-coloured serum forms at the top.

John the Evangelist observed that blood and water flowed out of Jesus' side.

Here it is. ‘But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his shins, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out’ (J 19,33-34). The Roman soldier, who specialized in murder, struck in such a way that the spear reached the region of the heart. From the bottom of the pierced pericardial sac first, red blood cells and then serum from the upper layer flowed out.

There were weather anomalies during the dying of Jesus. Is the description of these anomalies not mythical?

I experienced two hamsins in Israel, an autumn hamsin and a spring hamsin (the Hebrew equivalent for this popular Arabic name for hamsin is sharaw). This is a very inconvenient weather phenomenon, caused by a southeasterly wind casting fine and hot sand all over the atmosphere, which limits the visibility of the sun in a cloudless sky. I barely survived the spring hamsin. I felt a general breakdown and a kind of pre-cardiac state. One moves like the proverbial fly in the ointment. It is necessary to slow down the pace of life. It seems that Jesus' agony overlapped with the peak of the spring hamsin. Jesus' possible acute heart attack would have had additional justification in this as well.

Before dying, Jesus cried out: ‘I thirst’.

John describes it as follows: ‘Jesus, seeing that all things were already accomplished (tetelestai) and that the Torah was fulfilled (teleiothe), cried out: 'I thirst'‘ (J 19,28). Paradoxically, Jesus initiates the last act in the prophetic scenario of the death of the Messiah. In place of a drink, he receives a sponge soaked in vinegar, which further increased his thirst (Jn 19:29 cf. Ps 69:22). Then he exclaimed: ‘it is done (tetelestai), he bowed his head and handed over his soul to God’ (J 19,30). The Greek technical-religious verb is used here three times. It was used in antiquity to describe the closing of mystery rituals. In Jesus' mouth, it is in the past tense, the so-called perfectum, and in the passive side. The perfectum signals to us that, although His death occurred in the past, its effects continue into the present. The passive, on the other hand, informs us that God is behind the fact of this kind of pious death on the cross (this is the so-called passivum divinum - ‘divine passive’).

A mysterious matter.

It is. Jesus' death on the cross is the culmination of the mysteries of God's initiation. The medium in this process of initiation is Jesus the Man, as the chief Mystagogue. These mysteries continue according to the scenario that Jesus ‘unfolded’ in the course of his public activity. But that is a topic for a new conversation.

Interview by Magdalena Gorostiza

Z tego powodu Galilejczycy mogli być postrzegani w Judei jako rewolucjoniści.

Jako grupa podwyższonego ryzyka. Z powodu napływu rzesz pątników na święta pielgrzymkowe do Jerozolimy, zwiększano załogę rzymskiego garnizonu. Rzymianie dobrze pamiętali bunt z początku wieku wszczęty przez zelotów, stronnictwo narodowo-wyzwoleńcze o cechach rewolucyjnych. Zeloci stawiali sobie za cel walkę z Rzymianami oraz Żydami, którzy kolaborowali z okupantem. By uchwycić w całej rozciągłości okoliczności śmierci Jezusa, należy przeczytać z uwagą dzieła Józefa Flawiusza, historyka żydowskiego: "O wojnie żydowskiej" i "Dzieje Izraela".

Co to był za bunt?

Kwiryniusz - legat cesarski - zarządził w 6. r. n.e. dla prowincji Syrii spis majątków, by oszacować wysokość podatku. Jako szczególne upokorzenie odebrała ten spis Judea, gdyż został on ogłoszony wkrótce po zesłaniu na wygnanie Heroda Archelaosa, króla Judei. Bunt wszczęli na terenie Judei przybysze z zewnątrz: uczony mąż Juda o przydomku Galilejczyk wraz z faryzeuszem Sadokiem (Wojna 2,118; Dzieje 18,1-8.23; 20,102). Juda uchodzi za założyciela stronnictwa zelockiego, a wręcz dynastii zelotów. W miarę upływu czasu, gdy wzrastało napięcie między Żydami a Rzymianami, to wraz z nim rosła popularność zelotów w społeczeństwie. W dziełach Józefa Flawiusza spotykamy zelotów wywodzących się z kręgu faryzeuszy, kapłanów, a nawet esseńczyków. Zresztą Józef Flawiusz, będąc kapłanem, przystąpił do drugiego zelockiego powstania, które przerodziło się w tragiczną wojnę przeciw Rzymianom (66-73).

Czy Jezus był zelotą?

Był gorliwcem (zelotą) w najgłębszym religijnym wymiarze – do którego stronnictwo zelotów również się odwoływało. Na przykład z powodu gorliwości wypędził handlarzy i bankierów z dziedzińca świątyni (J 2,13-22). Żeby tej ekstremalnej gorliwości Jezusa nie interpretować w kategoriach zelocko‑rewolucyjnych, oświetlono ją cytatem z Ps 69,10: "gorliwość o dom Twój pożera mnie". W istocie Jezus tym czynem zainaugurował erę mesjańską, gdyż według mesjanologii, Mesjasz miał rozpocząć nowe porządki od świątyni w Jerozolimie. A według Targumu do Izajasza (53,5) – Mesjasz miał wznieść świątynię na nowo.

Had Judea been a self-governing country, Jesus would probably have been stoned to death for blasphemy. The Romans, while reserving permission for the death penalty, de facto limited it to crucifixion for participation in a conspiracy. It was reserved for the Zealots’, says prof. Bogusław Górka for onet.pl.

Professor, for what reason did Jesus die?

As a result of revealing that he is the Son of God. But in the optics of the New Testament Jesus is the Son of God not only as God but first of all as a man. John in the Prologue speaks of him as Man: ‘of God he was born’ (1,13). But this truth somehow eludes us because of the neo-Platonic corset of a worldview that suffocates Christian theology and mentality. The motive for Jesus' life and work was therefore the fulfilment of the will of God as Father, until his last breath on the cross, where the full revelation of his double sonship of God took place.

This is how it stands in the account of all the gospels. In the Gospel of John, for the first time, Jesus' opponents reveal their intention to kill Him following the confession: ‘My Father works until now, and I work’. (5,17). This is Jesus' official comment on the act of healing the lame man on the Sabbath at the Pool of Bethesda. The intention to kill Jesus is indeed linked to the revelation of his self-awareness of his sonship of God, which opponents obviously regard as a criminal usurpation. If the opponents saw in this statement only a usurpation of messiahship, they would probably seek to punish him by beating him with 40 strokes without one.

So what do the Romans have to do with the death of Jesus?

Generally speaking, without the approval of the Romans, it was not possible to take the life of a Jew in the territory of Judea, over which they had direct supervision at that time through the prefects.

Pilate's prefecture did not then include Galilee. Jesus was a Galilean.

Indeed, he was a Judean because he was born in Bethlehem. He was called a Galilean because of his residence in Nazareth after his return from Egypt. And for this reason, he was subject to the authority of the Galilean king, Herod Antipas. On the other hand, He was captured in the Judean area of Jerusalem by the Judean guard with the support of a Roman cohort (John 18:12). He was eventually handed over to the Romans on the pretext of organising a plot against the emperor.

Pilate, however, was reluctant to give his consent to the death sentence.

At one point, he tried to evade the decision and sent Jesus back to the Galilean king, Herod Antipas, who was in Jerusalem for the Passover festival (Luke 23:7).

Why did Jesus die on the cross? Why was he not, for example, stoned to death?

This also has to do with Jesus' Galilean environment. When Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feasts, he left Galilee as a free man, but a subject of the Jewish king; when he crossed the border of Judea, he entered an area occupied by the Romans. For Jews, especially Galileans, this was an unbearable situation. And on the occasion of the pilgrimage festivals, they gave expression to this in Jerusalem in many ways.

Because of this, the Galileans could be seen in Judea as revolutionaries.

As a high-risk group. Because of the influx of crowds of pilgrims on pilgrimage festivals to Jerusalem, the manning of the Roman garrison was increased. The Romans well remembered the revolt at the beginning of the century initiated by the Zealots, a national liberation party with revolutionary characteristics. The Zealots aimed to fight against the Romans and the Jews who collaborated with the occupying power. To grasp in full the circumstances of Jesus' death, the works of Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, should be read carefully: ‘On the Jewish War’ and ‘The History of Israel’.

What was the rebellion?

Quirinius - the imperial legate - ordered a census of estates for the province of Syria in 6 AD to assess the tax. Judea received this census as a particular humiliation because it was announced shortly after Herod Archelaus, king of Judea, was sent into exile. The revolt was started in Judea by outsiders: the scholarly man Judah, nicknamed Galilean, together with the Pharisee Sadoc (War 2:118; Acts 18:1-8.23; 20:102). Judah is regarded as the founder of the Zealotic party, indeed the Zelotic dynasty. As the tension between the Jews and the Romans increased over time, it was with it that the popularity of the Zealots in society grew. In the works of Josephus Flavius, we find zealots hailing from the circle of Pharisees, priests and even Essenes. In fact, Josephus Flavius, while a priest, joined the second Zelotic uprising, which turned into a tragic war against the Romans (66-73).

Was Jesus a zealot?

He was a zealot (zealot) in the deepest religious dimension - to which the Zealot party also appealed. For example, because of his zeal, he drove the traders and bankers out of the temple courtyard (John 2:13-22). Lest this extreme zeal of Jesus is interpreted in Zealoc-revolutionary terms, it is illuminated by a quotation from Ps 69:10: ‘zeal for your house devours me’. Indeed, with this act, Jesus inaugurated the messianic era, for according to messianology, the Messiah was to begin the new order from the temple in Jerusalem. And according to the Targum to Isaiah (53:5) - the Messiah was to erect the temple anew.

Hence the witnesses to the event ask Jesus for a sign?

For an authentication sign as the Messiah. And how did Jesus respond? He said: ‘Destroy this tabernacle, and in three days I will raise it up’. The Evangelist John mentions that the meaning of this expression was understood by the disciples only after the Resurrection. Jesus' utterance was prophetic and referred to a situation in which, on the one hand, the Zealot rebellion would lead to a war with the Romans (66-73), during which the temple was burned, and on the other hand, Jesus, after the resurrection, would build a new temple in the Risen Body. The worship offered to God in this temple will not be subject to the danger of profanity and degeneration.

After this ‘excess ‘, Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.

A member of the Sanhedrin and cordially warned Him: ‘give yourself up with these Messianic usurpations, for according to our findings you are an honorary doctor of Torah and no one else’. That is, neither a Messiah nor even a prophet. Jesus responded to this dictum with a speech about the new birth - in the Messianic era he was about to inaugurate...

Were there zealots among the apostles?

One of them - Simon - is identified by Luke with the Greek nickname zealotes (1:13). The other two Synoptics (Mt and Mk) use another Greek term - kananaios. Many scholars incorrectly identify it with Canaan and not, as it should be, with the transcription of the Semitic word: qana'i (zealot). The other apostles, the brothers James and John, sons of Zebedee, intended, according to Luke, to use arson to take revenge on the inhabitants of a Samaritan town for refusing them hospitality (9:54). Peter, during the capture of Jesus, resorts to violence with a sword in his hand. Jesus immediately cut off Peter's zealotic defensive strategy (Mt 26). Many of Jesus' disciples, if they did not have a Zelotic past in their biography, probably existed within the circle of popular Zelotic ideas and viewed their Master in these terms. This is why certain of them, after Jesus' death on the road to Emmaus, spoke with bitterness: ‘And we expected that He was about to liberate Israel’. (Lk 24:21).

So, to get rid of Jesus at the hands of the Romans, the best thing to do was to make him out to be a Zealot.

Exactly so. The Judean authorities were well aware of this, and from a certain point onwards they set so-called Zealot traps for Jesus. For example, the Pharisees and Herodians, who were generally in conflict, posed the trick question to him: ‘Is it permissible to pay tax to Caesar, or not?’ (Mt 22:15-21). Either of the two suggested answers was dangerous for Jesus. Jesus would say yes - he would compromise himself in the eyes of all pious and patriotic Jews; he would say no - the Herodians would denounce him to the Romans.

Then Jesus asked for a denarius. Why this coin?

For two reasons. The denarius was a one-year tax coin; secondly, there was the emperor's bust on the obverse and a blasphemous inscription for the Jews on the reverse. For these and other reasons, the denarius was a thing hated by the pious Jew who would not take it in his hands. Someone of the less pious, however, had it with him... The operation that Jesus performed with this coin is a symptom of genius. He entered into an elaborate dialogue with the schemers: ‘Whose is this image and inscription? They answered: of Caesar. Then he said to them: render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's’. (Mt 22:20). This is one of those places in the New Testament that is fatefully explained in catechesis and at the pulpit.

As an act of loyalty by Jesus to secular authority...

Exactly. What is decisive in Jesus' statement is the expression: eikon (image) and epigraph (inscription), which evoked the following association: what belongs to God and where is the inscription of God? What then belongs to God? That on which he has stamped his seal. Who is the seal of God? Man is the image of God. On his heart, mind, freedom, dignity, God has stamped his seal. Where is God's inscription found? The Torah is God's epigraphy. It contains an authentic commentary on the idea of the image, a commentary directed towards the messianic future.

We are at the heart of Judaism's religious argument.

Naturally. And no legitimate authority, secular or religious, represented here before the Herodians and Pharisees, is allowed to appropriate God's property. Jesus is not at all demanding submission to an illegitimate, occupying power. Moreover, he relativises the aspiration of every legitimate authority to monopolism and despotism before the eyes of the respondents. Every legitimate authority must render man to God. Political power - on the political plane, religious power - on the religious plane.

Why, then, was Jesus accused before Pilate of ‘forbidding to pay tax to Caesar’?

Because non-payment of tax was called for by the Zealots. In fact, the schemers correctly recognised the intention of Jesus' statement that he was against paying the tax. But by not accepting the payment of the poll tax, he was not calling on the Jews to rebel because of it. He was calling on the Jewish authorities, religious and secular, to surrender the man-image-God in all sectors of life. For where God is realistically in the first place, everything else will be in its proper place.

Before Pilate, the Judean superiors brought three charges against Jesus: ‘he incites the people, he dissuades them from paying taxes to Caesar and he considers himself the Messiah-King’.

These are extracted from the ‘anti-Jesus criminal code’. These three accusations were invoked to pressure Pilate into agreeing to put into action a resolution passed by ‘the chief priests and elders of the people’ to put Jesus to death (Mt 27:1). The content of this resolution is quoted by John: ‘according to the Torah, he should die, because he made himself the Son of God’. (19,7).

But before this resolution was made, the high priest Annas - retired but influential - insinuated Jesus as a conspirator during an unofficial interrogation. ‘The high priest asked Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Jesus answered as follows: I have spoken openly before the world. I taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews gather, and in secret I said nothing. Why do you ask me? Ask the hearers what I have said to them’ (John 18:19-20). The high priest's question supposes that Jesus was a Zealot and as such must have been practising conspiratorial teaching. In response, Jesus immediately counters this insinuation by claiming that he presented his doctrine in the synagogues and the most public place in Judea, the temple.

Before this resolution was passed, the Sanhedrin in a secret session decided to kill Him after raising Lazarus (John 11:45-53).

And the chief priests and the Pharisees ordered that His whereabouts should be reported to arrest Him (11:57). They tried to carry out the execution before the Passover. Then Jesus hid to survive until the Passover!

When do you think Jesus realised that He was going to be murdered?

In the Gospel of John - after his reaction to the first revelation of his sonship of God (5:17-19). I repeat that for insisting on His messiahship, He was only facing 40 lashes without one.

And that it would be execution on a cross?

If Judea had been a self-governing country, Jesus would probably have been stoned for blasphemy. The Romans, while reserving approval for capital punishment, de facto limited it to crucifixion for participation in a conspiracy to commit political subversion by armed struggle. Crucifixion was a punishment almost reserved for the Zealots. Jesus immediately realised that there was only one execution scenario left for him. And the shadow of that cross accompanied Him throughout His public ministry. He announced this kind of death during a discussion with the apostles Philip and Andrew in Jerusalem: ‘And when I am exalted above the earth, I will draw everyone to myself’. (J 13,32).

Hence the cross appeared in the announcements of the passion, death and resurrection?

Yes, except that in these announcements Jesus mentions the cross of the followers, which is significantly different from the cross of Jesus. Still, this must be taken into account that the expression ‘bear the cross’ was borrowed from the Zealot dictionary. The Zealots, aware of the rightness of their cause, heroically accepted numerous torments and mocked their tormentors and even witnessed the executions. At one point in the parable of the shepherd and the gate (John 10:1-18), Jesus alludes to this zealot's willingness to sacrifice and dissociates himself from it: ‘No one takes it (life - B.G.) from me, but I give it from myself’. His readiness for martyrdom is a disposition of a different order than the Zelock disposition.

What was the difference?

If the zeal of the Zealots was a zeal for a certain idea, let us say the radical veneration of the name of God at any cost, even the physical elimination of enemies and opponents, the zeal of Jesus was a zeal for the mercy of God, based on the direct and saving action of God.

Is it possible to identify in the Gospels such a moment in which Jesus moves in a determined way towards death on the cross?

He anticipated this death in many ways. I am most impressed by the scene in Bethany, in John's Gospel, when Mary anointed His feet with the oil of lard and wiped His feet with her hair. Jesus then came out of ‘hiding’ in a desert place and decided to go to Jerusalem for the Passover. He visited the house of the resurrected Lazarus. Jesus took this act of Mary, Lazarus' sister, as an anointing for his burial. Only a proper reading of the halakhic provisions in the Mishna for the ritual burial of a Jew reveals the meaning of Jesus' statement and the significance of this episode. According to these regulations, someone who shed his blood in the process of dying was not washed and anointed with oils after death. The body was wrapped in clean linen with spices. On the other hand, the walls of the burial chamber were anointed with oils. Jesus in Bethany knows that his body will not be anointed because of the shedding of blood and therefore treats Mary's anointing as a ritual anointing of the body going to death.

Amazing. And were the walls of His tomb anointed with oil?

Not in time. Although it was not an essential ceremony but an integral one, there was no intention to avoid it. During the great rush between 3 p.m. (death) and 6 p.m. on Friday (after 6 p.m. - sunset), no one bothered to buy oils for the walls. The first thing to do was to seize the body of Jesus so that it would not be thrown into a common grave with criminals, to organise a temporary burial chamber and gather linen and fragrances. Under the pressure of the approaching Sabbath eve, they did not manage to procure oils to anoint the walls of the burial chamber. However, John reports that the burial took place ‘according to the Jewish way of burial’. (19,40). Luke accurately records that after Jesus was placed in the burial chamber, the women carefully inspected the site and location of his body. On their way home, they had arranged for oils, but could not use them because of the Sabbath rest.

It is now clear to me why the women ran to the tomb on Sunday morning.

Before sunrise, when it was still dark. To warn the others. When the first mourners arrive, the ritual of burial will already have been completed and there will be no scandal. Meanwhile, they did not find Jesus in the tomb. In the house of Lazarus, Jesus, knowing that he would rise from the dead before the ritual was completed, treated the anointing of his feet by Mary as the anointing of his own body for burial.

On the occasion of this anointing, Judas, driven by an alleged concern for the poor, spoke out in Bethany.

He was the only Judean among the apostles. He was the treasurer and on that occasion, he was exposed by the author of John's Gospel as a thief, because he robbed the apostles of their donated funds.

Why did he betray them?

The Evangelists do not articulate the inner motives of this betrayal (e.g. disappointment with the form of Jesus' public mission). I had the opportunity to give an opinion for the award of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland entitled 'The Image of Judas and His Relationship with Jesus in Contemporary Hebrew Literature' by dr Anna Piątek from the University of Warsaw. This solid and original work shows that Hebrew literature contains a multiform portrait of Judas, as opposed to the Christian, monotheistic one.

Didn't greed for money play a major role in Judas?

According to the evangelists, in general, greed drove him to propose denouncing the Master. On the other hand, there is an intriguing element in his tragic biography, overlooked by hermeneutics, although brilliantly highlighted by Matthew: ‘Then Judas, who had delivered Him up, seeing that He was condemned, repented, and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in giving innocent blood. But they said, 'What do we care? It is your business. Having thrown the pieces of silver into the tabernacle, he went away and hanged himself’ (27,3-5).

What is the meaning of this behaviour?

Matthew here shows Judas as a man who did not fully realise the consequences of his act and did not intend it. When it became clear that Jesus had been condemned to death, he was immediately awakened by a conscience formed on the fifth norm of the Decalogue: ‘Thou shalt not murder’. Correctly judging his act as complicity in murder, Judas tried to avert its consequences by dramatically crying out that the Betrayed One was not guilty of the death penalty. When this desperate attempt to save Jesus fails, he gives up the money and executes the death sentence on himself by hanging himself for violating the fifth disposition of the Decalogue. The expression: ‘to shed innocent blood’ in the biblical tradition is an authentic interpretation of the commandment: ‘thou shalt not murder’!

It is fascinating how much can be read from the gospels. But let us return to the via Dolorosa. Did Pilate really care about releasing Jesus?

The Evangelists point to several of Pilate's behaviours that give rise to the claim that Pilate did not care about convicting Jesus. After all, he knew that the Judean rulers had delivered him into his hands through envy (Mt 27:18). His gesture of washing his hands shows that he lacked determination. The best assessment of the degree of his guilt is given by Jesus himself in the Gospel of John: ‘Greater sin hath he than he that delivered me unto thee’ (19,11). The greater sin presupposes the lesser one of Pilate.

Did Pilate break the rules of Roman law?

There have been some publications on this subject. He unjustifiably had Jesus scourged without proving Him guilty of anything. Then he led the famous 'amnesty contest' between the scourged Jesus and Barabbas, etc.

Who do you think Barabbas was?

In my opinion, he was an exposed zealot, a member of the special forces, the so-called sicarios from the short sica knife. The sicarios carried it in the folds of their clothing and used it to viciously execute their enemies. Matthew calls him a substantial prisoner (27:16). Mark states that he was imprisoned together with the rebels who, during the riot, committed premeditated murder on an innocent man, for their act was described by the word murder (15,7). In Luke, the one who struck the murderous blow was Barabbas, and it happened during a riot in Jerusalem (23,19; in v. 23,25 Luke attributes to Barabbas the provocation of the rebellion and the murder).

Jesus lost the ‘amnesty contest’ to the zealot!

Facing each other were an unremarkable zealot, selected by Pilate from a group of rebels, and a bloodied Jesus, deliberately made out to be a dangerous zealot by his opponents. The paradox of the scene is not exhausted in this alone. The name Barabbas is of Aramaic origin and literally means son of the father. A group of codices in the Gospel of Matthew give Barabbas the name... - Jesus. As we know, the name Jesus is theophoric and means: ‘God is salvation’. So the two Jesus stood against each other as sons of the Father... Jesus could not emerge victorious from such a ‘contest’.

What did Pilate want to achieve?

Playing the game of provocation and arrogance with the Judean superiors, Pilate was less interested in the fate of some provincial Jews who did not have Roman citizenship. Finally, complying with the demands of the inflamed mob, he handed Jesus over to be crucified, also yielding to the pressure of sophisticated blackmail (‘If you release him, you are no friend of Caesar’: Jn 19:12). By contrast, he then went to great lengths to ensure that the cause of death, nailed above the Condemned One's head, was motivated by imperial interests: ‘Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews’. The inscription informed that Jesus was claiming the title of King of the Jews, obviously without the approval of the occupying power. The figure of Pilate was also portrayed negatively by the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius.

The last act of the drama took place on Golgotha. Who was the so-called good villain?

As a rule, Zealots were crucified, and they mocked death and insulted others during the execution. According to Luke's account, one convict insulted Jesus, for which another rebuked him: ‘For we receive just punishment, fitting for the deeds we have done. But this one has not done anything wicked’ (Lk 23:39). It is possible that this second Zealot, in the face of rubbish, ‘awoke’. And by placing his actions in the context of God's merciful justice, he acknowledged their reprehensibility. Jesus then promised him an immediate place in paradise.

Is it true that Jesus became doubtful on the cross, as evidenced by the cry, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me’?

I am familiar with this ingrained but flawed interpretation. Psalm 22 begins with these words, a prayer that a pious Jew would recite before retiring to bed. By praying this psalm, Jesus, as it were, redefined his death as sleep. Secondly, it is a messianic psalm that so adequately reflects the life of Jesus with his last breaths. I suggest a close reading of its contents. It ends with the hope of resurrection and the promise of a great seed. The Gospel accounts show that Jesus recited it in its entirety. What is even more noteworthy is that he recited the psalm in Aramaic: ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani...’ (in Hebrew it would be, ‘Eli, Eli, lama azawtani...’).

I read recently that death on the cross occurred as a result of suffocation.

I consulted the medical circumstances of death with medics. According to them, death on the cross lasted from a few hours to tens of hours (or even days), depending on the condition of the condemned - and occurred as a result of suffocation. The crucifixion technique made it difficult for the convict to breathe. When he was hanging, he could not exhale fully. To breathe out, he had to lift himself up by straightening his knees - but at the cost of terrible pain to the nerves in his hands and feet, irritated by the nails. As a result of asphyxiation, the person goes out like a candle covered with a lampshade - slowly losing consciousness. We see none of these symptoms in the accounts of Jesus' agony. On the contrary, Jesus remained fully conscious until the moment of his death.

If not suffocation, what do you think was the immediate cause of Jesus' death?

Medical friends suggest a ruptured heart following an acute myocardial infarction. There is then pumping of blood into the pericardial sac, which can hold up to 2 litres of blood. If the body hung on the cross after death for up to two hours (Jesus died at 3 pm, and Joseph of Arimathea received Pilate's permission to remove the body from the cross in the evening), the so-called Biernacki reaction described by this Polish doctor may have occurred by then. The red blood cells sink to the bottom and a light-coloured serum forms at the top.

John the Evangelist observed that blood and water flowed out of Jesus' side.

Here it is. ‘But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his shins, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out’ (J 19,33-34). The Roman soldier, who specialized in murder, struck in such a way that the spear reached the region of the heart. From the bottom of the pierced pericardial sac first, red blood cells and then serum from the upper layer flowed out.

There were weather anomalies during the dying of Jesus. Is the description of these anomalies not mythical?

I experienced two hamsins in Israel, an autumn hamsin and a spring hamsin (the Hebrew equivalent for this popular Arabic name for hamsin is sharaw). This is a very inconvenient weather phenomenon, caused by a southeasterly wind casting fine and hot sand all over the atmosphere, which limits the visibility of the sun in a cloudless sky. I barely survived the spring hamsin. I felt a general breakdown and a kind of pre-cardiac state. One moves like the proverbial fly in the ointment. It is necessary to slow down the pace of life. It seems that Jesus' agony overlapped with the peak of the spring hamsin. Jesus' possible acute heart attack would have had additional justification in this as well.

Before dying, Jesus cried out: ‘I thirst’.

John describes it as follows: ‘Jesus, seeing that all things were already accomplished (tetelestai) and that the Torah was fulfilled (teleiothe), cried out: 'I thirst'‘ (J 19,28). Paradoxically, Jesus initiates the last act in the prophetic scenario of the death of the Messiah. In place of a drink, he receives a sponge soaked in vinegar, which further increased his thirst (Jn 19:29 cf. Ps 69:22). Then he exclaimed: ‘it is done (tetelestai), he bowed his head and handed over his soul to God’ (J 19,30). The Greek technical-religious verb is used here three times. It was used in antiquity to describe the closing of mystery rituals. In Jesus' mouth, it is in the past tense, the so-called perfectum, and in the passive side. The perfectum signals to us that, although His death occurred in the past, its effects continue into the present. The passive, on the other hand, informs us that God is behind the fact of this kind of pious death on the cross (this is the so-called passivum divinum - ‘divine passive’).

A mysterious matter.

It is. Jesus' death on the cross is the culmination of the mysteries of God's initiation. The medium in this process of initiation is Jesus the Man, as the chief Mystagogue. These mysteries continue according to the scenario that Jesus ‘unfolded’ in the course of his public activity. But that is a topic for a new conversation.

Interview by Magdalena Gorostiza