The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
Alfred Edersheim
1883
Book V
THE CROSS AND THE CROWN
Chapter 1
THE FIRST DAY IN PASSION -WEEK
PALM-SUNDAY
THE ROYAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM
(St. Matthew 21:1-11; St. Mark 11:1-11; St. Luke 19:29-44; St. John 12: 12-19.)
At length the time of the end had come. Jesus was about to make Entry into Jerusalem
as King: King of the Jews, as Heir of David's royal line, with all of symbolic, typic, and
prophetic import attaching to it. Yet not as Israel after the flesh exp ected its Messiah
was the Son of David to make triumphal entrance, but as deeply and significantly
expressive of His Mission and Work, and as of old the rapt seer had beheld afar off the
outlined picture of the Messiah-King: not in the proud triumph of war-conquests, but in
the 'meek' rule of peace.
It is surely one of the strangest mistakes of modern criticism to regard this Entry of
Christ into Jerusalem as implying that, fired by enthusiasm, He had for the moment
expected that the people would receive Him as the Messiah.1 And it seems little, if at all
better, when this Entry is described as 'an apparent concession to the fevered
expectations of His disciples and the multitude . . . the grave, sad accommodation to
thoughts other than His own to which the Teacher of new truths must often have
recourse when He finds Himself misinterpreted by those who stand together on a lower
level.'2 'Apologies' are the weakness of 'Apologetics' - and any 'accommodation' theory
can have no place in the history of the Chr ist. On the contrary, we regard His Royal
Entry into the Jerusalem of Prophecy and of the Crucifixion as an integral part of the
history of Christ, which would not be complete, nor thoroughly consistent, without it. It
behoved Him so to enter Jerusalem, because He was a King; and as King to enter it in
such manner, because He was such a King - and both the one and the other were in
accordance with the prophecy of old.
1. So notably Keim. Of course, the theory proceeds on the assumption that the
Discourses reported by St. Luke are spurious.
2. Dean Plumptre on St. Matt. xxi. 5.
It was a bright day in early spring of the year 29, when the festive procession set out
from the home at Bethany. There can be no reasonable doubt as to the locality of that
hamlet (the modern El-'Azariye, 'of Lazarus'), perched on a broken rocky plateau on the
other side of Olivet. More difficulty attaches to the identification of Bethphage, which is