The Life of Jesus

So the head cohanim and the P’rushim called a meeting of the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we going to do? — for this man is performing many miracles.

If we let him keep going on this way, everyone will trust in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both the Temple and the nation.”

But one of them, Kayafa, who was cohen gadol that year, said to them, “You people don’t know anything!

You don’t see that it’s better for you if one man dies on behalf of the people, so that the whole nation won’t be destroyed.”

Now he didn’t speak this way on his own initiative; rather, since he was cohen gadol that year, he was prophesying that Yeshua was about to die on behalf of the nation,

and not for the nation alone, but so that he might gather into one the scattered children of God.

From that day on, they made plans to have him put to death.

Therefore Yeshua no longer walked around openly among the Judeans but went away from there into the region near the desert, to a town called Efrayim, and stayed there with his talmidim.

The Judean festival of Pesach was near, and many people went up from the country to Yerushalayim to perform the purification ceremony prior to Pesach.

They were looking for Yeshua, and as they stood in the Temple courts they said to each other, “What do you think? that he simply won’t come to the festival?”

Moreover, the head cohanim and the P’rushim had given orders that anyone knowing Yeshua’s whereabouts should inform them, so that they could have him arrested.

Six days before Pesach, Yeshua came to Beit-Anyah, where El‘azar lived, the man Yeshua had raised from the dead;

so they gave a dinner there in his honor. Marta served the meal, and El‘azar was among those at the table with him.

Miryam took a whole pint of pure oil of spikenard, which is very expensive, poured it on Yeshua’s feet and wiped his feet with her hair, so that the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But one of the talmidim, Y’hudah from K’riot, the one who was about to betray him, said,

“This perfume is worth a year’s wages! Why wasn’t it sold and the money given to the poor?”

Now he said this not out of concern for the poor, but because he was a thief — he was in charge of the common purse and used to steal from it.

Yeshua said, “Leave her alone! She kept this for the day of my burial.

You always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

A large crowd of Judeans learned that he was there; and they came not only because of Yeshua, but also so that they could see El‘azar, whom he had raised from the dead.

The head cohanim then decided to do away with El‘azar too,

since it was because of him that large numbers of the Judeans were leaving their leaders and putting their trust in Yeshua.

The next day, the large crowd that had come for the festival heard that Yeshua was on his way into Yerushalayim.

They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Deliver us!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of Adonai, the King of Isra’el!”

After finding a donkey colt, Yeshua mounted it, just as the Tanakh says —