Crown of Thorns and Mocking
Basic Info
Matthew 27:29–31, Mark 15:17–20, Luke 23:11, John 19:2–3
After Jesus is scourged / whipped, he is handed over to the soldiers to be taken to his Crucifixion. They weave for him a crown made of thorns and drape a purple cloak over his shoulders. They bow down before him and sarcastically address him as the King of the Jews. Matthew, Mark, and John report this as taking place within Pilate’s precincts. Luke, ever aware of where people are from, reports that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod for trial because Jesus was a Galilean and Galilee was Herod’s jurisdiction. In the Gospel of Luke, it is Herod’s people who dress Jesus in regal finery and mock him. This Herod was the son of the King Herod of the Nativity story. He ruled Galilee as a king who answered to Roman authority.
The crown, the cloak, and the mocking are ways in which the soldiers or courtiers are playing on the sentence of Jesus allegedly claiming to be the king of the Jews. Occasionally, the crowning is treated by itself in artworks. Often the events are all treated together.
What to Look For
- The length and sharpness of the thorns
- Whether the cloak looks silly or regal on Jesus
- The attitude of the mockers
- Jesus’ attitude toward his mockers
- Whether the mocking looks silly or abusive
Questions to Focus a General Interpretation
What attitude does the artwork take toward the event? Does it mock the mockers or take seriously that this would have been a difficult thing for Jesus to endure?
How is Jesus portrayed as dealing with the situation? Does he call for compassion, or is he put forward as a model for how to deal with such abuse?
Questions to Guide a Personal Interpretation
What does the artwork put forward as the way to rise above being mocked? Does it offer a model that could be imitated while facing the kinds of mocking you have experienced in life?
Questions to Suggest a Historical Interpretation
If the artwork does not set the scene in Herod’s court, how might those who are mocking Christ reflect some of the bad guys of the artist’s time and place?
If the artwork depicts Jesus before Herod, how is Herod depicted? Both Jesus Christ Superstar (1998) and The Passion of the Christ (2004) depict him as an excessive buffoon. During some periods, he is the scapegoat for all of the era’s anti-Semitism. What might have been the thinking about Herod or the Jews in the artist’s time and place?
