own death. A sure aspect of Jesus’ vision for the nation included an ordeal of tribulation through which the nation would have to pass before God’s judgment and kingdom would materialize. It seems clear that Jesus saw his own death as part of that ordeal. We can be confident that the opponents of Jesus saw in his death a fitting end to his “failed national experiment” to call the nation to its knees in its final hour. Both sides of the story, then, fit the paradigm of a national mission: the opponents