She's So Scripture
She’s So Scripture Podcast
What the Crowd Was Really Waving - Palm Sunday, the Maccabees, and John 12
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What the Crowd Was Really Waving - Palm Sunday, the Maccabees, and John 12

An ancient coin stamped with a palm branch beside a single palm frond on aged parchment, representing the centuries of Jewish coinage that carried this symbol from the Maccabean revolt through the first century.

Every Palm Sunday, kids wave palm branches down a church aisle and most of us never ask why palm branches.

Two hundred years before Yeshua rode into Jerusalem, that same symbol was already tied to a Temple rededication, an armed revolt against an empire, and centuries of coins minted by people still hoping for the same kind of rescue.

By the time a crowd grabbed palm branches to meet Yeshua, they weren't waving something neutral.

This episode walks through the Maccabean revolt, the Hasmonean and Bar Kokhba coinage, and what "hoshia-na" actually meant to people who knew exactly what they were asking for, and what it cost when the rescue that came didn't look anything like the one they expected.

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