I’ve been thinking a bit about the number 12 lately. With that Twelve Tribes of Israel stained glass window series we’re working on, plus a bunch of other coincidences. My brother met with the rabbi of the synagogue planning to commission these windows. He explained that the 12 tribes originated in astrological symbolism. I’ve yet to do any specific research on that myself.

Then I was reading part of the introduction to Finnegan’s Wake a little earlier, and they mentioned something about groups of 12 people which appear in the book. That called to mind a correlation which I’ve heard implied elsewhere, but I can’t quite remember the source. I don’t know how much of this I’m making up and how much I’m paraphrasing and piecing together from various places. (But, I guess that could be said of everything that I write…)

It starts with the Twelve Apostles, the followers of Christ. Try to link that somehow to the fact that there are supposed to be 12 jurors in a felony court case. Between the 12 of them, they decide the fate of the accused. The foreman delivers the verdict to the court. You could think of Judas as the foreman, his kiss delivering the verdict, in some sense. “Him, he is the one.”

Also, interesting to note is that the 12th card in the tarot deck (major arcana), is the Hanged Man. This dovetails nicely into the above correlation. Seeing as how Jesus was executed in a way symbolically very similar to hanging.

From there, Jesus is delivered to Pontius Pilate, who acts as a judge over Jesus. (Card 20 in the tarot, is Judgement). Although, really, he is just acting out the verdict the 12 juror/apostles decided on. He also appeals to the gathered crowds outside his office, to double-check that Jesus should die. This might be related to the way you have all those members of the public assembled as an audience in the courtroom. Of course, God himself is also thought of to be some kind of ultimate Judge - so you have that layer as well.

So, Jesus is the defendant in this courtly drama. I’ve definitely read somewhere that the original idea of Satan (among the ancient Hebrews, I think), was an “adversary.” Basically, as a prosecuting attorney, acting on behalf of the state, delivering justice (Justice is card number 11). Think: devil’s advocate (Devil is card 15). He was supposed to tempt you and test your allegiance to God. This is his role in the Biblical Book of Job.

Anyway, yeah, that’s the basic premise. Whatever source I found that devil-as-prosecuting-attorney thing in, I believe also talked about our courtroom model being derived from ancient Middle Eastern sources, possibly Mesopotamian or Babylonian. Which is, not coincidentally, the source of much our Christian mythology. I’ll see if I can find any more links and references on this…