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Loading...Why did the Romans kill Jesus? Was it really because he was calling himself “King of the Jews”? Was that really what he was calling himself? How would we know? I’ve been asked these questions several times in connection with my posts about Jesus’ (death and) burial. Here is what I’ve said about the matter before, in reference to whether Jesus considered himself the “messiah” (i.e., the future king):
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One of the main reasons I think Jesus called himself the future messiah is that this best explains the best attested event of his entire life: his crucifixion by the Romans.
There are a few things we can say with virtual certainty about Jesus. For example: he was a Jewish preacher from rural Galilee who made a fateful trip to Jerusalem and was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. There are, of course, lots of other things that we can say, without quite so much certainty (see my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium). But that much is certain. So why did the Romans crucify him?
Romans had to have a reason to crucify a person. There had to be a criminal charge. There could be lots of charges – runaway slaves, brigands, insurrectionists, all could be crucified. So why was Jesus crucified? The Gospels tell us, and in this particular case, there are very good reasons for thinking what they say is right. Jesus was crucified for calling himself King of the Jews.
There are several points to make that, taken altogether, suggest this is historically what actually happened. First, all the Gospels agree that at Jesus’ trial this is what Pontius Pilate accused Jesus of, based on what the governor had learned from the Jewish authorities. Second, this is the charge that is written against Jesus on the placard over his head on the cross – again, in all our accounts.
So those two points are suggestive, but not in themselves convincing. Two other points show why the Gospels are historically correct about this. The first is
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Maybe he did deny the charge. Our earliest gospel Mark simply has Jesus say “You say so” in response to the charge. Maybe that is a summary of Jesus’ defense since the disciples weren’t there to hear it. If not a denial, perhaps an attempt to evade the charge. It didn’t work!
You say so isn’t a clear response. it could mean “those are your words not mine” for example, rather than being a denial. I’m trying to say it’s not that clear of an answer in my opinion
Pilate asked Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” “You have said so,” Jesus replied.
“But if he did, how did Pilate find out about it? Jesus does not call himself this publicly in the Gospels. So if he was calling himself that privately, how would Pilate know?”
Could it be that Jesus’ message once he was in the temple was that the son of man was coming to take Rome out of power and he would then be the king of the Jews?
So he had not said it publicly before but saved it for when he thought it was all going to happen in Jerusalem.
Possibly. My view is that the disciples knew, and that one of them betrayed him.
So, how involved were the Jewish leaders in the process? It’s hard to imagine that the Romans would have crucified every average Jew who might have randomly made such claims for himself. What was it about this situation that made it so important that the Governor got involved. Even if Judas reported he was claiming to be the future king, so what? There must have been something substantial that made such a charge believable. The gospels point to the Jewish leadership initiating the issue with the Roman authorities, but assuming that is factual, why did they even take it seriously?
The Jewish authorities appear to have handed him oer to Pilate. As far as Jews making random claims like that, I’m afraid we don’t hear of that very often at all. In this case, Judas appears to have told the Jewish leaders and they told Pilate, so he had it on “good authority.” He wouldn’t have cared a twit about crucifying some (in his opinion) crazed fellow that no one had ever heard of who was opposing Rome. This was a form of deterence.
But what do you suspect was Judas’ motive for spilling those beans? Did he become disillusioned with Jesus’ preachings, perhaps not believing him anymore? Did Jesus cross some line that was a bridge too far for Judas? But at some point, Judas must have been a convinced and devout follower of Jesus, just like the other disciples. Thoughts?
I talk about it at some lenth in my book on the Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot. There are some blog posts on it too, if you do a word search for his name. Short story is that I don’t think there is any way to know what was going through his mind, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was disappointed in how things were going for the one he expectd to be the future ruler of Israel.
Bart, I have been wondering for a while now why you’re not a Deist. Your reasons for not believing in the God of the Bible are quite compelling. Even if there was no Bible, your reasons for not believing in a God who intervenes on earth are still compelling. But what are your reasons for not believing that there is a Being who created this universe, who, for whatever reason, doesn’t intervene? It may be a Being whose attributes we do not know. It may be a Being not worthy of worship etc. But wouldn’t your belief that such a being exists be consistent with your belief that the God of the Bible doesn’t exist? Something akin to what Deism believes? Why the jump from “I don’t that a God who intervenes exists” to “I don’t believe there is a God at all”, when there is another alternative?
It’s pretty simple really. I can’t think of any reason to believe a God exists. I’m agnostic whether he does, but I can’t think of a single reason for me to think he does.
I would have to agree Bart. The Bible and religions generally are 100% expressions of humanity, not expressions of deity. Whether or not such a being even exists, there’s no way in my view that we as humans could ever conceive or understand such a being.
What can we say “with virtual certainty about Jesus”?
For Bart:
“He was a Jewish preacher from rural Galilee who made a fateful trip to Jerusalem and was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.”
My version :
“He … was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.”
“Someone is making these things up.”
Yep ! 100% agree!!! , but the question is who?
Why not think the four canonical gospels were as creative as that of Peter or any other non canonical?
Was Jesus a Jewish preacher from rural Galilee ?
Well, not Paul,nor Tacitus nor Josephus mentions Galilee in relation to Jesus.
“There could be lots of charges – runaway slaves, brigands, insurrectionists, all could be crucified. “
My choice: insurrectionist.
That’s why the disciples were armed in Gethsemane, no matter how much later gospel writers tried to fix Mark’s error in mentioning the arms… the arms are still there, in the hands of the disciples, cutting ears. Luke’s Jesus healed the ear, but the blood did not stop being shed.
Jesus’s times were rough; he lived a few decades before the Roman-Jewish war that led to the destruction of the second temple, and it’s in this historical context that we have to interpret the historical Jesus.
Dr Ehrman
Why did mark not have jesus rebuke the person who knifed off the ear?
I’m afraid we can never know why an author did not write something he didn’t write.
Is there a collection of the sayings and deeds of Jesus are categorized some way such as which ones are probably true, probably not true or definitely false?
I know that in your writings you sometimes say for example, Mark 25: 31-46 are probably almost certainly attributable to Jesus, but what about all the others?
Any book on the historical Jesus will do this, though not in tabular form. (I discuss what I think is authentic in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of hte New Millennium). The book the Five Gospels put out by the Jesus Seminar does it in a color coded edition. Unfortunately, a lot of us think they gave the wrong colors to an extraordinary number of sayings!
Judas’ motives are opaque to us. Bart, do you find it conceivable that Judas made up the allegation? That, Jesus never did claim the title King of the Jews but it was Judas that put that on his lips?
It’s an interesting idea. But I think there are good indications that Jesus was indeed calling himself the messiah during his public ministry, at least to his disciples. For one thing, there would have been no reason to call him the messiah after his death — even if he was believed to be resurrected — based on what happened to him. No one expected/thought that the messiah would die and be resurrected. So that would not have motivated them to come up with the idea that Oh he *WAS* the messiah. UNLESS they were already saying that before his death, and afterward they said, OH, were were right after all… Moreover, if the accounts are right htat he didn’t put up a defense( there’s no way to know for sure), that would suggest as well that he couldn’t deny the charge. I’m getting all this from Nils Dahl, a very fine NT scholar at Yale from 50 years ago, in his essay “The Crucified Messiah,” which made a big impressio on me in graduate school.
Professor Ehrman. Do we have any other accounts as to how trials were conducted in early first century Jerusalem? Were they conducted like the trial of Jesus is depicted in the Gospels?
Not that I know of. There may be some in Josephus, but none come to mind.
In my opinion, this does not fully cover the facts revealed by the Gospel texts, not because the writing nailed above Jesus’ head on the cross that Jesus was “King of the Jews” was not Jesus’ testimony about himself, but the text of the accusation against him. For in none of the Gospels did Jesus call himself the King of the Jews; the dispute between the Jewish leaders and Jesus was always about whether he was the Son of God or the Anointed one. But why could the accusation that he was the King of the Jews be nailed over Jesus’ head? I think there is a somewhat complicated but rational explanation.
According to the author of Luke’s Gospel, the events he describes took place during the reign of the emperor Tiberius, under the governorship of Pontius Pilate. As a matter of historical fact, Tiberius Caesar Caesar Augustus was the adopted son of the Emperor Caesar Augustus divi filius, commonly known as Emperor Augustus, because although he married three times, Augustus never had a son.
After the death of his adopted father, Julius Caesar, Augustus was elevated to the rank of god, and therefore called himself Augustus princeps, or ‘son of the gods’. All the subsequent princeps took Caesar’s name, so it became synonymous with the ruler. Tiberius also took the name Caesar, which logically means that Tiberius also claimed the title “son of god”.
According to the Gospel of John, the Jews accused Pilate of crucifying Jesus by making him “the son of God”. When this accusation is interpreted in the historical context outlined above, it becomes clear why it could happen that when “Pilate heard this saying, he was all the more afraid” (John 19:8).
We have discovered a real past thread in the narratives here, then the real, historical reason for the death of the historical Jesus must have been that Pilate was a good “vassal”, following a religiously based accusation, he wanted to prevent a ‘war of succession’ in defence of his faithful ruler and for his own sake, for if a rebel in Judea who had given himself the title of emperor had sought to claim the right to rule, Pilate would certainly have been out of a position as governor.
To the extent the story tellers and gospel writers desired to appeal to the gentile world – would not “King of the Jews”, the very human Jewish Messiah, have been way to “local” a character ? A character not fit for worship by Romans, Greeks etc? Even had he held himself out as the messiah might that not have been lost in the story telling?
Good question. But in their way of looking at it, the Jews were God’s chosen people through whom he planned to convert the world, and so their “king” would be lord of the world. That’s why, e.g., we get the odd storyin Matthew of the wisemen coming to worship him. It makes sense from Matthew’s perspective but really makes no sense. Why would foreigners come and worship the newly born kind of another country. Did anyone come and worship Ronald Reagan at his birth because he’d become president? See what I mean?
Here is your “King of the Jews”.
If we can trust the account of the early church historian Hegesippus preserved by Eusebius, the emperor Domitian sought out and questioned the surviving descendants of Jesus in the 90s AD — two grandsons of Jesus’s brother Jude — thinking that they might still be claiming the royal bloodline of David. They showed that they were just poor Judean farmers who had no interest in challenging Rome at the time, so the emperor supposedly let them go home and ordered the persecution of Christians to cease. If this story has any truth to it, it could speak to the fact that, more than 50 years after his death, people still remembered that Jesus had indeed claimed to be a direct descendant of David and heir to his earthly throne.
It could also be that this was an invented tradition, but I’ll let Bart weigh in on that!
Yup, it’s an interesting anecdote. I don’t see how it can be historical though. Emperors of the first century were not concerned about the descendents of Jesus and it’s really unlikely (almost impossible for me to imagine) that the ruler of the Western world was taking time to examine the hands of some peasants to see whether they were related to the Son of David…. It’s surely a Christian legend I should thihk.
On the other hand, it’s possible Pilate had him crucified for disturbing the peace – overturning the moneychangers’ tables in the Temple and generally creating a ruckus. Se terbulente gessere could easily get one crucified; Jerusalem was in a volatile state and Pilate had just put down one disturbance (insurrection?) led by Barabbas. He would have been in no mood to tolerate any other disturbance.
So why did the gospel ssay he was charged with being the “king of the Jews”? Perhaps they were embarrassed at the real reason Jesus was executed, and came up with something would be more “worthy” – and would also explain the High Priest’s antipathy toward him.
Speculation, I know. But that’s what we’re left with.
That is Paula Fredriksen’s contention, the priests were worried about a riot that would get them in trouble. It wasn’t what he believed.
“Had Jesus been so unpopular, Pilate may indeed have moved to kill him (thus appeasing Jesus’s numerous opponents), but he would scarcely have reason to crucify him. The one group historically necessary in any of these scenarios, however, is the numerous, vocally enthusiastic crowd. Without them, Pilate would have had no reason to crucify.” Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, 256. In so many words, Paula is saying Pilate was worried about a riot. She bases her position in part on the fact that Pilate never went after any of Jesus’s followers, and indeed left them alone.
I have the utmost respect for Paula, but I think here she overlooks some alternatives. Pilate didn’t need to chase down the others because they scattered (and he didn’t have the manpower to go after them), and he may have felt that cutting off the head of the movement would solve the problem. And once the volatile moment of Passover had passed, things would inevitably calm down.
Was Jesus the only one crucified ?
Maybe the “two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left” were in fact part of Jesus’s movement, the ones that fell with him while all the others fled.
That would explain the arms in Gethsemane.
Judas was the one who told the Romans about the group’s hideout, they did not know who their leader was so Judas pointed to him.
As you wrote , Pilate “ may have felt that cutting off the head of the movement would solve the problem” and the game was over.
I think the Jews played not role at all in Jesus’s capture, torture and killing, of course, the gospels tells a very different story.
The other two crucified with Jesus were identified only as lēstai, which often means “robbers” or “bandits” but can also mean insurrectionists. There is no indication that they were followers of Jesus; Mark 15:32 says that “those who were crucified with him also taunted him.” On the other hand, Luke 23:40-43 has one of the crucifixees* side with Jesus. (Actually, given the tremendous pain of crucifixion, including the way it limits air to the lungs, I doubt any of them were capable of saying anything.) In any event, Paula’s argument leans on the idea that none of the named apostles were caught or crucified.
*If “crucifixees” isn’t a word, it ought to be.
I just listened to some interviews with Paula Fredriksen and I think she makes some really valid points, which in all this discussion all of us overlook yet I think somewhat recognize. What we are doing here is just gross historical speculation. The information we are using to guess about these events may be totally wrong. We are using as evidence manuscripts which were copied for centuries, were written by people who we are uncertain of, based on oral stories many decades old. In addition the writings were in Greek, not the language of Jesus, Aramaic, and the writers may have had little understanding of the culture Jesus existed in. In addition the accounts we have vary in highly significant ways. So what we are fairly certain of is that Jesus was crucified and people at the time were crucified because they were threats to the existing power structure/government. Everything else is speculation and perhaps speculation based on false assumptions.
Is there any significance to the claim that Jesus called himself King of the Jews, i.e. of a people, rather than King of Israel or King of Palestine, i.e. of a country? I believe the northern Germanic tribes also had kings of tribes rather than kings of areas.
It’s extremely interesting. It wculd mean he wasn’t just the King of the country, but of the country and of all Jews everywhere — that is, the leader of God’s chosen people in fulfillment of all the prophecies. It’s also interesting because Christians never ever call him that in their surviving writings (which is one reason for thinking it really was the charge).
On the other hand, you *could* translate it as “King of the Judeans” That would solve the problem. (Since the region was not called “Israel” or “Palestine”)
Now I’m not a scholar, but I just happen to start reading about the Talmud a couple days ago, maybe you give us some thoughts on it.
I’m assuming it was the Jewish leaders that filled Pilate ears with information, if we read about the Talmud, also a book The Weight of Three Thousand Years”, Jewish Professor Israel Shahak, Jewish people was proud to take credit for Jesus death, According to Talmud, Jesus was executed by a proper rabbinical court for idolatry, inciting other Jews to idolatry, and contempt of rabbinical authority. All classical Jewish sources which mention his execution are quite happy to take responsibility for it; in the Talmudic account the Romans are not even mentioned. The more popular accounts – which were nevertheless taken quite seriously – such as notorious Taldot Yeshu are even worse, for in addition to the above crimes they accuse him of witchcraft. The very name ‘Jesus’ was for Jews a symbol of all that is abominable, and this popular tradition still persists.” (P-98)
https://www.alislam.org/articles/crucifixion-in-jewish-literature/
As you probably know, the Talmud was produced centuries after the days of Jesus; scholars today content that it cannot be used to establish what was happening in Israel all those centuries earlier (even in traditions that the Talmud claims goes back to rabbis of the time” But you’re right, it’s hugely interesting. There’s a book by Peter Schaeffer, an eminent scholar of Judaism, called Jesus in the Talmud, which is well worth looking at.
I just think the Jewish leaders who wanted Pilate to kill Jesus, probably had the same thoughts and attitudes as the in the Talmud but Pilate wouldn’t care about that, so I believe it was very possible that Jewish leaders told Pilate or started rumors that Pilate would hear that Jesus was claiming to be the king of jews let Pilate get rid of Jesus for them.
I recall Rabbi Michael Skobac saying that the passages in the Talmud don’t refer to Jesus.
Let me just add to what Bart said: the Talmud (gemarah) was composed between c. 200 and c. 500 CE (more or less), by which time Christians had long been making nasty comments about Jews, so Jews returned the favor (so to speak). The rabbis, who liked to spin yarns when they weren’t discussing legal matters, spun a number of yarns about Jesus, none of them particularly complimentary.
An additional complication is that, for many centuries, the Church censored the Talmud, removing anything it considered a reference to Jesus that contradicted its version of events. There have been scholarly attempts to repair this censorship using manuscript copies, but these efforts are not well known.
Check out Bart’s suggestion of Peter Schaeffer.
I should have left all Talmud out lol, wouldn’t the Jewish leaders during Jesus time have some serious issues with Jesus teaching, saying he healed people, raised the dead, went against Jewish understanding of torah in that time period, blasphemy son of god. who else would would want Jesus crucified the most? Who had the most to gain? Was Jesus really a threat to Roman Empire I don’t think so until he was called the king of the jews, In my mind only the Jewish leaders had most gain. So I believe it’s the Jewish leaders who came up with Jesus is the king of jews, because like Bart says Jesus never says he was, I believe jewish leaders knew that would be a death sentence for Jesus. I have no proof lol but makes the most sense to me on where it came from.
“Where it came from” is all Christian sources – Paul’s letters and the gospels. We have no contemporary records. The only non-Christian source from the first century is Josephus’s Testamonium Flavianum, which was heavily emended (though scholars still argue about the details), was probably based on Christian sources, and was primarily intended by Josephus as yet one more example of Pilate’s perfidy.
As Bart points out in today’s blog (and as I previously pointed out in a Platinum post), Jesus didn’t commit blasphemy according to the Jewish understanding of the term. Regarding Jesus’s arguments with the Pharisees, once you filter out the evangelists’ bias, it’s clear they were the sort of arguments the Pharisees engaged in all the time.
Also remember that the priests were not free agents; they owed their positions (especially the high priest) to Rome, and had to act as Roman agents helping to preserve the peace. Pilate was in Jerusalem that week – the most volatile week in the Jewish year – to stamp out any hint of rebellion or even disruption, and by the gospels’ own accounts, Jesus was disturbing the peace. And yes, that could be a capital crime.
Dankoh, love your comments. Can you or Bart provide a link to your platinum post re: “blasphemy?”
As often is the case, this site’s search engine not helpful, or, certainly possible, I don’t know how properly to use it. “dankoh” yields only your response to an 8-11-23 post by another blogger and “platinum” likewise gets me nowhere. Thanks.
Platinum posts are only available to platinum-level members, though occasionally Bart will ask for a vote to make one available to the general audience. You can always up your membership to the platinum level and get into all kinds of interesting discussions. As it happens, I did post a slightly more technical variation of my blasphemy post on academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/100403213/Hypothesis_That_Jesus_Was_Never_Charged_With_Blasphemy
Well. Duh. Bart’s 8-19-23 post (generated the same day as yours above) clearly answers the blasphemy question, at least mine.
But I’d still like to read your platinum post.
I am a platinum member. Still couldn’t find it. But OK, thanks.
https://ehrmanblog.org/you-have-heard-his-blasphemy-but-did-they-a-platinum-post-by-daniel-kohanski/
Well well. Medical consultation for me is necessary.
I actually commented to your blaspheme post the day it was published, 6-5-23. Obviously I had no recollection. Then and now: “excellent.”
Thanks again.
I’m 100% atheist, and I apologize in advance for my grammar I never went to high school, I’m Also not Antisemitic, I think is horrible how Jews been treated the last 2000 years, and how the Catholic Church wouldn’t even speak out against the nazis , granted long after the holocaust one of the popes formally apologized for 2000 yrs of guilt against the Jews.
I agree 100% that is was probably the event in the Tempe that was the main reason Jesus was put to death, but who was Jesus against, wasn’t it the temple authorities and the type business them and others was doing in the temple that Jesus was against, all I’m thinking is the Jewish authorities had more reason pile on more dirt against Jesus than Pilate would. I’m done beating my dead horse lol
Bart
Did the followers of Jesus believe that he was *already* the Messiah during his ministry (I’m referring to the period before he went to Jerusalem, when they couldn’t have envisaged his being crucified and resurrected), or did they believe that he would become the Messiah *only when* the Kingdom of God had been established?
If it was the former, is it possible that they actually called him ‘Messiah’, rather than ‘master’ or ‘teacher’, when they were talking to him? E.g., “Messiah, which town will you be preaching in tomorrow?”
Yes, the tenses of the verbs are tricky. They appear to be syaing that he was the king, meaning that he was going to be made king. (They knew he wasn’t ruling yet, but since he was destined to do so, they could talk about it as present)
Mr. Ehrman, something slightly irrelevant but important. I have a suggestion for the podcast: an interview with an archeologist, who has done some digging in the Old Testament locations and specializes in that period.
Because I recently ran across a clip on an apologist’s YouTube channel, and he had one that claimed that archeology has found nothing that disproves the Old Testament! Now, I’m not claiming to be an expert (though it happens that I myself am an actual archeologist! 🤣) on this particular subject, but I do know that’s false!
Oh boy is it false. Think: the walls of Jericho (actually, think of MOST of the claims of the book of Joshua; not to mention the Exodus!). Good idea. Think I should do that!
Hi Bart,
Two points here:
1# I have seen your interview with MythVision conducted last year, and I do have some observations about it, but the one related to this post is about the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”. We know that Matthew took stuff from Mark, because there is a Copy&Paste data that Matthew took from Mark almost word by word. This is not the case between Thomas and the Quran (verses 3:49, 5:110), the two stories are totally different. In Thomas it was a boy play, but in the Quran, it was a miracle during his prophethood missionary. The similarity between the two is just one thing: clay of birds.
From a totally non-metaphysical perspective, we could say that there is a distant source for this data (regardless whether it was true or false) with two different oral traditions, one reach Thomas and the other reach the Quran, or we can just say that this similarity is just a coincidence without any true relationship.
So, I think that it would be disputed to say that the Quran picked this story from Thomas.
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2# If we took the NT data “as-is”, then the Religious Authorities went in a United Front (that was established in that particular day for that particular day) to ask Pilate to execute Jesus in charges of blasphemy and for planning against the Mighty Great Caesar.
If this was the case, then would Jesus really have any chance with Pilate? Would it make any difference if there was an inside man or not? Would it make any difference if Jesus said under oath with the right hand above the holy Torah that he had never uttered the words “King of the Jews”?
Would any of that make any difference with Pilate?
Would Pilate really take the word of a peasant from Galilee over the words of the Religious Authorities United Front?
Or can we say that Jesus fate was sealed even before entering the office of Pilate, and probably Jesus realized that it is game over and he preferred not to defend himself?
I’d say no, it would make no difference at all. The other oddity is that now the one on Jesus side was one of the ones condemning him the night before….
Yes, it would be an oddity but only according to Mark and Luke (which I can say it is only Mark) as they both regarded him as part of the Sanhedrin. However, I think it is reasonable to say that not all the council wanted to kill Jesus, but the majority. And it is also reasonable to say that not all the council went to Pilate asking for the execution of Jesus, but the majority.
If we are really going to say that Joseph of Arimathea was part of the United Front that went to Pilate insisting for the execution of Jesus then to know later that he was actually a secret follower of Jesus then this would really be bizarre that probably could only be explained by considering the assumption of a conspiracy-in-play here as suggested by Rfleming, but I would assume that it would be much simpler to say that Joseph of Arimathea was part of the Religious Authorities but wasn’t part of the United Front.
Yes, saying he got it directly from Thomas is a bit simplistic. Nothing indicates it existed before Thomas, and most interpreters think he came up with it, or at least popularized it. The story then went into circulation, and the author of the Quranic story heard it. That doesn’t mean he had read Thomas.
Yes, there is no evidence that the datum: “clay of birds” was before Thomas, but equally, there is no evidence that this datum continued to circulate specially after Thomas was forbidden and lost. Note that the Quran is under the question here therefore it cannot be used as an evidence for this datum.
But if we looked at things from a deeper level, then I could argue that the stories of Boy-Jesus was circulating in the Christian world before Thomas as it would be natural for the new converts and the potential ones to ask about Boy-Jesus, and there would be so many street preachers willing to answer these questions in length.
Also, when we have two different stories with shared tiny similarities then these similarities cannot be used as an evidence for a relationship (not without valid data or logic). For example, there are many similarities between John and Mark, but we cannot just jump to the conclusion that Mark is a distant source for John without valid data or logic. The same should be said that Thomas cannot be a distant source for the Quran as the stories in them are very different.
I have always wondered about this ‘King of the Jews’ business. In particular, the account–imagined, embellished or genuine of the trial of Jesus in John. When Pilate asks him: ‘are you the king of the Jews?’ Jesus replies: ‘You say I am the king or alternatively ‘so you say.”
If Jesus is really God, and if he knows the mind of ‘man’ couldn’t he be said to have been lying–since he ‘has’ to know that6 Pilate is concerned with instability and revolution and he must know that Pilate is asking him directly if in effect if he is a rebel and is therefore a genuine threat to Roman power?
if he is lying, isn’t he violating the ninth commandment and his own exhortation to keep the law and the commandments?
I don’t think we can ask a quesiton of the account on the assumption that Jesus was God on earth. The story tellers who told the tale didn’t see him that way.
Shouldn’t it be considered likely that the brother of Jesus carried on his teachings when he took over leadership of the church after the crucifixion and that the group that wanted the brother of Jesus killed were likely the same group that wanted Jesus himself killed? Especially when the four biographies written within living memory about Jesus confirm that?
I’d say that Christian story tellers of both tales probalby thought so.
But the story teller of the death of the brother of Jesus was Josephus. If Josephus says it wasn’t the Romans that wanted the brother of Jesus dead and the four biographies of Jesus’s life say it wasn’t the Romans that wanted Jesus himself dead, why would we doubt them?
None of them interviewed anyone, least of all Josephus. All of them have very clear reasons for wanting not to say the Romans wanted him dead. And in fact the very point of the Gospel accounts is that hte Romans did want Jesus dead. The governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, put him on trial for sedition against the state, and ordered him crucified.
If Jesus did think of himself as messiah or future “King of the Jews”, regardless of what he said or didn’t say, I am curious as to why? Was he simply a charismatic figure whose response from others caused him to let fantasy take over? Was he delusional, possibly psychotic? Of course, it’s unlikely we’ll have any real evidence. What, from your reading seems likely?
Yeah, I wish we knew. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to psychoanalyze someone living among us today without lengthy conversations conducted by a trained and skilled expert; we don’t have any way to know what Jesus was actually thinking or what motivated it. He appears to have called himself the messiah; we could probably assume that he believed it; but we have no way of knowing if he was delusional or had heard voices or felt an inner conviction as an answer to prayer, or what. My sense is the last of these is the most plausible, but there’s no way ot know, given our sparse sources.
Do we know anything about who was allowed to witness trials before Pontius Pilate, or anything about the setting, such as where they took place in Jerusalem?
How were charges against someone formally lodged? Were defendants such as Jesus forced to speak on their own behalf or were they assigned and advocate?
Who would be the prosecutor? In Jesus’s case, would some spokesperson for the Temple authorities have accused him and spoken against him to Pilate?
Would there have been anything legally unusual given the situation of Passover in Jerusalem or would the trial have occurred as it would have were someone in Caesarea to have alerted authorities to what Jesus was saying or that people were saying about him and troops sent to arrest him in Judea?
We have very little evidence for any of this; what does exist shows we have to wipe the modern judicial system completely from our minds. There were not prosecutors and lawyers and juries and civil rights and witnesses and due process and … Pilate as governor would probably have had a special room where he dealt with prosecutions. Someone (a Jewish leader in this case) would level a charge, Pilate would decide what to do about it, possibly questioning the person or possibly just taking a lower official’s word for it (the Jewish leader, e.g.). I also don’t think that we should imagine this was a big deal with people being alerted and troops being mustered and crowds being gathered. They may well have simply nabbed Jesus on directions from Jewish leaders and took him in to be tried with everyone else being tried that day.
Thanks for the reply. The Gospel writers were composing narratives outside Palestine in Greek speaking areas at later dates under different rulers. Do we presume that the Gospel writers, hearing that there was a trial and conviction of Jesus, extrapolated their narratives on what they knew of jurisprudence in their areas? Not doing what you rightly suggest, that we “wipe the modern judicial system … from our minds”?
I’m just wondering what the average person reading the Gospels when they were written would have known of legal process, if anything, or they just took the narratives as is.
Most people would have known nothing about it, since capital cases were undertaken in private in major cities without any news coverage. 80-90% of the population lived in rural areas, and hardly anyone would have been present at a trial in a place like Jerusalem.
In addition to some insider “spilling the beans” about his belief that he would become king of the Jewish people after the Son of Man swooped-in and killed all the bad Romans, all the dead Jews rose from their graves in their human bodies, etc., isn’t is possible that the pharisees who were in Galilee would have heard this claim from some of those who heard Jesus say it, or heard it from some claiming they had heard it. When these men returned to Jerusalem for Passover, they could have mentioned this to members of the Sanhedrin, who then told the others including the chief priest. Then, after Jesus caused some sort of ruckus with merchants and money-changers in the temple, they decided to report the mater to Governor Pilate.
Bill Steigelmann
It’s possible, though none of our sources mentions that. Also, Pharisees and Sadducees were not on freindly terms as a rule. And we don’t hear of any Pharisess coming to Jerusalem for the Passover. (We tend to think of them as wealthy elites who could travel at will and who exercised considerable power/influence, but apparently that’s a misconception)
You say that all the gospels agree that, at Jesus’s trial, Pontius Pilate accused him of calling himself king of the Jews. The gospels also all agree on other matters such as that women who saw Jesus buried in a tomb on the Friday evening found it empty on the Sunday morning.
What is the justification for accepting the trial account as accurate but dismissing the tomb story as fiction?
One reason to conclude that Jesus’s burial was possible is that all the gospels mention it.
Gospel writers wanted to persuade people that Jesus had been buried so it would have been counter-productive if it was generally considered absurd to suggest that Pilate might have allowed it.
The conclusion is that the gospel writers did not think that burial on the day of crucifixion was extraordinary.
This is what it means to do historical analysis. If you know that sources sometimes misreport what happened, and sometimes report correctly, in every case you have to figure out which is which. There are compelling reasons outside of the accounts themselves for thinking that Jesus both called himself the messiah and that Pilate executed him for that; and there are compelling reasons outside of the accounts themselves for thinking that Jesus would not have been buried on the afternoon of his death. Critical scholarsihp involves evaluating probabilities rather than simply accepting what the sources say on face value. What holds people back, usually, is that they already have an image of what happened in their minds and they can’t critically evaluate whether it’s actually plausible or not. All the accounts that mention it say that Jesus was born of a virgin and that he walked on the water. I don’t think historically either one can be said to be probable, even if all the relevant sources say so, any more than I think that all the sources that report miracles of Mohummad or Baal Shem-Tov can be accepted as reporting historical reality, just because htey all agree on the issue.
An unrelated question: If Paul spoke greek and Peter did not. How would they have communicated? Isn’t the fact that Paul describes talking to Peter indicative of them actually speaking the same language to each other?
No, Paul gives no indication of how they communicated. I’d assume that it would be like what happens when I go to a place where my host doesn’t speak English. Someone does their best to translate for us.
Hello Bart,
Can you explain the difference in meaning of “sin”, “repentance”, and “metanoia” – I have heard some terms come from archery and that “repentance” is a poor translation of what John the Baptist meant.
Thank you
Dennis Kelly
The Greek word for sin hamartia can means something like “missing the mark” and can indeed be used to refer to someone missing the target with his arrow; it also simply means falling short, offending, making an error, doing wrong, and sinning. The meaning, as with all words, can only be determined by a close look at the context. The word metanoia literally means something like “having second thoughts” or “thinking again” about something, with they idea that you’re reconsidering what you are doing/have done and decide to change — since it can have the connotation of regret or remorse for what you’ve said or done.
Christians weren’t going around calling him the “king of the Jews”, but they were all saying he was the messiah which is basically a synonym. I do wonder if Jesus himself was much more vocal about the claim of being the future King though and by the time the gospels were written, that idea had been watered down.
Hi Bart,
1. I suppose that the Sanhedrin calculated that their best bet for getting Pontius Pilate to give Jesus the death penalty was the charge of Jesus referring to himself as the King of Jews because that could be interpreted as political rebellion. Do you agree?
2. Also, any time that Jesus referred to himself as the Messiah would imply that he referred to himself as the King of Jews. Do you agree?
3. And finally, according to your historical method, do you believe that Jesus only privately referred to himself as the Messiah prior to the trials by the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate?
4. And if your answer to 3 is yes, then why do you think he kept it private until the Sanhedrin asked him?
1. I’m not sure they wanted him dead. Maybe they just wanted him taken out of the way for a while? Not sure. (Historically, I mean. In the Gospel they want him dead.) 2. Yes. 3. Yes. 4. He meant it only for the insiders to know. He wasn’t interested, in my opinion, in spreading rumors about him being a military leader to take the troops into battle. He would be kind when God made it happen, and if word got out, no one wold understand how he *meant* the term. (As in facdt in our earliest Gospel even the disciples don’t)
Where do the sins of the world come in, in all this? None of the four gospels makes any mention of the crucifixion as a sacrifice (substitute or otherwise), redemption, atonement or any of the other ideas that Paul would later heap on the event!
The Gospels do indeed refer to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, atonement, and so on. Just as starters: mark 10:45; 14:24; and notice what happens immediately at Jesus’ death (ripping of the curtain)
“There is nothing up to this point in the Gospels that would lead either anyone in the narrative itself or anyone reading the narrative to expect that this will be the charge leveled against Jesus.”
That’s perhaps true of the Synoptics, but not so much of John’s gospel:
Right from the start, Nathaniel identifies Jesus as “You are the King of Israel!” (1:49), and Jesus implicitly accepts the statement. Next in 6:15, the crowds attempt to “take [Jesus] by force to make him king”. And then when Jesus parades into Jerusalem, shortly before his arrest, the crowds again proclaim “Blessed is […] the King of Israel!” and “[…] daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming[…]!” (12:13, 15), and this time Jesus does nothing to stop them. Combine that with how the priests are said to be trying to arrest Jesus since “if [they] let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both [their] holy place and [their] nation” (11:48), which is presumably to be read in light of the events of the Roman-Jewish War, and it is hardly surprising when Jesus is then charged as ‘King of the Jews’.
Yup, that’s right!
In response to ‘innocypho’ and his critique of Bart’s agnostic/atheistic approach. My comment is: If there is a conscious entity who created all things, but makes him/her/itself invisible and unreachable, then what’s the use of spending much time on him/her/it? Even if you speculate about he/she/it, one might even speculate that he/she/it may have created everything and then died/moved to another of the universes within the multiverse, etc. You go crazy wasting your time: the rough equivalent of medieval scholars contemplating how many angels would fit on the head of a pin. No wonder most intellectual progress slowed to a crawl during that time period!
NT Wright says the priests wanted Jesus executed because he was leading people astray and this is consistent with jewish practice but told Pilate he was seditious because that was the charge that would stick. He says Pilate tried to wash his hands of executing Jesus because he invariably did the opposite of what the jews wanted, but relented because he was afraid of a riot.
I agree with the first sentence. But I don’t think “the Jews” wanted Jesus killed, or that Pilate could possibly have feared a riot if he condemned a criminal guilty of seditoin to execution.
What do historians have to say about who Jesus’s father was?
Most agree it was Joseph, a lower class impoverished day-laborer in a remote village, Nazareth, in Galilee. Beyond that we don’t know much.
Fair enough. I guess there is a big question mark on who was the biological father of Jesus.
Nope!
Messiah was a title in the old testament reserved for descendants of David who would keep ruling Israel forever. That’s why every Jewish revolutionary called himself a messiah.
Problem is… Jesus wasn’t a political insurrectionist but a religious scholar, akin to a judge or a prophet. So he was judging the Jewish elite for not not holding up the religious Jewish laws, and he thrashed the merchants at the temple for that reason.
The Saducees who had enough of him, presented this act as an insurrection against the Romans, because they knew Jesus’ criticism against them was right, and they didn’t want to incur the wrath of the common Jews for selling out their own religion.
A Pilate, disgusted by the Saducees, still went along with their plan.
Paul invented a messiah for the gentiles who would save the whole world, not just Israel.
Josephus made Vespasian a messiah, and blamed the common Jews for playing messiah.
The Evangelists retorted to Josephus by pointing out that the Jewish religion was creating rebellious messiahs, while their “messiah” was a pacifist who would have prevented the destruction of the temple if the Jews followed his teachings, and of course a bloodthirsty Vespasian could never be messiah!
Messiah was used more broadly than that. IN Isaiah Cyrus, king of Persia, is called (by God) his “messiah”
Some Scholars have pointed out that this whole business of Jesus clearing the temple of merchants and purchasers was a bit odd–since going back to old testament times, the temple was used as a center for both secular commerce and religious observance. The stories in the gospels about Jesus clearing the temple never mention that these transactions were being conducted within the inter sanctuary/holy of holys, so what reason would Jesus have to remove people doing legitimate business (in some cases purchasing animals so sacrifice) that would be later used in the religious ceremonies themselves?
There were other Jewish prophets who were opposed ot the activities inthe temple (including the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls). Even Jeremiah and Isaiah have their problesms with it. In my next book I’ll be arguing that Jesus did not think the sacrificial cult was the key to being forgiven by God.