Who Killed Jesus?

by ProfDave, ©2021

(Apr. 2, 2021) — Over the centuries, there has been more heat than light on this subject. Yet the historical facts are reasonably plain, so long as medieval ignorance is laid aside. We do not blame the Greeks for the judicial murder of Socrates or the Americans for the assassination of Lincoln. Jesus, all his closest associates and all his enemies were Palestinian Jews. This should not be a question of race or nation.

From a historical point of view – I will touch on religion later – we must say a few words about sources.  The craft of the historian is about the selection and interpretation of documents.  Documents deteriorate and get lost.  Anything written before the printing press was relatively rare to begin with, and we must depend on hand copies.  Someone had to see value enough in the document to spend hundreds of hours meticulously copying it – over and over again through the centuries.  Thus, ancient history is a matter of interpreting a limited number of fragments that have come down to us.  Except for the Bible, of course, of which we have multiple copies from the first century AD and even beyond.  Thus, for the trial and death of Jesus of Nazareth (or Yeshua Ben Joseph, if you will), we have a few contemporary fragments (presumably objective), the New Testament (two/three eyewitness accounts, one/two by close associates of eyewitnesses, and a creedal statement quoted by Paul from primary sources even earlier than the others), and some hostile or heretical writings from the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries or later.

Except for the Gnostics, who claimed (much later) he did not really die at all since he was not really human, all sources agree that Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea.  He ordered the execution, performed by his Roman soldiers, in the Roman manner reserved for slaves and non-citizen subversives.  Invented by the Assyrians and perfected by the Romans, crucifixion was the most painful and humiliating death ever devised.  The Gospels give details not found elsewhere.  The charge posted on the cross, in the Roman manner, was “King of the Jews.”  Thus, the crucifixion of Jesus can be seen as an act of anti-Semitism.  The title, at least, expressed calculated contempt for the Jewish elites.  The Gospels also indicate that Pilate did not regard Jesus as a real threat.  Legally, then, Pontius Pilate killed Jesus as a pretender to the Jewish throne.

There was at least one other trial.  Jesus was arrested and tried by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court, under the impetus of the temple elites, and for good reason.  Politically, first century Palestine was a tinderbox.  The Roman conquest a century before had been bitterly contested and brutally prosecuted.  Guerillas still hid in the hills.  Periodically “Messiahs” rose up promising supernatural deliverance from the pagan oppressors, bringing on massive destruction and repression.  The temple elites had forged a delicate modus operandi with Rome, yielding submission in exchange for religious toleration.  The Temple was the major industry of Jerusalem.  It was being rebuilt/renovated for them by Rome, 18 BC to 63 AD (on veritable “big dig” scale).  One false Messiah and they could lose everything.  John quotes the High Priest as saying, some days earlier, “it is better for you [his colleagues] that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”  John 11:50. Even if Jesus could raise his rod like Moses and obliterate the Roman presence (and he showed no interest in political or military strategy), he had made it clear that there was no place for them in his “Kingdom of Heaven.”  Twice in the last three years he had forcibly driven their concessionaires out of the Temple Court of the Gentiles at Passover!

So Jesus was tried and convicted of blasphemy on his own testimony (there was no 5^th Amendment in Jewish law).  Virtually, he pled guilty.  When challenged, under oath, to “tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God,” he answered, “Yes, it is as you say” – guilty as charged (Matthew 26:63-64, Mark 14:61-62).  This left the court with little choice: they must either fall down and worship him or stone him. 

As John tells the story, he had been needling them all week to make this choice: was he God or fraud?  Where did his power to cast out demons, to make a man born blind see, to raise Lazarus from the dead come from?  What did he mean by saying, “before Abraham was, I AM?”  Or “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again”?  Bound and roughed up as he was, he certainly did not look like Messiah.  By some legal complication of their subject status they were denied the right to stone him.  They had to refer him to Pilate for execution.  The Romans didn’t care a fig about blasphemy (unless against Caesar), so the charge was changed to sedition.  The Temple leadership prosecuted the case with vigor, insinuating against Pilate’s loyalty to Caesar.  Politically, then, the Sanhedrin killed Jesus – not the Jewish people, but the Temple elite.  And not all of them, at that.

So far, there is little reason to doubt the Gospel accounts.  Some would discount John’s reports of Jesus’ claims as influenced by later theology, but they are consistent with what happened at the Sanhedrin trial.  Some of Jesus’ modern “friends” may doubt, but his contemporary enemies did not.  Interestingly, his followers “forsook him and fled,” completely demoralized and disillusioned.  Only his enemies set a vigil at his tomb.  And they didn’t even try to find the body after his reported resurrection.  Hmm.

But wait.  There is more.  Christians believe that he was telling the truth.  But how can you kill God?  Jesus hinted at this.  “I lay down my life for the sheep . . . . The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.  This command I received from my Father.”  John 10:15-18.  And to Pilate at his Roman trial, beaten to a pulp: “you would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.”  John 19:11. He had been telling his disciples for weeks that he had come into the world to die.  See John 3.  As Isaiah had prophesied it centuries before, “God [made] his life an offering for sin.”  Isaiah 53:10. The Sanhedrin did not, could not, kill Jesus.  Pilate did not, could not, kill Jesus.  The Roman soldiers did not, could not, kill Jesus.  As a Christian I believe He gave his life up willingly as an offering for my sin and yours.  We killed Jesus.

          Behold the man upon the cross, my sin upon his shoulders.

                   Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.

          It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished;

                   His dying breath has brought me life.  I know that it is finished.

          I will not boast of anything: no gifts, no pow’r, no wisdom.

                   But I will boast in Jesus Christ: His death and resurrection.

          Why should I gain from His reward?  I cannot give an answer.

But this I know with all my heart: His wounds have paid my ransom.

                                                          Stuart Townsend, 1995

David W. Heughins (“ProfDave”) is Adjunct Professor of History at Nazarene Bible College.  He holds a BA from Eastern Nazarene College and a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota.  He is the author of Holiness in 12 Steps (2020).  He is a Vietnam veteran and is retired, living with his daughter and three grandchildren in Connecticut.