Did "The Jews" Kill Jesus? Part One

A historical, literary, and theological problem

Okay. 

What’s this. What the hell is this. 

This is a tweet from Marjorie Taylor Green explaining why she did not vote in favor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. I’m not going to argue about the legitimacy of the bill or the specific definition of antisemitism present in it, which is highly contested. What I want to focus on is this historical claim: that Jesus was crucified by “the Jews,” apparently through Herod (where is Pilate in this passion narrative?).

I’m willing to give it to MTG that this is a garbled half-remembering of Luke, but the thing I want to deal with is this: the fact that a lot of Christians think that “the Jews killed Jesus” and that this is actually a central claim of our religion. How people arrive at this conclusion is pretty varied, I suspect. Some of it does come from a reading of the Gospels that is perhaps a little uncritical and culturally reinforced by interpreters: that Pilate really did not want to crucify Jesus and ultimately did so only because Jewish leaders and the crowds forced his hand. Or, worse yet and even less critical, that Pilate didn’t order Jesus crucified at all and simply took his hand off the wheel. Some of it also comes from a misunderstanding of who the different players are in the text – that the system by which Herod. Caiaphas, and Pilate would sentence someone are all distinct from each other. And some of it is also just the oldest and most stubborn form of antisemitism that there is: that the Jews are guilty of deicide and (while Green did not claim this) that all Jews bear collective guilt for the death of Jesus.

The latter isn’t really a historical claim, but the rest of it is: the idea that ultimately Jews, not Rome, were responsible for the death of Jesus. But is this what happened? Is this what the Gospels say? Of course, the question of what the Gospels say happened and what actually happened are, strictly speaking, different questions. You’ll meet scholars who simply deny that it’s plausible that Jesus had a trial before Pilate at all, that if he did the hearing might have been cursory at most, that the crowds and the call for Jesus’s death over Barabbas was entirely apologetic fiction, and that all this was constructed as part of the growing divide between the increasingly-gentile Christian movement and the re-constructing early Jewish movement that coalesced and vied for converts in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem. 

But maybe that’s taking things too far. For my part, I actually just don’t think there’s enough evidence regarding provincial justice in the Roman empire to say what is plausible and what isn’t regarding a hearing. In light of this, we have to deal with the few sources we have, which do include the Gospels. We may not have a lot of sources for the death of Jesus, but we do have them. In light of this, I want to try to reconstruct the most historically plausible reading of the Gospels. If key events in the text really happened – like the crowd asking for Jesus’s execution, or Caiaphas being the one who sent Jesus to Pilate – why did they happen? What political causes might there be involved in this? And is the best description of these events that “the Jews,” without distinction between province, rank, ethnicity, and without regard for Roman authority, cause Jesus’s death? 

This is fundamentally a historical question. When I’m switching into a more literary mode to answer the question “does this Gospel frame Jewish groups as more responsible for the death of Jesus than Rome?” I will flag that. We should note that the historical and literary questions here are distinct: “who killed Jesus” is not quite the same question as “who does John think killed Jesus?” But even in these literary confines, the text might be a bit more complicated than we originally think.

Chapter One: “The Jews”

The extent to which historical sources play up or play down the involvement of Jewish groups with Jesus’s death is incredibly knotty, and there are a lot of motivations besides historical accuracy in play here. For instance, playing down Jewish involvement does happen in patristic sources – there’s an apologetic motivation here, answering the pretty reasonable question “if Jesus was the messiah of Israel, why didn’t he get more of a hearing?” But on the other hand, playing down Roman involvement is a good move for appealing to gentile audiences – Jesus wasn’t actually a criminal, he just pissed off this obscure group of people you don’t need to worry about. 

So with that in mind, it’s important to remember that every writer in antiquity is going to try to thread this needle differently and there’s always going to be bias. The job of the historian is to look at all the information and try to weigh them appropriately. So with that in mind: did “the Jews” crucify Jesus? 

Well, what do you mean by “the Jews?” Which of the following groups are you including under this heading? 

1. Jesus, his disciples, and his entourage. (Remember – they’re all Jews)

2. Caiaphas the high priest 

3. The Sanhedrin that Jerusalem, as opposed to the other Sanhedrins (Josephus says there were several!) 

4. The Sadducees (priestly sect that kept a shorter canon excluding the prophets, some of whom may have been represented in the Sanhedrin)

5. The Pharisees (not priests, sect within Judaism that kept a longer canon)

6. The crowds that were in Jerusalem at the time that Jesus arrived there

7. The crowds from Galilee that came as pilgrims during the Passover

8. Herod Antipas, the tetrarch

9. The Judeans (sometimes argued as a possible translation of Ἰουδαῖοι particularly in John, as opposed to the Galileans)

10. All of the above 

So, before we say anything else: only one guy on the above list has any plausible ability to execute people under Roman law – that’s Herod Antipas, who was a client ethnarch of Rome over Galilee and Perea. Jerusalem isn’t in those places. Herod Antipas probably mostly ruled out of Tiberius and Sepphoris. Jerusalem wasn’t in his territory.

So while Luke’s detail that Pilate tried to hand Jesus off to Herod on the grounds that Jesus was Galilean is a bit of a head-scratcher (this would presumably not be the normal custom, since Herod lives pretty far away, but he’s apparently in town for the weekend per Luke 23:7), ultimately, Luke is right about one thing – if the sedition happened in Jerusalem, it’s Pilate’s problem, not Herod’s. 

So whatever else we might say, only one guy ultimately has the right to be the one to make the call to execute Jesus, and to dispatch soldiers to make it happen. That’s Pilate, the governor of Rome. We know that Pilate is ultimately the guy holding the bag for two reasons. First, he’s the only guy in Jerusalem who has the authority to execute people. Second, Jesus is crucified – not stoned, crucified.

Why does this matter? 

Well, it matters because of the kind of execution crucifixion is. Crucifixion as practice developed from the Persians and eventually made its way west through Alexander the Great, until Rome got ahold of it probably some time in the early Republican era. Strictly speaking, crucifixion is not a Torah-certified manner of executing people. Deuteronomy mentions suspending a corpse after they’re dead, but not before. (That didn’t stop Alexander Janneus of the Hasmonean dynasty, who Josephus says crucified 8000 Pharisees in one day. However, remember that is before Rome, when the Hasmoneans were ruling Judea after overthrowing the Selucids, and it’s a good deal before the Romans show up and install Herod as their client.) So the issue is not just that the Torah doesn’t prescribe this method of execution – the am ha’aretz probably do things all the time you’re not supposed to do according to the Torah. It’s that Rome doesn’t let just anyone take justice into their own hands. After the Hasmoneans, there’s no record of a Judean-based official ordering a crucifixion, and only a handful of references to a high priest ordering a stoning (we’ll get to that in a bit). 

But the role that crucifixion specifically has in the Roman Empire is, to introduce Joel Marcus to you all, “parodic exaltation.” The specific way Rome envisioned this punishment was as a way of humiliating people who were stepping out of place – lowering them by literally raising them in the air. Crucifixion was usually reserved for rebellious slaves, pirates, brigands, and other provincials who had “gotten above themselves” and tried to place themselves over Rome. This is exactly what is said in the Gospels to have happened to Jesus – he is parodically crowned, robed, and “raised up” by a battalion of Roman soldiers with a sign that declares him the “King of the Jews.” This is what Rome does to people who try to get out from under Rome. This is not a punishment the Sanhedrin dishes out to blasphemers, this is what direct imperial rulers do to people who threaten Roman rule. 

So, the man holding the smoking gun is Pilate. Pilate has the power to order an execution, and he does so against a man using a Roman method of execution. Anyone else who was involved would be involved at the level of influence at most. But, not everyone on the above list has the same level of influence. Who could have plausibly influenced Pilate on this matter? 

Let’s take a look at the candidates, starting with the most powerful – the high priest and Sanhedrin. 

Chapter 2: The High Priest and the Sanhedrin

The high priesthood was the highest office a Jewish person could hold in Judea during the time of Jesus’s execution and ministry. Rome had already tossed out the local ethnarch and was ruling directly through the governorship, and Rome was appointing the high priests themselves. This tells us a lot about what kinds of people were getting this position: people who could work well with Rome and defend Rome’s interests through local channels, who still had meaningful sway with local populations (e.g., you wouldn’t appoint a Greek to this role). This was usually how Rome worked with local populations – have a client whose ability to stay in power was measured by the extent to which Rome wanted them there. 

At the time that Jesus was executed, the high priest was a man named Caiaphas. Caiaphas is named in the passion narratives in Matthew and John. He’s not named in Mark, and he’s name-dropped early in Luke to describe the “priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas” during the early days of John the Baptist (Luke 3:2). He also appears at the beginning of Acts (4:6). 

So who’s Annas? Annas is, according to John 18:3, Caiaphas’s father-in-law. The Romans deposed Annas in 15 CE and ran through two more high priests before they finally settled on Caiaphas (that must have made for some fun holidays). 

Caiaphas and Annas probably didn’t actually overlap per Luke (Luke might mean Eliezar the son of Annas? Not sure) but it might have felt that way to people in the area. Annas had, according to Josephus, five sons who became the high priest and was seen as exceptionally fortunate. With so many family members in power he probably retained a fair amount of influence. Caiaphas was installed in 18 CE by the Romans and he kept the job through 36 CE (the same year Pilate was recalled to be tried in Rome regarding a violent incident in Samaria). Caiaphas was replaced by another one of Annas’s sons. 

So a few things to note here. Caiaphas kept the job for a really long time and even outlasted the governor who appointed him, so the Roman governors seem to have liked him. More to the point, Rome really liked this family. They kept picking priests from them, and Annas’s son was eventually assassinated by rebels in 66 CE for opposing the revolution. Why did the Romans get on so well with this family?

It comes down to what the high priest does all day. Obviously he’s the head of the Temple cult. He runs the Temple, makes sure the sacrifices are in order, and presides over councils and determines policy.¹ But that’s all stuff Rome doesn’t really need to be involved in. Why is Rome picking these guys?

Well, here’s the thing. The governor of Judea didn’t have legions at his disposal. Pilate probably had to get by with five infantry cohorts and a cavalry. They also had inherited Herod’s army, most of which was up north, some of which was at a few fortresses in the area, and a garrison in Jerusalem.² In other words, Pilate was policing the province with a skeleton crew. If you’re going to stretch that few soldiers to keep a whole province in order, you need smart policing to cover what surveillance doesn’t. And that’s where the high priest comes in.

The job of a high priest, like most people who are appointed by Rome, is to keep order among the Jewish people. They keep the governor informed of things they need to be worried about. They preside over local bodies to encourage good behavior, like orderly behavior at festivals, and paying taxes. They probably play some role in keeping Rome from stepping in local scandals, like trying to put standards in the temple. 

When you look at Josephus and see why priests got deposed under Herod, some of it comes down to boilerplate pettiness, but some of it comes down to security issues. One priest was too popular with pilgrims (holidays were tense in Jerusalem, plus ça change), one failed to prevent a demonstration against Herod, etc. The governor before Pilate, Gratus, cycled through about a priest a year after Annus and before Caiphas, which fit Roman norms – cycling through priests about once a year so that no one priest gets too much power. 

But something was different about Caiaphas. Gratus didn’t replace him. There’s some plausible historical reason to think that delegations from Syria and Judea told Germanicus that priests shouldn’t be cycled through regularly, and Gratus accommodated them. Rome didn’t necessarily want control of the Temple cult, so this wouldn’t have been a bad concession to make. But it’s also just plausible that Caiaphas was really, really good at his job as far as Rome was concerned. He kept his eyes out for upstart movements that might cause an uproar. 

So when you see “Pharisees and Herodians” asking Jesus in Mark 12:13 asking about paying taxes, they might just be trying to win an argument, or specifically in the case of the Herodians, they might be people on the beat trying to get information of what Rome’s clients need to know. If Jesus is saying “don’t pay taxes,” that needs to get back to Herod before Rome gets involved.

So to follow along with Mark, the priests suddenly show up in Mark 11:18, after Jesus has been sacking the Temple. Some of them probably saw this and they’re immediately alarmed, concerned he came with a crowd, and are afraid. From a Roman perspective, this is exactly what they’re supposed to be doing – keeping an eye out for problems. They ask for some clarification – why does he think he has the authority to do this? (Mark 11:27). They agree he’s got to go, but they also know that they can’t do it during the feast because Jesus is too popular with the people (who are, not to put too fine a point on it, Jews 14:1-2).

So this is where Judas comes in. Exactly what Judas said or did is a matter of extreme historical confusion, but I think it’s a plausible guess that Mark thinks he gave them the inside scoop – Jesus is absolutely saying he’s the messiah, and offers to help them arrest him when he’s not in the middle of the temple. They take him up on the offer.

So according to Mark, this is the group of people who send soldiers to come arrest Jesus. Now, this is fought over a lot, but I actually think it’s pretty plausible, given that when the Romans came to arrest messianic aspirants they usually left way more carnage behind. 

So they arrest Jesus, and they’re having a hearing that looks like it’s more or less a normal blasphemy trial until Mark 14:58 - a witness against Jesus says he’s going to destroy the Temple. Whether this is actually false witness seems to be contested in the Gospels (John seems to think Jesus was more misunderstood per 2:21), but this seems to be the clinching point for Caiaphas. Caiaphas probably doesn’t know much about Jesus except that he came in heralded as a king and then trashed the temple. So, the priest asks if Jesus is the messiah, and he answers he is. 

And then… it looks like the trial suddenly stops being a blasphemy trial. Caiaphas tears his clothes and responds to it as though it’s a blasphemy, but the plan of attack changes completely. What exactly Jesus said that would qualify as cursing God, which is the Torah standard of blasphemy, isn’t clear at all. You eventually have in John the idea that “making oneself equal with God” (John 5:18) is a form of blasphemy, but these are ideas that are difficult to find corroboration for outside of the NT. They don’t stone him, the scene just ends and they take him to Pilate (15:1). 

So here’s the thing. The historicity of the specific account of the trial is contested, to say the least. How many eyewitnesses were at hand and would have told their stories to the earliest Christians is muddy water. But I think there’s something really plausible going on here. 

Caiaphas and the priests got a threat – a really popular local prophet is speaking against the Temple. They are extremely concerned this doesn’t turn into festival violence, but they’re damned either way. The triumphal entry and Temple incident could have both turned into violence easily, but if they arrest Jesus, violence is all but guaranteed (see: Peter with sword). They get more information and a plausible out to arrest him. And then they arrest him and get the full measure of what they’re dealing with. 

If the concern was some kind of impious conduct (like the prophet who speaks against the Temple in Josephus in JW 6), they could have just whipped Jesus, held him while they waited for the pilgrims to clear out, and moved on with their lives. But when they land on Jesus threatening the Temple and saying he’s the messiah, the rules change. Their job is to make sure this stuff goes to Pilate. If they don’t, and Jesus’s followers cause a problem, they’re on the line. 

So I don’t want to deny that Caiaphas was probably actually offended by Jesus’s actions – I’m sure he was. But it’s also bigger than that. He’s not just the head of the cult, he is working on behalf of the state. 

John even shows Caiaphas making these calculations in John 11:49ff. The cause of events is different, but John shows Caiaphas working out the math in his head. If they don’t do something, they will lose their ability to lead in Israel. (The Sanhedrin actually was disbanded following the Jewish War, so he’s not wrong). It’s better to have one person executed than to underestimate him and let the movement devolve into revolt, which will destroy the whole nation. Based on how things went down forty years later, if this was Caiaphas’s thought process, he wasn’t wrong.

So I want to allow for the fact that Caiaphas is the chief priest presiding over a Sanhedrin, but he’s not acting exclusively as a representative of Second Temple Jewish religion. He’s not just getting Pilate to do his dirty work. He is convinced there is an actual danger to Rome deciding to solve this themselves in their own time, and instead decides to get out in front of it, tell Pilate that what looks like a halakhic problem on its face is actually bigger than that, and encourage Rome to treat it like sedition.

It’s not denying the Jewishness of the above figures to note that what’s preceded doesn’t meaningfully get us to “the Jews killed Jesus.” What we’re talking about here is a fairly small group of Jerusalem-based leaders who are affiliated with the Temple and are deputized to act in Rome’s interests. This is hardly representative of all Judea and Galilee, not to mention the sizable Diaspora that already existed.

But this brings us to some figures who aren’t Temple affiliated who, the Gospels say, did call for the execution of Jesus — and those would be the crowds on Pilate’s pavement following Jesus’s trial. That’s where we’ll pick up in Part 2.

1.  Helen Bond, Caiaphas: Friend of Rome and Judge of Jesus? (Westminster John Knox, 2004), 44-47

2. Bond, Caiaphas, 40-41.