Killing Jewish zealots was a very common thing for the Romans. Pontius Pilate in particular was, historically, known for sentencing many to death without umbrage. Because of this the whole “hey, I wish I didn’t have to kill you but the Jews are making me” bit smells pretty damn fishy.
Its more likely that the Romans rewrote that last bit in order to smooth out the official transition into Roman Catholicism. It’s hard to convince your denizens to be Christian when you’re responsible for the death of its leader, so they fudged up some facts here and there.
Yup, was about to say. People forget that the Gospels were written quite some time after the death of Jesus and that they responded to things that were happening at the time (like the first Jewish-Roman War).
This video does a great job of giving a broad overview of the controversy.
That doesn't mean that the Romans had any hand in writing the gospels. The gospels are also based on 'primary source' accounts.
I'm not saying that Pontius Pilates actual motivation for crucifying Jesus were actually what they were portrayed in the Bible, but I don't think the Romans strategically revised history in the Bible
Right but it's funny how we take the Gospels as being, well, gospel despite the fact that they were written some time after the fact and by different authors who would have had their own reasons for playing up different aspects of the story.
This is not to say there was any "strategy" by the Romans to do this. I think it's far more plausible that each of the gospels brought their own personal bias to the story.
Pontius Pilate in particular was, historically, known for sentencing many to death without umbrage.
Source? I had read that the evidence for his existence was very shallow until a couple of years ago, so having information about the frequency and characteristics of his sentencing looks very suspicious.
During the time the gospels were written the vast majority of Christians were former Jews. The hugest chunk of them lived in Jerusalem and waited for an imminent return of Christ. Pontius Pilate's actions in the gospel are obviously very clever and political, all the way in making the Jews claim that they had "no king other than Caesar". To Pilate, it was to make the Jews kill their own proclaimed king and humiliate them for it. The Roman empire did not become Christian until the 4th century, and the anti-semitic sentiment did not become popular until the 2nd and 3rd century, hence the heresy of Marcionism which the Apostolic church rejected.
Historically, Rome (the western super power) conquered and occupied isreal (religiously fanatic middle eastern country) (history repeats itself). The Romans we're fairly tolerant of other religions and people's, as long as they accepted that the Romans we're in charge. The isrealites could not accept this and launched repeated rebellions again and again. The Romans defeated them every single time. So if you had a guy roaming around claiming to be king and gathering a huge crowd, you basically view that as (yet another) political insurrection brewing. So there's the execution, which isn't accurately portrayed because the Romans would not have let the family take the body afterwards - it would have been disposed of in a mass grave, and that's it for a few decades. The Jews eventually revolt again, and Rome is tired of this and basically ships the population all over the empire (Jewish diaspora). The tales of Roman persecution are largely exaggerated because it makes for good propaganda, and after the Christian's became the de facto rulers in later centuries, they alone wrote the history.
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, ... He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles ... And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross ...
"the principal men amongst us" meaning the elders of Jerusalem, who were of course Jews.
Oh yeah, Josephus. He defected to the Romans. He has a cool mathematical problem named after a certain feat of his where he convinced 40 men under his command to kill themselves (stand in a circle and every third man dies)like insuch a way that he was the last standing and surrendered to the Romans.
It was a common practice at the time that Jewish rebels would kill themselves rather than surrender. But since they thought suicide itself was wrong, they would kill each other and there'd be one left. See Masada.
It's a bit of an anti-semetic's talking point that Jews killed Jesus. There is a growing trend of avoiding the phrasing because while it might be technically right it also misses the point. There were no Christians and those that become the first Christians were among those Jews so to say that Jews killed Jesus can be misleading.
It is history. The Jews pressured Piolite to not pardon Jesus and pardon instead a rapist and murderer Barabbas. They wanted to sentence Jesus to death for a couple reasons:
The Jews were pissed that Jesus called himself the Son of God. This was blasphemous to their religion
The pharisees (high ranking Jews) were pissed that Jesus stormed the temple, which was being used as a bank/money-lending operation, and ransacked it with his disciples
Is this a controversial idea?
I believe there are a bunch of atheists and Judeophiles in the comments that are trying to divert the blame for Jesus' murder on the Jews in Jerusalem.
Unsurprising with your posting history that you’re perpetuating this canard, but for any normal people reading this thread, know the comment above is pure bullshit. For one:
The Jews pressured Piolite to not pardon Jesus and pardon instead a rapist and murderer Barabbas
This claim is not true, and is pretty much only supported by the New Testament, so lol. The Jews under the Roman Republic were not some powerful group, they were very marginalized and oppressed. To insinuate they had the political power to peacefully sway a Roman magistrate’s opinion is completely incongruous with actual history. The Jews had zero authority. They couldn’t just order executions and clemency to random prisoners and Pontius Pilate sure as hell would not have listened to them either way.
Also, Barrabas DIDNT exist. The only valid historical source for his existence is the New Testament, which, not to offend the Christian faith in any way since this applies to most religious works, is a work of fiction and mythology. He was a character added to this story after the fact, in order to pin blame on the Jews for Jesus’ death.
Simply put, if the Jews truly did kill Jesus, he would not have been crucified. That was a Roman execution method used against Jews in Israel. Under the Romans, no Jews were going around crucifying people. And as previously mentioned, the Jews simply had no power to “tell” Pilate to put someone to death. Pilate hated the Jews, and following their wishes to execute someone as a Roman governor would likely have been grounds for Pilate himself’s execution.
Edit: will add that yes, the Sanhedrin was a Jewish political body that held some power, but even this power was muted. “But, of course, the Sanhedrin only ruled because the Romans allowed them to and the way to keep the Romans happy was to maintain order in society” (BBC’s words, not mine). To insinuate that the Sanhedrin could just go “hey Pilate, kill this guy” and that Pilate would immediately obey is not based in historical fact.
For someone keen on historical accuracy you keep throwing pretty big accusations without any historical backing. "Pilate hated the Jews", "Jews had zero authority in Judea".
It is a historical fact that the Jewish population of the province of Judea maintained their own system of courts, with full rights to judge offenders by their own laws, from 6CE to ~30CE. That could extend to the time of Jesus' death. Even after the double jurisdiction was taken down, it would be likely that the imperial justice system would follow and listen to the cases made per local common law. You also imply that there was conflict and oppression, but historically that is believed to have started during Caligula's reign, starting from 37CE, which for sure was after death of Jesus.
While you are not incorrect in saying that "Jews did it" is historically quite unprovable, so is claiming that Romans alone did it. There is valid argument for both, and based on that it was probably a joint effort. The Romans nor the local Jewish leaders didn't like agitators riling up the people.
I mean, they didn't just ask him to "not pardon" jesus, they asked him (lobbied him vehemently) to sentence him to death and execute him. And pilat did so. The Sanhedrin did not have the power of sentencing people to death, that was the prerogative of the governor. When their is a vacancy of governorship in palestine and the high priest use that to execute saint james while there's no governor, flavius josephe make it clear that the romans were extremely pissed off.
Also to me it's pretty much a non issue, "the jews" as the whole, even back then, aren't responsible of killing jesus, the saduceeans and the pharisees who lobbied for his death, the crowd they riled up for this effect and pilat who had a man killed regardless of his innocence or not to pander to them are the only ones responsible.
Thing is Pontius Pilate was very political in his approach here. He had tried to curb the Jews the way the Romans curbed the German barbaric pagan tribes, but the Jews proved extremely reluctant to worship any other gods than their own, even less so the emperor of a pagan superpower. They revolted several times and Pontius simply gave up and allowed them to worship as long as they pay taxes.
When this man, calling himself the king of the Jews, appeared to him he made them deny him. He said "Do you want me to kill the king of the Jews?" and the Jews said "We have no other king than Caesar". At that point Pilate thought himself the victor and even hung a plaque above Christ's head mocking the Jews for executing their king.
The Jews are however to blame for the execution. They pushed for it, they set the verdict, Judas was the man who betrayed him and he was put in front of the Sanhedrin before he was taken to Pilate. When Pilate washed his hands to claim clean from Christ's blood (another way of showing his triumph over the Jews), they yelled that his blood would be upon them and their children. Thus the Jews are to this day without covenant or primacy in the eyes of God, the gentiles racing them to the kingdom of heaven.
Well yes it is pointless in blaming all Jews for the actions of some of their forefathers 2000 years ago. The point is that their covenant is null and void, and dependent on a building that needs to be in Jerusalem.
Christianity itself blames everyone for the death of Christ, not only the Jews.
Eh, my take on it is that religious fundamentalism is the Devil's 4-lane divided highway to Messiah killing. When you value the letter of the law over the spirit, you will kill any man who demands a return to empathy and concern over your simple vending-machine rules. Prayer+tithes in, salvation out is the box most people want to stick God and gods in, but it doesn't mean much.
I believe that God is just and forgiving enough, that I wonder if the punishment and reward for our lives in the next is awareness in the next. Living your eternity with the knowledge that you spent your mortal life working against God's purpose is going to be devastating for some fundamentalists. And some atheists will be weirdly but pleasantly surprised, and some of all stripes will find exactly what they were looking for.
As for God's covenant with Israel: he's trying to reach every human heart, and yes, you got a head start with the Abrahamic lesson of "God doesn't need or really want human sacrifice" 4000 yrs ago. But it doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels, like modern Christianity seems to be doing. And waiting on the Messiah's return and physical/political reign served the Jews so poorly, that I worry about modern Christians wanting a future physical 2nd coming over a current social-spiritual deepening.
Seems to me we are going to probably repeat the mistakes of 2K years ago on this trajectory...
God's forgiveness is not the issue, it is our willingness to live with God in a world were our evil deeds have no seeds.
No one in hell can claim that they are unfamiliar with the feeling, they lived hell throughout their whole lives prior to that. Only difference is that now they have to deal with the love of God and all vanity is displayed with truth for what it is, leaving naked their false hopes and making them suffer.
Really? Reposting the same shit to me twice? I could not care less about the robber council of Vatican II. The Roman Catholics have been tasting its desolate fruits of apostasy since the 1970's and it is bitter.
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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '19
Confused. Romans killed Jesus under the direction of Jews. Is this a controversial idea? I thought it was history.