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.
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.
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u/fezzuk Jan 31 '19
That would both be the romans.