CHAPTER 21 - Jesus’ Arrest and Execution
CHAPTER 21
Jesus’ Arrest and Execution
“We should begin our study with two firm facts before us: Jesus was executed by the Romans as would-be ‘king of the Jews’, and his disciples subsequently formed a messianic movement which was not based on the hope of military victory.”
E. P. SANDERS1
“Jesus had alarmed some people by his attack on the Temple. . . . It is highly probable, however, that Caiaphas was primarily or exclusively concerned with the possibility that Jesus would incite a riot. He sent armed guards to arrest Jesus, he gave him a hearing, and he recommended execution to Pilate, who promptly complied. That is the way the gospels describe the events, and that is the way things really happened, as the numerous stories in Josephus prove.”
E. P. SANDERS2
No one doubts that Jesus was executed. Early Christians would not have invented this fate for their leader, a fate that posed considerable risks for them as followers. Likewise, scholars do not routinely suppose that first-generation persecuted groups usually invented elaborate stories of their founders’ executions on criminal charges when such founders died a natural death.
Moreover, early Christians are not the only ones to report Jesus’ execution, though some other sources (like the Syrian Stoic Mara bar Serapion, who around the year 73 CE blames the Jewish people for Jesus’ death) may follow Christian reports. In the early second century, Tacitus attributes the execution to Pilate. Most strikingly, the Jewish historian Josephus in the first century apparently blames both the governor and Jerusalem’s aristocrats: “Pilate condemned Jesus to crucifixion, after our leaders had accused him.”3 Josephus’ verdict fits not only the reports in the Gospels but also how matters were usually carried out in this period.