TRIALS OF JESUS

ARREST AND TRIALS OF JESUS

Caravaggio painting of Jesus as a prisonerJesus was brought to trial in Jerusalem in April in A.D. 30 or A.D. 33. He was tried twice in two separate trials. According to the BBC: No trials "or execution in history has had such a momentous outcome as that of Jesus in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, 2000 years ago. But was it an execution or a judicial murder; and who was responsible? The story begins when the Galilean rebel Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, deliberately fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah. He's mobbed by an adoring crowd. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

“The next day Jesus raids the Temple, the heart of the Jewish religion, and attacks money-changers for defiling a holy place. The leaders of the Jewish establishment realise that he threatens their power, and so do the Romans, who fear that Jesus has the charisma to lead a guerrilla uprising against Imperial Rome. |::|

“Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, tried by Caiaphas and then by the Roman Governor. He's sentenced to death and executed. Caiaphas Caiaphas had a privileged position Caiaphas was a supreme political operator and one of the most influential men in Jerusalem. He'd already survived 18 years as High Priest of the Temple (most High Priests only lasted 4), and had built a strong alliance with the occupying Roman power. Caiaphas knew everybody who mattered. He was the de-facto ruler of the worldwide Jewish community at that time, and he planned to keep it that way. |::|

“The case against Caiaphas is that he arrested Jesus, tried him in a kangaroo court and convicted him on a religious charge that carried the death penalty. What were Caiaphas' motives? Jesus threatened Caiaphas's authority. Caiaphas could not afford to allow any upstart preacher to get away with challenging his authority; especially not at Passover time. This was the biggest Jewish festival and scholars estimate that around two and half million Jews would have been in Jerusalem to take part. Caiaphas did not want to lose face. |::|

Websites and Resources: Jesus and the Historical Jesus Britannica on Jesus britannica.com Jesus-Christ ; PBS Frontline From Jesus to Christ pbs.org ; Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ bible.org ; Jesus Central jesuscentral.com ; Catholic Encyclopedia: Jesus Christ newadvent.org ; Complete Works of Josephus at Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org ; Christianity BBC on Christianity bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity ; Sacred Texts website sacred-texts.com ; Candida Moss at the Daily Beast Daily Beast Christian Answers christiananswers.net ; Bible: Bible Gateway and the New International Version (NIV) of The Bible biblegateway.com ; King James Version of the Bible gutenberg.org/ebooks Biblical History: Bible History Online bible-history.com ; Biblical Archaeology Society biblicalarchaeology.org

Jesus was tried first by Jewish officials and questioned in front of a group of Jewish religious leaders led by Caiaphas and then, second, tried by the Roman Governor According to the BBC: The Gospels give different accounts of this, and of who is present. Caiaphas, the Chief Priest of the Temple wanted to destroy Jesus before he caused a rebellion that would bring down the comfortable world of the Temple and enraging the Roman authorities. |During questioning Jesus says enough for the Romans to see him as a rebel, and the Jews to regard him as a blasphemer. The trial of Jesus before the Jewish authorities is a source of much controversy, and has been used in the past to justify anti-Semitism. Modern Christians do not blame the Jews for the death of Jesus. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

“The Jewish authorities had several reasons for being angry with Jesus: 1) Jesus had challenged their authority - earlier in the week Jesus had gone to the Temple and protested against the moneychangers, as a symbolic denunciation of all the injustices the Temple stood for; 2) Jesus was reinterpreting Jewish Law; 3) Jesus was breaking the laws concerning the Sabbath; 4) Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, a claim which the authorities thought blasphemous; 6) The claim to be Messiah suggested that Jesus was preparing some sort of rebellion - probably against the Roman colonial government. Such a revolt would endanger the relationship between Roman and Jewish authorities. (In those days the Messiah was expected to be a royal figure who would defeat the enemies of God and cleanse or rebuild the temple, and perhaps also bring God's justice to the world.) [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

“Jesus is tried by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, on a charge of treason. The Jewish authorities were not authorised to execute people, so they needed to transfer the case to the Roman authorities. Pilate is not convinced that Jesus is guilty of a capital crime and suggests that it would be sufficient to flog him. The crowd objects to this and demands that Jesus be killed. Pilate gives in and sentences Jesus to be flogged first and then executed by crucifixion. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

“Although the Gospels paint Pilate as a weak man who ignores justice rather than stand against the crowd, other sources say that he was tough and authoritarian, and unlikely to have been pushed around by anyone. Pilate was eventually ordered back to Rome and tried for the cruel way he treated the people under his government. There is a Christian tradition that Pilate and his wife eventually converted to Christianity. |::|

First Trial of Christ

Sanhedrin Trial

The first trial was at a Jewish high court for Sanhedrin (the Jewish tribunal and ruling body), at the Jerusalem basilica, presided over by Caiaphas, the high priest of Jerusalem, who questioned Jesus. Jesus was accused of falsely pretending to be a Messiah. When the priest asked him: “Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus answered in the affirmative.

According to the conventional telling of the story the Sanhedrin court quickly found Jesus guilty of violating temple law and making false prophecies based in part on Jesus’s exchange with the moneychanger and his claim to be a Messiah. But the court lacked the authority to pass a death sentence so Roman authorities were called in. Scholars regard the Sanhedrin as a political body, lacking religious legitimacy, that collaborated with the Romans. Jesus was also charged with blasphemy. If he had been found guilty of that in the Jewish court high priests could have had him stoned to death. But that didn’t happen. Instead Jesus was turned over to Pilate and Roman authorities.

The Gospels do not agree on what happened to Jesus between the time he was arrested and his sentencing by Pilate. One unresolved question is what crimes Jesus was actually found guilty of? Was it political subversion, offensive religious claims or blasphemy. Many scholars say that he was ultimately condemned on blasphemy charges, not because he claimed he was the “Son of God,” which scholars say he never did, but because he claimed to have the power to forgive sins and talked of bringing the kingdom of God to earth---things which Jews believed only God had the power to do.

In 1990, archaeologists working in Jerusalem found an ossuary (box of bones) marked with the family name Caiaphas. Dated to the first century A.D., the bones are believed belongs to Caiaphas, the Jerusalem high priest who presided over the trial of Jesus.

Caiaphas and the Trial of Jesus

“Jesus was first tried by Caiaphas. Caiaphas had a privileged position Caiaphas was a supreme political operator and one of the most influential men in Jerusalem. He'd already survived 18 years as High Priest of the Temple (most High Priests only lasted 4), and had built a strong alliance with the occupying Roman power. Caiaphas knew everybody who mattered. He was the de-facto ruler of the worldwide Jewish community at that time, and he planned to keep it that way. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

Case Against Jesus

Annas and Caiaphas

“Did Jesus know what he was doing in the events leading up to his execution? According to the BBC: “Many experts believe that, more than anyone else, the person responsible for the death of Jesus was Jesus himself. There is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that everything he did was planned and that he knew what the consequences would be. |::|

“1) Jesus' motive: Jesus believed profoundly that he was on a mission from God and everything he did was to fulfil that mission. 2) Acting out the prophecy of the Messiah: In the events of Holy Week, Jesus seems to be deliberately acting out the prophecy in Hebrew scripture about Israel's true king, the anointed one, the Messiah, coming at last to be God's agent to redeem Israel. His arrival in Jerusalem on a donkey was a fulfilment of prophecy but it would not have been enough on its own to get Jesus killed. |::|

“3) Attacking the religious establishment: Jesus went to the Temple and launched not only an attack on the commercial activity of the moneychangers but a symbolic attack on the Temple itself. Jesus was steeped in the religious culture of his time; he knew the potential consequences of his actions. He knew what it meant to proclaim the Temple's destruction and to claim that a new kingdom was forming, the Kingdom of God. |::|

“Jesus knew that it would not be long before the authorities took action against him, and he knew that the sentence was likely to be death. The obvious thing for Jesus to do was to leave Jerusalem and hide, and he had plenty of time to run. But Jesus continued to put himself directly in the path of danger; he stayed in Jerusalem and celebrated the Passover with his disciples. |::|

“During that Last Supper Jesus seemed to be predicting his own death. As he and the disciples sat together, Jesus called the bread they were eating his broken body and referred to the red wine they drank as his spilled blood. Later, Jesus identified Judas Iscariot as his betrayer. In one of the Gospels Jesus says to Judas, "Do what you have to do, but do it quickly." |::|

Jesus Threatened Caiaphas and His Relationship with Rome

Christ beaten and maocked before Caiaphas

According to the BBC: “Caiaphas' power base was the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of Jews which controlled civil and religious law. It had 71 members, mostly chief priests, and Caiaphas presided over its deliberations. It was hard work but it had big rewards - modern archaeologists have discovered that Caiaphas and his associates lived lives of luxury with large and lavishly decorated houses. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

“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. Caiaphas himself was a Roman appointment, so he needed to keep cosy with the governor, Pilate, if he wanted to stay in power and preserve his luxurious way of life. |::|

“So if Jesus was making trouble, he was making trouble for both Caiaphas and Pilate - and trouble for Pilate was still trouble for Caiaphas. Jesus was undoubtedly a threat; the public liked him, indeed they may have been paying more attention to Jesus than to the priests, and the public were listening to his condemnation of what he saw as wrong in the religious establishment. Jesus threatened the Temple's income |::|

“You don't get to stay High Priest without being able to take the tough decisions and follow them through. Caiaphas decided Jesus had to be stopped and he called a meeting of the chief priests. Matthew's Gospel tells us that Caiaphas told them that Jesus had to be killed. The priests weren't at all sure about this. If Jesus was killed, there might be riots. But Caiaphas got his decision and put it into effect at once. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

“The Temple guards arrested Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane that night and he was put on trial before the High Court. We might disapprove of some of the self-interested motives behind Caiaphas' actions: protecting his income and his power-base; but it doesn't amount to a crime of any sort. Jesus was causing trouble in Jerusalem. He was a known rebel and he was endangering public peace at a time when large and volatile crowds were thronging the city. It was entirely reasonable to arrest him. |::|

Jesus Also Threatened the Temple Priests

According to the BBC: “The Temple apparatus brought in huge revenues for simple matters like purification and the forgiveness of sins. Archaeologists have discovered 150 mikvehs around the Temple. Mikvehs are ritual baths which Jews use in order to purify themselves before any act of worship. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

20120507-Judas_Returning_the_Thirty_Silver_Pieces_-_Rembrandt.jpg
Judas Returning the Thirty Silver
Pieces by Rembrandt“Jewish people could only enter the Temple if they were ritually pure and almost everyone arriving in Jerusalem for Passover was deemed ritually unclean. They had to use a mikveh before they could fulfil their religious obligations. The priests controlled the mikvehs and charged people to use them. |::|

“There were so many regulations requiring ritual purification that control of the mikvehs was a way of making money. Jesus thought the whole thing was rubbish. He taught that the elaborate purity rituals were unnecessary - the Kingdom of God was available to everyone and they didn't have to go through these rituals or pay the money in order to get there. Bad news for the Temple apparatchiks. A quick way to raise a revolt was to tell people that they were being ripped off. This could cause a riot in the Temple if it got out of hand. |::|

“But there was worse. Jesus stormed into the Temple and accused the moneychangers and sacrificial dove sellers of extortion and of turning the Temple into a den of thieves. The ultimate challenge to any religious leaders: What you are doing is against God and God will destroy you and cleanse the whole religious apparatus. And God, as every Jew knew, had the power to do it - he'd demonstrated that many times before. Jesus was doing this in the Temple, in front of the crowds and without any fear or respect for Caiaphas and his staff. Caiaphas had to do something to show that he was still boss, and he had to do it quickly; Jesus was on a roll, and who knew what he was going to do next. |::|

Rigged Trial Against Jesus

According to the BBC: “At this point Caiaphas crossed to the wrong side of the law. He rigged the trial. Caiaphas took on the usually incompatible roles of chief judge and prosecuting lawyer. Scholars know the rules that applied to Jewish trials at that period and the trial of Jesus broke many of those rules: 1) It was at night - Jewish trials had to take place during the day; 2) It took place on a feast day - this was not allowed; 3) It took place in Caiaphas's house - it should have been conducted in the council chamber. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

“The trial went wrong for Caiaphas. He needed to prove that Jesus had threatened to destroy the Temple, which would have been both treason and an offence against God. But the witnesses couldn't agree on what Jesus had said. So that charge failed. Caiaphas decided to see if he could induce Jesus to utter blasphemy. He asked Jesus, point blank, "Are you the Son of God, the Son of the Blessed? Are you The Messiah?" The Gospels vary a little, and only in Mark's account does Jesus answer that he is. |::|

“It's enough. Caiaphas announces that Jesus has spoken blasphemy. The rest of the Court agree. Jesus deserves the death sentence. Just one problem; the court didn't have the power to execute people. And that's where the Romans come into the story. Actually, there are two problems: blasphemy against the God of Jews was not a crime under Roman Law, and unless Caiaphas could think of something better, it might not be enough to persuade the Romans to execute Jesus. |::|

“Caiaphas's fate; He was removed from office soon after the death of Jesus and lived quietly on his farm near Galilee. |::|

Second Trial of Christ

Jesus brought before Pilate

The second trial was before a Roman secular court presided over by a minor prosecutor named Pontius Pilate, who asked Jesus a few cursory questions and ordered his crucifixion. After the sentencing Pilate famously washed his hands to show the fate of Jesus was no longer a matter of which he had any control over. Jesus was then mocked, spat upon and slapped around. He was taken away by Roman guards who harassed and tortured him the night before his execution.

Pilate was the only one with the authority to order a crucifixion. He originally did not see any reason why Jesus should be executed — his crime was never clarified and Pilate said "I find no crime in him” — but he was persuaded to give Jesus a death sentence due to pressure from Jewish authorities, who considered his refusal to submit to the High Priest of the Temple as a an offense punishable by death. Jesus accepted his death and did not deny the charges, despite being tempted to. All that he said was “he known and made known by God.”

The Romans found Jesus guilty of sedition not blasphemy — a civil crime not a religious one. The men that were crucified with him were identified in some translations as “thieves.” The word can also mean “insurgents.” Jesus' condemnation by Pontius Pilate is described Matthew 27:11-24; Mark 15:1-15; Luke 23:1-25; and John 18:28-19:16.

Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great. He is mentioned often in the New Testament. Pilate sent Jesus to him for questioning. Herod Antipas ‘set Him at nought, and mocked Him and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him, again to Pilate.” Herod was also a central figure in the story of John the Baptist.

Pontius Pilate

Pilate was a cruel former-military leader who served as the Roman prefect for Judea for 10 years. Little is known about his life other than that he was born south of Rome, had difficulty dealing the Jewish priestly class and Jewish sects and had a reputation for cruelty. [Book: Pontius Pilate by Ann Wroe (Random House)]

Historians and scholars have generally much less kind to Pilate than the Gospels. According to Philo of Alexandria he was a man of “inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition” and is on record for killing suspects without trial. He ordered his troops to carry imperial images of Caesa in The Temple and appropriated sacred Temple funds to build an aqueduct. He once surrounded a mob of several thousand people in a stadium and threatened to chop of their heads. On another occasion, he ordered his men to infiltrate a demonstration and beat up everyone they could their hands on. His career ended when he was recalled to Rome, presumably for excessive cruelty, after her ordered his cavalry to break up a gathering around a prophet in Samaria.

Pilate's interogation of Jesus

According to the BBC: “Pilate was the Governor of Judea, a province of the Roman Empire. He had 6,000 crack troops with him and 30,000 more on call in nearby Syria. Pilate was effectively a dictator; so long as he kept Rome happy, he had absolute power, including power of life and death. The case against Pilate is that he found Jesus not guilty, but had him executed in order to keep the peace. [Source: BBC, September 18, 2009 |::|]

“We don't know what Pilate was like. The Bible story paints him as a weak but innocent man who didn't want to execute a man he believed innocent, but who gave in to political pressure. Some historians disagree. Philo, writing at the time, said that Pilate was calculating, cruel and brutal. He probably had a typical Roman's disdain for any other culture, thinking the Jews not nearly as civilised as the Romans. Pilate was well known for having executed prisoners even without trial, so it would not be out of character for him to be responsible for killing Jesus.” |::|

David L. Silverman of Reed College wrote: Quite apart from Pontius Pilate's complicity in the crucifixion of Jesus, there is ample evidence to show that he took a high-handed line to the government of his province. Christian writers noted that he had suppressed a riot by massacring a group of Galileans, and accused him of worse (Luke 13:1 "At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices"). For the Jews Pilate's worst offense was belittling the taboo against graven images by introducing military standards into the city, and depositing golden shields inscribed with the name of Tiberius, imperial cult objects in other words, in the palace of Herod. As Philo tells it, Pilate worried about the Jewish protest over the shields, because he feared that if they actually sent an embassy they would expose the rest of his conduct as governor by stating in full the briberies, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries, the executions without a trial constantly repeated, the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty (Philo Emb. 302). Indeed, an embassy to Tiberius eventually succeeded in procuring the ouster of Pilate, which shows continuing concern on the part of the imperial administration for keeping the Jews happy. [Source: David L. Silverman, 1996, Internet Archive, Reed College /+/]

Who was Responsible for Jesus’s Death, the Jews?

Jesus in the House of Anas

The issue of who was responsible for Jesus’s death is a topic of dispute and controversy which has shaped the relationship between Christians and Jews: was it Pontius Pilate and the Romans or Jewish leaders or both? Jesus was viewed as a threat to both the Romans and the Jewish aristocracy. He criticized Jewish priests and prophesied the Jewish Temple would be destroyed. His following was small but committed. It was gaining new converts all the time and was beginning to be perceived as a threat to the status quo. Scholars say it is not surprising that the Romans and the Jewish aristocracy both condemned Jesus and tried to eliminate the threat he presented.

In poll in 2013 conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) , 26 percent of Americans said they believed the Jews killed Jesus. Although the number had dropped from 31 percent in 2011, the ADL described it as “surprisingly large.” Many people were not surprised though as that picture painted in the New Testament. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: In many ways it is strange that anyone continues to think this. In the wake of World War II a number of Christian leaders and organizations issued formal statements on this topic. The Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church categorically stated that the Jews as a whole could not be blamed for the death of Jesus.” But “In all four of the canonical gospels a (presumably) Jewish crowd calls for the death of Jesus, and Jewish authorities spearhead efforts to arrest and convict him. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, November 5, 2013]

Traditionalist Christians have traditionally put most of the blame on Sanhedrin, which they say had selfish reasons to order Jesus’s death and pressured the Romans to hand out a death sentence. It has been argued that the Jewish high priests pushed for Jesus death to nip the upstart sect at the bud or use it as a scapegoat to take the heat off the entire Jewish community. In Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion” , Caiaphas and other high Jewish priests are made out to be conniving, ill-willed, petty despots.

Ordinary mobs rose up against Jesus. According to Matthew a Jewish mob demanded that Jesus be put to death, crying out, “His blood be on us and on our children.” When Pilate asked the mob what should be done with Jesus and “what evil hath he done?” The mob shouted, “Let him be crucified.” This episode of the Jesus story has been used back up the accusation that Jews were Christ killers and has been used to justify persecutions, pogroms and mass murder of Jews.

When analyzing these events it is important to take into consideration the time and place and the agenda of the Gospel writers, The Gospels were written a century to two centuries after the death of Jesus at a time when Christianity competed with Judaism for followers and the writers of the Gospel had reasons to portray Jews in the worst possible light.

Who was Responsible for Jesus’s Death, the Romans?

Other put the blame on the Romans because the Sanhedrin (Jewish authorities) acted under Roman authority. Pilate was the only one with the authority to order a crucifixion, a public event designed to be a warning to rebels. The Romans were also the ones who tortured Jesus before his death.

Caravaggio's FlagellationThe depiction of the Romans is less hostile than it could of been perhaps because the Gospels describing the events were written when Christians were under the Roman rule and they didn’t want to antagonized Roman authorities.

Some have suggested that Jesus’s refusal to defend himself in the trial gave authorities no choice but to crucify him. As time went on, the Romans were absolved of any guilt involving Jesus's death and the blame was placed on the Jews who handed him over to the Romans. Catholics say that everyone is responsible.

Asked why was Jesus killed, Professor Allen D. Callahan told PBS: “The Roman answer is good enough for me. He was causing trouble. He constituted a security risk and he was dealt with the way the Romans always deal with security risks in the provinces. This was a matter of not even so much politics, as policy. This is how the Romans handled trouble-makers, even if they didn't intend to make trouble. One of the questions that runs like a leitmotif in modern New Testament studies is whether Jesus was fomenting revolution, ... [whether] Jesus' self-concept had to do with being a revolutionary or being someone who was overturning the Roman establishment. For the moment anyway, I'm probably willing to leave that question unanswered. I think the Roman answer is the one that's important, and that is, whatever he was doing, it was considered dangerous enough that he'd be crucified for it. And, that's exactly what they did. [Source: Allen D. Callahan: Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]

Was Jesus Killed Over Taxes

In “Killing Jesus: A History”, Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News fame, seems to argue that Jesus was killed over his disgust with taxes. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: The basic argument of the book is that Jesus died because he interfered with the taxation-heavy Roman revenue stream. The reason the Jews eagerly anticipated the Messiah, writes O’Reilly, is, “When that moment arrives, Rome will be defeated and their lives will be free of taxation and want.” It’s true that the people did long for the Messiah, that the majority of them were poor and oppressed, and that very few benefited from Roman occupation. But even if the Romans had been overthrown the people would have still been paying tithes to Jewish authorities to sustain the Temple, as Biblical and Jewish laws demand. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, September 27, 2013]

O’Reilly argues that Temple taxes and profits from the moneychangers were back-channeled to Rome. Thus when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers he “interrupted the flow of funds from the Temple to Rome.” He’s right: the Temple incident led to Jesus’s arrest and execution and the Romans were responsible for killing Jesus. But there is no evidence that the Romans benefited from the financial affairs of the Temple during Jesus’ lifetime. Pilate didn’t get dibs on the lamb shanks some used to pay the priests. Jesus died because he was a rabble-rouser who disturbed the peace and challenged the authorities. Jesus didn’t die for our W2s.

Even if Jesus’s actions had been all about taxes, he died protesting a skeletal taxation system that privileged the rich. Wealthy citizens were exempt from most taxes altogether, non-citizens paid a flat-rate poll tax regardless of income, the property tax was 1 percent, and the money from taxes was used to build roads and fund the military. It's not like the Romans did anything obscene like tend to the poor. As for Jesus himself, O Reilly thinks that one of the main reasons Jesus was appealing and successful was because he was an independent, powerful, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of guy. According to O’Reilly, “[He] had no infrastructure. He had no government behind him. He had no corporation.”

True, but this fact alone doesn’t make Jesus special. None of the charismatic prophets or would-be messiahs had corporate sponsorship. They had patrons: wealthier, more powerful individuals (like Mary Magdalene) who supported them financially. O’Reilly calls this charity, but it wasn’t; it was a network of social debt and responsibility.

Evidence of Jesus’s Trial

Around 60 years after the death of Jesus the Jewish historian Josephus wrote: At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, for he was a doer of astounding deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth gladly. He won a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. When Pilate, because of an accusation made by our leaders, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. Up until this very day the tribe of Christians (named after him) has not died out. [Source: Testimonium Flavium, as edited in R. Joseph Hoffmann, Gerald A. Larue, Jesus in History and Myth, 1986 |::|

“The Roman historian Tacitus wrote in his Annals that: Christus, from whom their name [Christians] is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius... [Source: Tacitus, Annals] |::|

In 2015, archaeologists announced that they had discovered what they believed was the site of Jesus’s trial — the place where he was sentenced to die. Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: While excavating the floors underneath an abandoned building next to the Tower of David museum in Jerusalem, archeologists came across the foundation walls and sewage system that lay beneath Herod the Great’s Jerusalem palace. According to scholars, this is most likely the place that Jesus was sentenced to die. In the Gospels, Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate in a “praetorium,” a Latin term for the general’s tent in a military encampment. Modern historians locate this praetorium in Herod’s Palace and now, for the first time, the palace is accessible to public view. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, January 6, 2015]

In her 2012 book The Archeology of the Holy Land from the Destruction of Solomon’s temple to the Muslim Conquest, Professor Jodi Magness of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, writes, “The praetorium — the palace of the Roman governor in Jerusalem — was Herod's palace, not the Antonia fortress. Therefore, Jesus was sentenced to death and took up the cross not in the area to the north of the Temple Mount, but on the western side of the city. This means that the route walked by Jesus is different from the one walked by modern pilgrims (the Via Dolorosa).” Magness told me that this wasn’t even her original observation and that “there is nothing new in this story.” Indeed, the remains of Herod’s Palace beside the Tower of David were first discovered in 2001.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, Schnorr von Carolsfeld Bible in Bildern, 1860, IMDB

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Christian Origins sourcebooks.fordham.edu “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); King James Version of the Bible, gutenberg.org; New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org , Frontline, PBS, “Encyclopedia of the World Cultures” edited by David Levinson (G.K. Hall & Company, 1994); Wikipedia, BBC, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Live Science, Encyclopedia.com, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, Business Insider, AFP, Library of Congress, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024