The Final Days of Jesus by Mark D. Smith

Author:Mark D. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780718847104
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC

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Quaestio: 1

The High Priests’ Inquest

Traditional interpretation of the ‘trials’ of Jesus suggests that Jewish leadership, vested in the representative council of the Jewish people, the Sanhedrin, arrested Jesus and then subjected him to two trials: a Jewish trial followed by a Roman trial. Jesus was convicted of blasphemy in the Jewish trial, but the Sanhedrin subsequently changed the charge to treason or something of the sort and bound him over to Pilate for the Roman trial. There, a great gathering of Jews demanded the crucifixion of Jesus, even calling down his blood on themselves and their children. Pilate, cowed by the crowd, ultimately gave the order to crucify him while washing his hands of the matter.

There are many problems with this interpretation, not least, that it has fuelled many centuries of Christian anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews. The belief that ‘the Jews’ killed Jesus has helped to justify the Crusades, the Inquisition, and pogroms. Some have even cited such logic, at least indirectly, as one of the roots of the Holocaust. In response, recent years have seen the rise of revisionist interpretations, some of which argue that Gospel accounts of any involvement of any Jews in the ‘trials’ of Jesus must be purely fictional, growing out of the anti-Jewish biases of the authors rather than history.

As with everything in this study, the most probable historical reconstruction is much more complex and nuanced than these interpretations suggest, and the only way we can begin to analyse this puzzle is to pay close attention to the puzzle pieces available to us.

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