The four gospels are said to be the word of God by the Church. These Gospels lie that Jesus was crucified by Pilate who was forced to do this by the Jewish people. Some gospels say that Pilate gave Jesus to the Jews to be crucified.
JEWS COULD HAVE EXECUTED JESUS THEMSELVES
The Talmud says that Jesus was sentenced to death and the Jewish people were given
forty days to change the mind of the leaders and spare him and this didn’t happen
so he was executed by the leaders.
In some cities, it is certain
that the people could execute without expressly appealing to the Roman
authorities. Christians state that the
permission was limited to these and was not extended to
The ancient book, The Golden
Ass, says that
Pilate would not have told the
Jews to put Jesus to death themselves unless they could. He could not have been joking or sarcastic
when the Jews answered him as if he wasn’t being. And no hint of sarcasm exists. What he said could have been used against him
if he didn’t mean it if it were against Roman policy to let a person be
executed without permission. Also, he
was empowering them to execute Jesus themselves. So why didn’t they? The scandal of Jews being granted the power to
stone Jesus to death or execute him and insisting the hated Romans should do it
would have generated the greatest Jewish scandal of all time had it
happened. There was no explosion of
uproar recorded in the world at the time over it so it didn’t happen.
WAS PILATE FORCED?
The gospel story that the Jews forced Pilate to kill Jesus by crucifixion
is incredible. It cannot be true. Even if Pilate wanted to he could not have
avoided sentencing Christ to death.
When Pilate told the Jews to
judge Jesus by their own law and put him to death (John
Pilate knew they wanted Jesus
dead when they accused him of capital crimes.
His telling them to judge him by their own law received the reply that
they couldn’t execute reveals that the Jews knew he was saying they could kill
him. They had Pilate’s permission to
kill and
In John 19, Pilate tells the
Jews to take Jesus and crucify him themselves.
They answer back that their Law needs him dead meaning that they want
Pilate to kill him though they can do it themselves. We are told both that this answer scared
Pilate who was afraid of violence in the crowd and that he killed Jesus against
his will. This is absurd. The Jews would not have rioted when they
could kill Jesus themselves by stoning and string him up nor would Pilate have
expected them to. The gospeller is
lying.
Jesus was claimed to have had
been carrying royal blood and to have been King David’s real heir to the
throne. Had Pilate been keen to save
Jesus he would not have said so in public despite the gospel report that he
did. He would not have told the world
that King Jesus was innocent when royal blood and Messiahs were just not
tolerated in the Roman regime. Pilate
would have known that arguing with the Jews was nonsense so there was no point
in him standing up for a Messiah. Caesar
would have been furious and would have fired him for a man who approves one
Messiah is giving the wrong message to other would-be Christs
who could hide their political aspirations behind a spiritual façade.
THE JEWS DID NOT KILL JESUS
The New Testament blames the Jews and not the Romans for Jesus’ horrific
death by crucifixion. It says the Jewish
leadership got the people on their side and together they made sure Pilate, the
Roman governor, would kill Jesus by crucifixion. All the gospels say that Pilate was keen to
save Jesus and only crucified him because he was bullied into it. Pilate even proposed that Barabbas
or Jesus could be released even though Barabbas was
an insurrectionist in the hope that the people would pick Jesus. The plan was to put the blame on the Jews so
that the Roman audiences would be more susceptible to Christian charms and accept
the “gospel”.
Because Jewish tradition stated
that a Messiah would die in a brutal way the Jews would have arranged a
discreet assassination or execution for Jesus if they preferred not to exile
him. And even more so if Jesus had
miracle powers. They understood that
Jesus would use a public death to advertise his gospel by dying like a
martyr.
It is supposed that the Jews
abominated crucifixion for the Law said that the hanged person defiles the land
(Deuteronomy
The Law said that a hanged man
was cursed by God. Did the Jews surmise
that if Jesus was hanged on the cross it would prove he was not God’s Son for
God could not curse him if he was? But
the curse was promised for men who were not the immaculate Son of God but who
were sinners. God could not curse his
Son. He would have been an exception so
the curse proved nothing. If only the
deserving could be cursed then the curse could not curb Jesus’ good standing
with God or with the people for there was no curse. And if God curses only for a good reason
perhaps he could curse his Son. The text
seems to mean that God curses the dead body which is not the same as cursing
the person. Dead bodies are not nice so
they are cursed in that sense and in the sense that they are doomed to
destruction. However, the vast majority
of Jews did not see things this way and neither did their leaders. They did believe that crucifixion was a
desecration of the land and an insult to Jews and their faith and their
country. That being the case they would
not have handed Jesus over to Pilate unless Pilate forced them. They would not have wanted to risk Jesus
being crucified.
It is doubtful that the Jews
would have schemed to get Jesus crucified.
They detested the Romans and would not have collaborated with them.
The Jews believed in vicarious
suffering so they knew that there was a chance that the followers of Christ
could turn his death to their advantage by making out it was for sinners (page
23, The Metaphor of God Incarnate). To
make a martyr of Jesus was to give him greater esteem for Judaism did approve
of martyrdom (page 26, ibid).
The Jews only made themselves
unclean for the Passover if they schemed to get Jesus crucified and we read
that they would not even enter Pilate’s house to keep themselves clean. Inconsistent.
Yet we are told they took people away from their spiritual preparation
for the feast just to destroy Jesus and mix with unclean Gentiles and to stand
around an unclean area of death all of which made them unclean. They made themselves morally unclean as
well. They knew that Jesus should have
been allowed to live past the Passover and the Sabbath to give him time to
repent. They would only have dirtied
themselves all these ways in fiction and not in fact.
The idea of Jewish leaders
being desperate to have Jesus crucified when he could not be left on the cross
long enough because of a sacred Sabbath which had to be respected by getting
him killed and taken down before it started is mad. Death by crucifixion could take days. The Romans did not care about Jewish feasts
and the Jews could not risk forcing a Jew to work on the cross to fight for his
life on the Sabbath which was a day of strict rest.
The suggestion of conservative
Christians that since the Jews could not execute themselves they had to do all
they could to keep their law that apostates like Jesus should be killed and
then strung up as a warning to others is abominable and a mark of desperation. These people are saying that the nearest the
Jews could get to keeping the law was to have Jesus crucified by the Romans and
hung up for display on the cross. They
could have had Jesus taken out of the country and executed elsewhere. They could have persuaded Pilate to let them
execute Jesus themselves which would be a lot better than forcing him to kill
Jesus which the gospels say they did.
The Jewish law prescribed a cruel
punishment for false Messiahs as a deterrent.
And Jesus dying on the cross would remove the deterrent part of the law
which was what the savagery of the law was all about because Rome was not
killing Jesus because he was a false Messiah but or for religious grounds. They killed him for other reasons. Also deterrence had nothing to do with it for
the apostate disciples of Jesus were not crucified. Deterrence then was not the Jewish
motive. So we have no reason to believe
the Jews wanted Jesus to die that way for deterrence.
The Jews could not expect to be able to force Pilate to kill again when
they had done it the once. Jesus was an
unusual case and why would the Jews want to make an example of apostates of him
for the Romans were not interested in deterring apostates for they wanted the
Jewish religion to die out?
That is the worst thing about Christianity is the silly lies that look
believable until you take a moment to think that are continually being issued
especially from Christian quarters that want to keep the world in the dark
ages.
JEWS ACCUSED OF NAILING JESUS
Luke says that Pilate reluctantly surrendered Jesus to the will of the
Jews (Luke 23:25). Luke
24:20 states that the Jews handed Jesus over for sentencing and then they
crucified him. John 19:16 does
the same thing as Luke. It says Pilate
handed Jesus over to be crucified. And
when we ask to whom we have to go to the previous verse which mentions only the
Jews. This evidently accuses the Jews of
crucifying Jesus. This is a very serious
slander.
Luke and John must have been written very late
when it was able to make statements like that.
The Jews were not to blame for Jesus’ death. The gospel evidence that they were is
dubious.
The New American Bible, Living Word Edition, note for John 19:16
confesses that out of the desire to blacken the Jews John like Luke was
deliberately ambiguous to give the impression that the Jews were the killers of
Christ and that he was handed over to the Jews for crucifixion.
JEWS WERE SLANDERED AS CHRIST-KILLERS BY BIBLE
Acts 5 gives clear evidence that the Jewish leaders were innocent but
slandered by the apostles as the killers of Christ. Though the authority of the Jews forbade it,
the apostles preached the gospel of Jesus in
It is impossible to believe that
the apostles really had the freedom to preach their Jesus message. When Rome killed Jesus for claiming to have
royal blood and threatening their totalitarian set-up, there was no way they
would have wanted people going about saying that Rome’s treatment of Jesus was
against the will of God who can destroy Rome in the twinkling of an eye.
It is a lie that the apostles were allowed into the Jewish Temple. They could not have been when the Jews did
not approve of Jesus any more and considered him a fake Messiah. The apostles were heretics and heretics were
not welcome in the
The Sanhedrin and the High Priest who had
supposedly engineered the execution of Jesus, had the apostles brought before
them. They chastised them for preaching
about Jesus though they had told them before not to. But when they had had the apostles before
them previously and forbade them to mention Jesus the apostles must have
promised to do what they asked when they were granted their freedom. Otherwise, they would have been jailed or
exiled.
The High Priest and Sanhedrin
also chastised the apostles for saying they were to blame for the death of
Jesus. Now if this was common knowledge
as the gospels claim, it had to have been then, they would not have chastised
the apostles for that. The apostles were
being accused of slander. And obviously
the charge must have been true.
The Sanhedrin member, Gamaliel, is presented as pleading with the Sanhedrin not
to kill the apostles for if the movement they have is not from God it will die
just like the movements led by other false Messiahs which died soon faded away
and that it might be fighting God to fight the apostles. This was a foolish argument and yet we are
told the Sanhedrin bought it. Gamaliel knew that the false gods of
None of this makes any
sense. But the apostles must have lied
to the Sanhedrin that they would not mention Jesus again when they let them
return to the
It is totally certain that it is
most unjust to the Jews to have their ancestors accused of the crime of killing
the Son of God even if the gospels do it.
Accusations like that are very serious and we need proof before we can
make them but we have none. Nobody can
prove who wrote the gospels which are anonymous. And it is not fair to condemn the Jews
without having their side of the story.
Fundamentalist Christians like the pope don’t believe in innocent until
proven guilty when it comes to defending their religion.
The Jews, according to the
gospels, arrested Jesus secretly for they feared the people. Then why didn’t they dispose of him
themselves? If they were so corrupt this
should not have been a problem. The
Romans alone were to blame. The gospels
shifted the blame on to the Jews because they wanted to make the faith they
professed attractive to Romans.
Jesus himself plainly said that
the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath meaning that true
Christianity does not advocate harming others in the name of faith. The gospels are very offensive for implying
that he consciously refused to avoid his own execution thereby putting faith
before himself and his mother and friends.
But regardless, the gospels forbid what they themselves did. They spin-doctored and distorted
and slandered all in the name of promoting Christ.
Something should be done about these gospels which promote anti-Semitism. The Jews are a decent minority in our society and society tends to despise them and anything that encourages that should be opposed.
CONCLUSION
The Jews were
slandered by the gospels and this caused much abuse of the Jewish people by
Christians. Do not honour anti-Semitism
by honouring the gospels.
WORKS CONSULTED
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley,
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh
McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
Handbook of
Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch,
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House,
In Search of Certainty, John Guest Regal Books,
Jesus and Early Christianity in the Gospels, Daniel J Grolin, George Ronald, Oxford, 2002
Jesus and the Four Gospels, John Drane, Lion
Books, Herts, 1984
Jesus Lived in
Jesus the Evidence, Ian Wilson Pan,
The Bible Fact or Fantasy? John Drane, Lion
Books,
The Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan,
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Michael Baigent,
Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi,
The Jesus Conspiracy, Holger Kersten and Elmar R Gruber,
Element,
The Messianic Legacy, Michael Baigent, Richard
Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi,
The Metaphor of God Incarnate, John Hick, SCM
Press Ltd,
The Passover Plot, Hugh Schonfield, Element
Books,
The Resurrection Factor, Josh McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation,
Bucks, 1993
The Resurrection of Jesus, Pinchas Lapide, SPCK,
The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton
& Co Ltd,
The
The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
The
The Virginal
Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Raymond E Brown Paulist
Press,
The Womb and the Tomb, Hugh Montefiore, Fount –
HarperCollins,
Verdict on the Empty Tomb, Val Grieve, Falcon,
Who Moved the Stone? Frank Morison,
Why People believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer,
BIBLE VERSION USED
The Amplified Bible