No king but Christ: Why Caesar killed Jesus

The four Gospels take pains to blame Jewish priests and Jewish crowds for the crucifixion of Christ. It was these who ultimately condemned Jesus to his fate; their justice, not Rome’s, put the Messiah to death. Pilate had tried to release him.

Yet historical data from these same Gospels, παραλειπόμενα rarely acknowledged or pieced together, heighten Roman responsibility and expose Roman malice. Such relics remain in the Gospels despite the countervailing ideological thrust of both the Evangelists themselves and of the Roman imperial Church that canonized their writings. Details from the Gospel of John—usually considered to be the most anti-Jewish Gospel, as well as the least historically valuable—are, ironically, indispensable for this reconstruction. When placed within the world of 1st century Judean politics, this forgotten material grounds a compelling counter-narrative of the last days of Jesus, one in which the Jews play an auxiliary role rather than a leading one.

In order to develop that counter-narrative, let’s begin by telling the story of Jesus from the perspective of the Romans who administered Jerusalem. How did they assess Jesus?

Jesus of Nazareth, enemy of Caesar

To the Romans, Jesus was a charismatic leader of the Jews. He might have been dismissed as a magician or a sage but Jewish crowds insisted that the God of Israel, a lesser deity of the Near East, was working through him to perform miracles in anticipation of a coming kingdom. The threat posed by such a kingdom—clearly an alternative to the Roman imperium—always proved illusory. Teachers with these kinds of romantic visions were not unusual for the province; they came and went, typically without incident.

More troubling though, messianic pretensions stalked this Jesus of Nazareth. People believed him to be a prophet of some sort, chosen by heaven to rescue Israel from their troubles and usher in the Jewish God’s βασιλεία (“kingdom” or “dominion”) over the world. Down in the Galilee, the Idumean tetrarch Herod Antipas, a client ruler for Rome, was already well aware of his activity and had dispatched his predecessor, John the Baptist, due to fears of a popular revolt in John’s name. Now that Jesus seemed to be John redivivus (Mark 6:16), Herod was eager to put him away again (Luke 13:31).

Since Herod Antipas and the Italian governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, were entrusted with the same task—the preservation of Roman dominance in the region—the two bonded over their joint prosecution of so-called prophets, pretenders to the Herodian throne, among whom Jesus was included (Luke 23:6-12). Neither man tolerated murmurings of rebellion (Luke 13:1-5), and in the endless game of cat and mouse between the Roman cavalry and the cunning spokesmen of Israel’s God, the Romans were undefeated (e.g. Theudas & The Egyptian, the Samaritan prophet).

Well-adapted to this environment, the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem understood the sensitive theo-political triggers that might hurl Roman Judea into chaos if transgressed—tens of thousands of Jews dead, enslaved, or displaced as a result. The Gospel of John offers a strangely sympathetic, not to mention realistic, portrait of their predicament.

What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation… it is [therefore] better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.

John 11:47-50

The most dangerous title a man could receive under such conditions, βασιλεύς, had already been publicly awarded to Jesus when he arrived in Jerusalem for his final Passover (John 1:49, 6:15, cf. Mark 6:34). But once again, Jesus was greeted with regal acclaim: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the king of Israel” (John 12:13, cf. Luke 19:38). As if the seditious cries were not enough, Jesus chose to enter the holy city upon a donkey, the steed associated with the triumph of the messianic king in his war against the heathen (Zechariah 9:9-17, cf. 1 Kings 1:28-40). Thus the yearly festival commemorating the violent liberation of Israel from Egypt by the hand of the prophet Moses would once again destabilize Roman control.

King of thieves

If there were any doubts in the mind of the Roman governor, Jesus confirmed his suspicions by proceeding to instigate a disturbance in the Temple. He crafted a scourge of cords, drove the livestock out, turned over the tables of the money-changers, and prevented normal operations with omens of destruction before slipping away (John 2:13-16).¹ Though he was a Galilean craftsman, he behaved as a sovereign, a king, willing and able to override the Pax Romana in Jerusalem, and if allowed, all throughout Judea. Plans to arrest Jesus were thus put into motion.

A few days later, on the night before the Passover, police confronted Jesus in what appeared to be his own “den of thieves,” the Mount of Olives. At least one disciple drew a sword and resisted, and as expected, more swords were discovered (Luke 22:36-37). The Romans had been right, so it seemed, to expend a σπεῖρα (“cohort”) of soldiers on this effort, as if to arrest a λῃστής, that is, a leader of a rebellion (John 18:3, 12).²

Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a rebel?

Mark 14:48

Captured as a λῃστής, Jesus was then tried and executed among λῃσταί (John 18:40, cf. Mark 15:27). One such “robber” was Barabbas, a Jewish nationalist who had killed enemies of Israel in an “uprising” (στάσις), and was now a co-prisoner with Jesus (Mark 15:7).

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish propagandist for Rome, clarifies the place of these “robbers” in 1st century Israel:

For there was then a great number of robbers in Judea, which was the cause of all these disorders, who made the pretense, indeed, of recovering their liberty, but in reality fought against the Romans for gain.

But now the robbers were grown so very numerous, that they no longer contented themselves with the plunder of single houses, but made war upon whole cities; and, being joined by many of the seditious, they overran the country.

There was another sort of robbers in Jerusalem, who were called Sicarii, who would come in crowds at the festivals, with their daggers concealed under their garments, and mingling themselves among the multitude, would assassinate men in broad daylight; and when they fell, the murderers would join in the outcry, and, through the crowd, escape notice, while no one knew who it was that had given the blow.

Antiquities XVII. 10, Jewish War II. 17, Jewish War II.13

Evidently, Jewish λῃσταί killed and plundered with the goal of weakening the pagan grip on Judea and the Galilee. In Josephus’ estimation, therefore, they were responsible for Israel’s disastrous war with Rome some 30 years after the execution of Jesus. These were not mere thieves. They were insurrectionists. Perhaps, so the Romans may have thought, Jesus had earlier intended to pillage the Temple in order to fund the war effort. After all, the Temple was full of Roman collaborators.

Suffered under Caesar Tiberius

The Jewish priests and Jewish crowds present at Jesus’ subsequent gubernatorial interview corroborated the concerns that the Romans already had. According to them, Jesus had political aspirations—styling himself as Israel’s king, as a son of God (υἱὸν θεοῦ) in fact, and thus setting himself up as a divinized competitor with Caesar for rule of the empire (John 19:12, 15). This news “frightened” Pilate for obvious reasons (John 19:7-8); just as the Romans fought and died for their god-king, the Jews might do the same for theirs. That Jesus had also declared imperial taxation illegitimate was perhaps the final straw (Luke 23:2).

So, taking control of the volatile situation, Pilate “grasped” (ἔλαβεν) Jesus and “scourged” (ἐμαστίγωσεν) him (John 19:1).³ Afterwards, Pilate’s soldiers performed the necessary liturgy for this “king of the Jews,” complete with adornment and obeisance, and then crucified him, as if upon a throne (John 19:2-3). Scriptures, both explicit and implicit, foreshadowed their cruelty (John 19:23-25, 34-37, cf. Psalm 22).

That ill-fated moniker, βασιλεύς, appeared one last time, hung above the head of the condemned Galilean λῃστής, written in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin on Pilate’s orders (John 19:19-22)—a parting insult not only to Jesus of Nazareth, a man who claimed to be the king of the Jews, but to all Jews who thought Israel might one day have a king. The emperor’s supremacy in Israel would thus remain unquestioned.

Yet a few days later, this same Jesus came back to his followers in bodily form, the shame of the crucifixion seemingly undone and the government of Tiberius seemingly disregarded. Bewildering Roman confidence yet again, disciples throughout the οἰκουμένη began hailing this Jesus as “my lord and my god,” an enduring challenge to the cult of Caesar Domitian.

With no less arrogance [Domitian] began issuing a circular letter in the name of his procurators, “Our lord and god (dominus et deus noster) bids that this be done.” And so the custom arose of henceforth addressing him in no other way even in writing or in conversation.​

Suetonius, Life of Domitian 13

John and history

In sum, the Gospel of John should be treasured for its unique contributions to our understanding of Jesus’ demise. The historian finds in John a storehouse of goods that subvert the anti-Jewish tendencies of early Christianity, and allow for the composition of a more sociologically sophisticated portrait of the nexus between Roman power and Jewish machinations. The Jesus that emerges from the Gospel of John, moreover, is anything but the politically indifferent spiritual advisor to the Christian Roman emperors—the criterion of embarrassment is surely satisfied. As the enemy of Caesar, the Johannine Jesus elicits royal acclamations, rides into Jerusalem as Israel’s warrior-king, violently upends the Roman-backed economy of the Temple, is arrested and tortured as befitting a rebel by an imperial cohort, and tacitly accepts the charge of opposing Caesar at his trial before Pontius Pilate. He is a political juggernaut.

We can therefore thank the Fourth Evangelist for expressing with sharp clarity the terrible danger that bubbles under the surface of Christ’s passion, threatening to ruin a people eagerly awaiting their liberation from pagan empire: “This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” It was the Romans, and Caesar himself by implication, not the Jews, who, with the help of Herod and the Jerusalem priests, quietly but meticulously endeavored to remove Jesus from the straining res publica as that fateful Passover approached.

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1—The Gospel of John greatly intensifies the violence committed by Jesus at the Temple when compared to the Synoptic accounts.

2—The Evangelists use this word to refer to Roman detachments (cf. Matthew 27:27, Acts 10:1). In John 18:3, the σπεῖρα is differentiated from the police belonging to the priests.

3—Mark 15:15 joins the participle φραγελλώσας (“having flogged [him]”) to Pilate’s “handing over” (παρέδωκεν) of Jesus to the soldiers whereas John 19:1 attributes violence directly to Pilate by using two definite verbs. The governor did not grip the scourge himself but the language is provocative.