Shalom everyone,
I was recently asked to explain why I disagreed with Bart Ehrman’s opinion that, since the Romans executed Jesus as a messiah, that he must therefore have been executed for political reasons. Ehrman believes that the Romans executed Yeshua because they perceived him as politically dangerous. So I thought I would share my answer with you.
Throughout this article, I use the word ‘Zealot’ as an expedient shorthand for ‘pre-Zealot, anti-Roman Jewish seditionst’. I fully accept that the party of the Zealots did not yet exist in Yeshua’s time. I am using the word ‘Zealots’ purely for the sake of convenience. If anyone wishes to be pedantic and swap out ‘Zealots’ for ‘pre-Zealot, anti-Roman Jewish seditionsts’, you are free to do so.
Roman Injustice:
Many secular, non-Christian scholars tend to automatically assume that the Romans executed Yeshua with just cause. They assume that the Romans could not possibly have been unjust, and could not possibly have crucified Yeshua on false charges.
This is not supported by a study of Roman legal history. During the time of the Roman Empire, a class of professional informants known as delatores emerged. They supplied information and accusations that could be used against political opponents. Although there is no direct evidence that Judas himself acted directly on behalf of the Romans, nevertheless one might compare his role as an informant to that of an unofficial, ad hoc delator.
In the provinces, Roman governors held the absolute power over life and death. A governor’s primary mandate from the Emperor was not to ensure perfect, objective moral justice; it was to maintain efficient tax collection and continued public order.
Roman literature is filled with accounts of innocent people being systematically wiped out through false charges. For example, the Reign of Terror under Tiberius. Guided by his ruthless prefect Sejanus, the Emperor Tiberius allowed a wave of false treason trials to sweep through Rome, executing dozens of innocent aristocratic families based on manufactured rumours. Then there is the more famous Scapegoating of Christians by Nero.
The Roman legal system was designed to protect the Imperial state and the ruling class, not the individual. While it laid the foundation for modern Western law, in practice, it was frequently a tool of raw political violence, where innocent lives were readily sacrificed for political expediency or financial gain.
I do believe that Yeshua was crucified by the Romans, because they thought he was claiming to be the messiah. However, I beg to differ on exactly who was claiming he was the messiah. The earliest gospel, Mark, has Yeshua try to stop people proclaiming him the messiah (often referred to by scholars as, “the Messianic Secret in Mark’s Gospel”).
My Chain of Logic
There is a summary of this logic-chain at the end of this article. My detailed logic is as follows:
1. Throughout the gospels, the Pharisees are portrayed as plotting to kill Yeshua. This appears somewhat unlikely, since most Pharisaic traditions at the time seem to have favoured a more cautious ‘wait-and-see’ attitude towards messianic claimants.
2. Pertinent to this point, the confrontation about paying taxes to Caesar in Mt 22:15-22, would have been irrelevant to Pharisees, but it would have been highly significant for anti-Roman seditionists; I suspect that this episode was about the Zealots (or at least, their early predecessors), and not the Pharisees, as the gospels claim.
3. One notable under-representation in the gospels are the Zealots. Revolutionary anti-Roman movements seem less prominent in the Gospels than one might expect from Josephus’s description of first-century Judea. The pro-Roman sensitivities of the gospel-writers may have persuaded them not to mention any Jewish revolutionaries against Rome. Although ‘the Zealots’ were not a formalised party at that time, there were still multiple groups of anti-Roman seditionists (stasiastai) who opposed the Romans at the time of Yeshua.
4. Yeshua thought of himself as a prophet (Mt 10:41, 13:57), and the ordinary people also considered him to be a prophet (Mk 6:15, Mt 14:5, 21:11, 21:46).
5. It was well-known throughout the Roman Empire that if a province rebelled violently, that province would be violently put down, and its people wiped out or expelled (eg Sarmizegethusa in Dacia, the Batavian rebellion in Belgica, the Viriathic rebellion in Hispania, the Boudiccan revolt in Britannia etc). A prophet would have known the terrible consequences of violent rebellion against Rome, even if only through reputation. I do not therefore believe that Yeshua would have ever advocated violent rebellion. Just like the advice of Jeremiah (Jer 27:12) not to oppose the Babylonians because of the terrible consequences otherwise, I believe that Yeshua too would not have supported violent opposition to the Romans, purely because of the known, terrible and predictable consequences.
6. There is a high probability that he would therefore have been against groups that did advocate violent rebellion, such as the proto-Zealots of his time. His nickname for them may have been ‘the Dead’ (Mt 8:22 – see my commentary on the website for my reasoning behind this). I strongly suspect that part of his mission in the Galilee may have been to turn supporters of the Zealots, as men of violence, to the Way of Life (as per Dt 30:15-20), and away from ‘the Way of Death’.
7. For all these reasons, I consider anti-Roman revolutionaries to be a plausible alternative candidate for some of the hostility directed toward Yeshua in the gospels, rather than the Pharisees.
8. However, the Zealots could not murder him themselves (cf Mk 12:12, Lk 20:19), because the people believed he was a prophet (Mk 6:15, Mt 14:5, 21:11, 21:46), and murdering him themselves would have ended up turning the ordinary people against the Zealots (as I explained earlier, I believe that the plots to kill Yeshua were not orchestrated by the Pharisees, but rather by the forerunners of the Zealots).
9. These proto-Zealots had to find another way to have Yeshua put to death. It was well known that the Romans would normally arrest and execute any disruptive prophetic leaders, and anyone who claimed to be a messiah (this is explained in the writings of Josephus, eg The Jewish War, Book 2, Chapter 4, 2.57–65 and other places). So they had to somehow convince the Romans, but covertly, that Yeshua was widely viewed as a messiah. This way, the Zealots might have hoped that if the Romans killed Yeshua, the ordinary people would subsequently hate the Romans, not the Zealots, for putting him to death.
10. My hypothesis is therefore that it was the Zealots who went around the Galilee and Judea, spreading the false rumour that Yeshua was claiming to be the messiah. I believe that it was primarily his enemies, not his followers, who originally publicised claims that he was the messiah, in order to get the Romans to execute him for sedition (remember, Mark’s gospel has Yeshua regularly dissuading his followers from spreading such claims).
11. The charge above Yeshua’s cross read, “Yeshua the Nazorayyan, King of the Jews” (iesous ho nazoraios, ho basileus ton ioudaion, Jn 19:19). The identifier ‘Nazorayyan’, being a sectarian appellation, would not have been on his cross, unless it was somehow seen as a crime (if a personal identifier was all that was required, then ho nazarenos, ‘the Nazarene’, that is, the man from Nazareth, would have been all that was needed).
12. According to the ancient writings of the Mandean sect in Iraq, who are the descendants of the followers of John the Baptist, the original name of John’s followers was ‘Nazorayyan’ / Nasorean. This connection is made by Matthew Black in his book, ‘An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts’. The Greek ‘Nazorean’ may be a melding of the Hebrew notzrim and Aramaic natora – John’s followers might have originally called themselves, natorayya in Aramaic, and this became nazoraios in Greek.
13. Yeshua had originally been a follower of John the Baptist (suggested by Mk 1:9, and by passages that show he had a high regard for him, eg Mt 21:32 – he believed him to have been a prophet, Mk 9:11-13, 11:29-32, and preached the exact same message as John – Mt 3:1-2 / Mt 4:17).
14. There were many different and opposing groups among the Zealots (The Jewish War, Book 5, Chapter 1, Sections 2–3 / 5.5–10). If the Romans considered that being a Nazorayyan was a crime, then in response to John’s unjust and violent death, some of John’s followers might possibly have become a type of early Zealots, in order to promote sedition against the Herodians and their masters, the Romans.
15. I hypothesise that the main promoters of Yeshua as messiah might have been these Nazorayyan Zealots. Yeshua would not have been able to refute having previously been a Nazorayyan.
16. The Romans executed Yeshua as a messiah and as a Nazorayyan seditionist, which may have had the effect desired by his revolutionary messianic opponents. I strongly suspect that the two ‘lestai’ (brigands) crucified with him were likely Nazorayyan seditionists, as individuals involved in an uprising (Mk 15:7).
So the bottom line is that, yes, the Romans crucified Yeshua as the messiah, but not because his followers proclaimed him messiah, but rather because the Zealots amplified and weaponised the claim, by broadcasting the false rumours that he was the messiah, so that the Romans would execute him. He was an ideological enemy of the proto-Zealots of that time, and I strongly suspect they would have wanted to be rid of him.
Summary:
My core hypothesis is that anti-Roman revolutionaries could have exploited existing messianic expectations, in order to deliver Yeshua into the hands of the Romans, thus getting them to do what they themselves could not do because of public opinion. It may explain how Judas’s betrayal was instrumental in delivering Yeshua over to the Romans – after all, Judas led the Romans to where Yeshua was praying, so that they could arrest him. ‘Iscariot’ may have come from ‘Sicarius’, which were the daggers used by anti-Roman revolutionary assassins.
a. Yeshua was primarily understood as a prophet.
b. His teachings on peace appear to have opposed violent revolt (and so bring the claim that he was a messianic revolutionary into serious question).
c. Revolutionary anti-Roman movements were a major force in first-century Judea, which eventually evolved into the Zealot movement.
d. Such movements are much less visible in the Gospels than one might naturally expect.
e. Some revolutionaries may therefore have regarded Yeshua as an ideological opponent.
f. Deliberately spreading Messianic rumours about Yeshua could have increased Roman suspicion.
g. It is possible that some hostile groups helped spread or weaponise those rumours.
h. The Romans ultimately executed Yeshua under a political charge connected with kingship (“Yeshua the Nazorayyan, King of the Jews”).
i. It doesn’t logically follow that, just because that’s the charge Yeshua was executed under, that that must therefore be a truthful charge.
j. My hypothesis is that he was framed by his enemies, in order to get him killed.
Taking all this into account, I believe it is reasonable to ask whether the charge against Yeshua accurately reflected his own intentions, or whether it actually reflected how others portrayed him to the authorities; it is significant that John’s gospel has Yeshua say in response to Pilate’s accusation of kingship: “Do you ask this on your own, or have others said this to you about me?”