Your report on how Jesus died is the standard scholarly position, but there are many things wrong with it. I will focus on two.
It is wrong to say that there is a historical context for the priests or any Jewish leaders cooperating with Rome to arrest and prosecute Jewish troublemakers. Josephus gives absolutely no information to support this. The example of Jeshua (or Jesus) son of Ananias is misused. The priests did not give him a trial for Rome and then turn him over to the Romans for punishment. Josephus quite clearly says that they turned him over to Rome for only one purpose: He was uttering something that may have been divinely inspired and the priests thought the Romans should hear it. They were not working with Rome to punish him.
Josephus actually gives at least one example where the priests refuse to cooperate with a Roman governor who wanted them to turn over some men. No scholar ever reports this. Also, Josephus gives other examples where priests got into trouble for not taking action against Jews. The historical context is unequivocal: Priests would never help Rome execute a Jew.
Secondly, Jesus did not get into trouble for attacking the Temple. His attitude towards the Temple is overwhelmingly positive. His action at the Temple is against the vendors and moneychangers only and is in defense of the Temple. There are far more serious criticisms of the priests reported in rabbinic literature and none of these rabbis or Pharisees got into trouble. Jesus’ action actually pales compared to some of the other actions. That is the historical context.
I will not even go into how the Gospels of Luke and John do not describe a Jewish trial against Jesus. The Romans alone killed Jesus. And it is possible to prove that Jewish leaders tried to save his life.
Many people have the impression that the vendors and moneychangers shouldn’t have been there, or that they were violating the law. Were that the case, then the Jewish authorities wouldn’t have minded Jesus stirring them up a bit, or at least they shouldn’t have minded. But that’s not so. Fact of the matter is, the merchants outside of the temple were not only allowed under Jewish law, but required. If you live too far from the Temple for it to be practical to bring livestock for sacrifice, you’re supposed to sell your sacrifice animals locally, and use the money to buy an animal to sacrifice at the Temple. And the coin of the realm, bearing the likeness of a human being (namely Caesar) was illegal under Jewish law, and not allowed in the Temple. So you needed moneychangers, too.
Now, it may well be that the Temple merchants were gouging their customers, and if so, then yes, that’s something to get upset over. But to say that they don’t belong there at all is to go against the very Law.
You are right that the merchants belonged there are at the Temple. I never said that Jesus objected to their presence. More likely, he wanted some proper decorum. Perhaps the merchants did gouge some customers, perhaps they were too noisy, or they were too close to the Temple. Whatever Jesus objected to, it shows he loved the Temple. And his action certainly did not get him into trouble with the authorities. There are far more serious criticisms of certain Temple practices in rabbininc literature. Jesus stands in good Jewish tradition.
Well, but where’s your evidence for that? The story appears in all three synoptics, and John, and in each synoptic, he quotes first Isaiah (. . . a house of prayer), then Jeremiah, (Den of thieves). So it seems like he is objecting to the moneylenders’ presence. Also, in all three of the synoptics, the disturbance in the temple is followed by “And the priests plotted to kill him”.
The quotes from Isaiah and Jeremiah indicate that Jesus revered the Temple and he was objecting to something about the moneylenders. The Gospels do not specify the exact substance of Jesus’ complaint. It is my guess that he felt they were operating too near the Temple. Objecting to their very existence is a big leap that is unwarranted by the historical context. As for the priests plotting, that represents somebody’s conclusion, not evidence. In a court, if someone testified that Frankie and Johnnie plotted to kill someone, the defense would object. The judge would sustain the objection and instruct the witness to testify only to what he saw and heard, not his conclusions. Mark states this conclusion that the priests plotted but he gives no particulars (what did anybody see or hear) to justify it. Even a conservative scholar like John Meier admits this. Actually, there is a lot evidence in the Gospels that the priests never plotted like this. I provide it in detail in my unpublished book “The Ghost in the Gospels”. I will only say here that Luke and John do not describe a trial, Josephus makes it very clear that priests in the 1st century never did this and never cooperated with Romans to prosecute Jews, and even Mark and Matthew give us a lot of evidence that the priests conducted a very informal meeting with Jesus, not a hostile judicial procedure. The evidence (other than the bare statement) that priests plotted to kill Jesus is practically non-existent.
Hmmm. Now this is very interesting. I’ve read Hyam Maccoby’s take on this, which amounts to Jesus being a radical mystic Pharisee eliminated by a collaborationist High Priest.
But what you say about the priests not collaborating, I’ve never heard that. Cite? It makes the later pro-Roman, anti-Jewish cast of Gentile Christianity even more ironic, and further supports the hatred of Paul’s memory by the Ebionites. Was the “Apostle to the Gentiles” seen as creating an anti-Jewish counter-religion?
My reply to foolsguinea: First, Maccoby has always done a good job on Jesus’ Jewishness, but as to the priests, he is way off balance. He constantly calls them quislings, without evidence to back it up. Second, Paul is in no way responsible for blaming priests for Jesus’ death. His letters are remarkably free of such accusations (the lone accusation at 1 Thess 2:15 has long been suspected of being a later addition and my own work helps confirm that).
Now for the main point. I don’t have just a single piece of evidence that the priests never conspired against Jesus and indeed tried to save his life. Instead, I present an overwhelming pattern of evidence in my book: 1) Josephus presents a couple of examples where the priests avoid helping the Romans; they never work with them to prosecute Jews; 2) if you list all the details from the so-called Jewish trial scene in all 4 Gospels, far more support my position than the traditional one; 3) in fact, if you assume the traditional story is true, you run into too many contradictions and difficulties which cannot be explained, but I explain them very easily.
Why does John, the most anti-Jewish Gospel, describe such a mild Jewish questioning of Jesus? Why do all the Gospels use a neutral word, not the word for “betray”, to describe Judas’ action? (See William Klassen’s brilliant book “Judas”.) Why do the priests leave Paul alone for 15 or 20 years after he abandons his mission to persecute Jesus’ followers and joins them instead? I explain all this and more very easily without breaking a sweat. No one else can do this. Help me get my book published and you can read all about it.
My reply to Sir Rhosis: That’s easy to answer. The word is “paradidomi”. It’s a neutral word with no connotation of betrayal. It means something like “convey”, or “transfer”, or “escort”. The Greek word for “betray” is “prodidomi” and it is not used in any of the Gospels except at Luke 6:16. If you click on the www button below, it will take you to my blogspot. My posts for 6/24 and 6/25 give some more detail. Or you can read my most recent post at 7/16. There is also more information on my Web site for which you will find a link at the blogspot.
interestingly, Messianic Rabbi Les Gosling has theorized that the High Priest Caiaphas actually believed Jesus may have been the Messiah & turned him over to the Romans to fulfill “the Suffering Servant” passages of Isaiah. (He however adds that Caiaphas resented Jesus’s being the Anointed One & would only have submitted to Jesus if He had come in His Resurrected body to him. Thus, Caiaphas & the priesthood remained hostile to the Jesus sect.)
I’m not convinced of any of this, but it’s worth pondering.
My reply to FriarTed: I’m glad you’re not convinced of that theory. Speculation is not a bad thing to do as a means of stretching your imagination. But if you are going to do rational, scientific investigation, everything has to be founded on the evidence. There is absolutely no evidence for the theory you mentioned. It is pure, wild speculation.
In fact, there is no good evidence anywhere that the priests would have been lethally hostile towards Jesus. All the evidence from Josephus – and I do mean all of it – tells us that they would never cooperate with the Romans to persecute another Jew. And the evidence from the Gospels, as I explained in some of my above replies and on my blogspot (click www button below), is extremely weak. The Gospels contain more evidence that the priests never persecuted Jesus than they do for any other proposition. That’s the only rational conclusion.