Now, I know that the Romans were hardly blameless for the death of Jesus Christ, but I was always under the impression that it was the (predominately Jewish) crowd who yelled for his death as opposed to Barbaras’s[sic?].
However, I’ve heard it asserted that the Romans were in fact the main force - needless to say, the Sanhedrin would have stoned him, and the Roman punishment was the crucifixion. So… was it the Jewish crowd or the Roman government that bears the most responisibilty?
(Looking this over, I realize it could quickly go GD, so… move it/close it, if you want, mods)
Either way you’re taking the word of a biography written many years after his death (60 to 120 year or so, depending on which book you’re reading). As for the FACTS, the SD Staff did a rather wonderful and unbiased essay on the subject.
As for the whole Roman thing, most of the popular conception that they were the benevolent rulers sprang from the book of Luke, which was written the latest of all the testaments and was quick to place the blame and evil on the Jews. It is no accident that this book took to page during a dysfunctional time when Christianity was angrily splitting from its Judaic roots.
The irony is that the historian says that Jesus was killed, and the Christian says that he died knowingly for our sins, yet we still want to know WHO did it?
[Fixed link. – MEB]
Actually the last written of the Gospels is generally accepted to be John, which is also the considered the most anti-Semitic. (Look at the way in which Luke recounts the story of the driving of the moneychangers out of the Temple in Luke 19:45-48, the passage in Luke 20:1-8 where Jesus’ authority is questioned and Luke 20:27-40 where Jesus discusses marriage and the resurrection in the context of a dispute with the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. In the first two passages, the antagonists of Jesus are identified as “the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people” and “the chief priests and the teachers of the law, together with the elders”; in the last passage, the antagonists are identified as “the Sadducees”. By contrast, in John’s telling of the clearing of the Temple, John 2:12-25, the antagonists are identified only as “the Jews”, not as a particular subset of the Jewish people. References to “Jews” or “the Jews” appear over sixty times in John, often in antagonism to Jesus, but less than a dozen times in Luke, and not as the generalized enemies of Jesus. Quite often, where other gospels might specify “the chief priests” or “the Pharisees” or some other specific subset of the Jewish people, John refers simply to “the Jews” as being Jesus’ antagonists; I don’t believe Luke ever does this.)
Which is sort of ironic. They way I understood this Gospel is that Christ understood and accepted that He had been specifically sent for the purpose of serving as a scapegoat to take the sins of mortals onto himself. That way, humans could be saved from eternal damnation.
If it hadn’t been the Pharisees and Romans it would had to have been someone else. No sacrifice, no Christianity, and no eternal life.