Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

But Pilate followed his own strategies as well. He wanted to avoid pardoning Barabbas at the Passover festival, and Jesus became a means to his end. Pilate was so preoccupied with carrying out his strategy that he did not notice how, in suggesting that Jesus be pardoned in place of Barabbas, he was already declaring him guilty and so losing control of his own judicial powers. Pilate’s political strategy also became deadly to Jesus in the end. But Pilate, despite his much greater power, is the weaker figure in this game of clashing moves. The Sanhedrin—quite unlike Pilate—never lost sight of its goal and pursued it unerringly. That goal was to bring Jesus to the cross.

But we can scarcely understand the unerring purpose of the Jerusalem temple aristocracy in seeking Jesus’ crucifixion without considering the background in Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which is about the burial of those who are executed. It is presupposed that, after their execution, they will be hanged on a pole (as a warning?). The law in Deuteronomy 21:22-23 says that the bodies of those who are hanged in this way may not remain overnight but should be buried on the same day. In this context it is said that “anyone hanging on a tree is under God’s curse.” That sentence from Torah was already applied by pre-Christian Judaism to those who were crucified. As the “Temple Scroll” found at Qumran shows, the statement “anyone hanging on a tree is under God’s curse” was applied to the crucifixion of Jews who betrayed their people to a foreign nation and brought evil upon them.¹⁸ It must therefore have seemed appealing to the Council to have Jesus crucified with the help of the Roman occupying power as someone who was leading the people astray and corrupting them.

From this point of view the Passover festival with its masses of pilgrims represented an uncomfortable obstacle to having Jesus seized by the police, but on the positive side it offered the opportunity to expose Jesus publicly before assembled Israel as someone cursed by God. For once Jesus was hanging on the cross it would be obvious: God could by no means be behind a man like that.

All these strategies show that Jesus had fallen between the millstones of powers much stronger than he who (like Pilate) wanted nothing to do with any question of truth or who (like the Sanhedrin) saw it as their religious duty to expose Jesus and get rid of him. But were they really stronger than he? The Jerusalem temple aristocracy who condemned him have vanished from history. Jesus has not vanished. He started an unimaginable movement. He changed the world and goes on changing it. All those who have tried to get rid of him have been wrecked in the attempt. Their project continually turns into its opposite.

The Question of Guilt

Those who seek to reconstruct what happened on Jesus’ last day cannot avoid the question of guilt. They cannot be content to note, coolly and clinically, what took place in Jerusalem on that day. They must think about the guilt of the Council and that of Pilate but also the guilt of all those who had encountered Jesus, since his appearance in Galilee, with unbelief, skepticism, or indifference. And they must reflect on the guilt of Jesus’ disciples, who left him in the lurch and fled.

It will be clear to those who have read this book to this point that it is not intended to argue an anti-Jewish cause, certainly not to sow hatred against the Jews. Sadly, there has been such hatred in Christianity, a horrifying mass of it, throughout the centuries. But there can be no talk of any kind of collective guilt on the part of Israel, and even if there were such a thing the Christian response would have to have been completely different.

In reflecting on Jesus’ death we must also refuse to simplify things the way the old passion plays did: here the Holy One, there the evil ones! Instead, we must assume that there were many among Jesus’ opponents who desired nothing but to follow their consciences. The depth of the conflict with Jesus is not simply apparent from the fact that the general public here acted against the good—although, of course, one must always take the possibility into account. There is a kind of lust for evil, and it would be nave to suppose that all people desire only the true and the good. At any rate, often they desire neither good nor evil but simply their own convenience. But to get back to the point: the real depth of the conflict emerges only if we see that here people who sought to defend the honor of God or God’s Law set themselves against an individual who, in their opinion, was blaspheming God’s honor and destroying the holy Law.