The Condemnation of Jesus

This scene of Jesus’ condemnation by the Roman governor of Judea, painted by Antonio Ciseri, is one that millions of Christians contemplate each Easter. In it, Pilate asks his audience whether they want to have Jesus released, and that he had “found no case against him.” In reply, they shouted that they wanted Jesus dead. This scene takes place in the Gospel of John, and desperately needs unpacking, for it has been the cause of generating horrendous anti-Semitism for centuries.

The Gospel of John was written around or shortly after 90 CE, generations after Jesus’ death at a time when the Jesus movement had splintered various groups. Among Jewish people, arguments over the nature of Jesus had caused conflict, and those disputes surfaced in the Gospel with John’s consistently negative use of the phrase “the Jews” (_hoi Ioudaoi_ in the Greek). Repeatedly, “the Jews” in John are the collective group who want to have Jesus killed (as opposed to some of the other Gospel authors, who blame specific groups like the Sanhedrin or priestly council of the day). For instance, in Chapter 19:15 “[Pilate] said to the Jews, ‘Here is your King!’ They cried out, ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!”.

Although many Christian theologians and some other academics argue that the author of John actually was referring to “Jewish authorities” and not all Jewish people in his Gospel, this was not the interpretation that many understood. When the Roman Pontius Pilate — and we must keep in mind that the Romans had crushed the Jewish rebellions brutally in the decades before the Gospel was written — is depicted in a more sympathetic light than “the Jews,” it was all to easy for future generations of readers to subconsciously develop harmful anti-Semitic prejudice.

An awareness of this legacy is important to keep in mind, as is the fact that the Roman government crucified thousands of Jewish rebels in the first century, with Jesus’ death being the only one usually remembered today.