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FICTITIOUS TRIAL BEFORE PILATE
THE SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR LIE
JEWS COULD HAVE EXECUTED JESUS
THEMSELVES
DID THE JEWS WANT CRUCIFIXION?
JEWS WERE SLANDERED AS
CHRIST-KILLERS BY BIBLE
FOREWORD
The passion stories in the four gospels are the stories about Jesus’
sufferings and his death by crucifixion.
These tales are universally assumed to contain the oldest strata of
information about Jesus. But the fact of
the matter is that though they are assumed to be the most trustworthy parts of
the gospels they are in fact full of legend and impossibility.
WHAT THE GOSPELS SAY
According to the gospels, Jesus was betrayed by his disciple Judas Iscariot. He took the Jewish police to a garden where he knew Jesus was with his disciples. There he betrayed Jesus with a kiss and Jesus was arrested and tried before Annas and Caiaphas who were Jewish leaders. False witnesses appeared to try and help the jury find Jesus guilty of blasphemy so that he could be put to death but they made idiots of themselves. He was tried before King Herod and finally Pontius Pilate the Roman Procurator who reluctantly sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion as the Jews clamoured for him to do so. The vast majority of scholars and thinkers and rational people see the story is full of practical and legal contradictions and absurdities. The Historical Evidence for Jesus, G A Wells, Prometheus Books, New York, 1988 page 174 mentions how Rome giving the Church religious freedom in the fifties AD indicates that the gospels are lying that Jesus was crucified due to Roman and or Jewish hostility to him. It is reasonable to assume that because the Romans found no evidence that this Messiah or king was a real man but only a vision that they tolerated the faith. The followers of men who were proclaimed Messiah or lawful king of Israel were not tolerated.
MORISON AND THE TRIAL
The arch-defender of the position that the gospels are plausible is Frank
Morison. Frank Morison
in his famous Who Moved the Stone? wrote that the trial of Jesus was
perfectly plausible but nevertheless made admissions which undermine this.
On page 16, Morison says that
the
Morison said it was illegal to
put anybody on trial for their life at night - only trials relating to money
could happen then. It was illegal for a
person to be cross-examined after the witnesses made a shambles of the
testimony. The witnesses were to be
stoned to death by law if they were proven false. The Torah said that if you tell lies to get
somebody killed you should undergo what you tried to put the other person
through yourself if found out.
All of this makes the gospel
version of events improbable.
Would Jesus have been sent to
Pilate when he could have blabbed about the illegal trial he had just got and
got the Sanhedrin and the witnesses into a lot of trouble and perhaps charged
with perjury?
The gospels say the Sanhedrin got
Jesus to commit the capital crime of blasphemy by claiming to be the Son of God
at his trial. And if all the Sanhedrin
wanted was for Jesus to claim to be God’s Son and Messiah they had no need of
false witnesses for that and would have made the disciples testify. Why weren’t they questioned? Incidentally, if they could not prove it, it
is likely that Jesus never claimed to be these things and that the gospels are
lying in saying that he did.
There was no need to try Jesus
at night and break the law against night trials. The Jews waited long enough before so they
could have waited a bit longer and tried him some day. Morison thinks they justified this breach of
the law by saying it was necessary for political reasons to stop Jesus and to
do it before the feast so that it would be done fast in case there would be
trouble (page 20). Unbiased he
isn’t! It would have been safer to wait
a few days until the feast was over and the crowds had gone home. And if Jesus was so dangerous why did they
think they could dispose of him at that time of all time when most of his
supporters would have been in
If it was illegal to question
the accused after the testimony against him broke down then Jesus was never
questioned at all. The Sanhedrin knew it
would be best to get new witnesses and try again soon and they could not send
Jesus to Pilate if their own trial had been a shambles. It had to have been illegal for it was a
sensible law.
Josh Mc Dowell claims that the
trial of Jesus was every bit as unusual as the critics admit, and was held late
for it was a matter of extreme seriousness, that is, the Jews had come to
believe that Jesus had to be tried and put out of the way as soon as possible
before a national crisis arose (John 11:50).
This man makes me sick with his lies.
If he believes that it was that urgent then why does he believe the
story that thousands clamoured for Jesus’ death the next day? Why did the apostles get away to tell that
Jesus was arrested if it was a national crisis?
WITNESSES WERE NOT LIARS
Morison said that only witnesses could do the accusing and that was the
way the Law said it had to be (page 17).
Would what the gospels call the “false”
witnesses at the trial, have been so stupid and daring
as to go in with an unplanned testimony especially when the penalties for
perjury were so severe? Stupid witnesses
would not have been chosen by the Sanhedrin who supposedly wanted to find Jesus
guilty one way or another according to the gospels. If the trial were a set-up, each witness
would just have had to say what his experience of Jesus was and would not have
been asked too much. There was no need
for them to squabble and argue against each other. That could have been avoided by talking about
individual events that were unrelated to the things the others planned to say
and if the lawyer guided them by asking questions to prevent
contradiction. The witnesses would have
been too terrified of Jesus’ supporters to make mistakes and expose themselves. False witnesses have to endure the penalty
they tried to bring on their victim according to the Law of Moses. If you tell a lie to get somebody stoned to
death you get stoned to death yourself. And
here we are asked by the gospels and Christian nuts like Morison to think that people
would risk their lives to tell obvious lies to have Jesus executed! And Morison would expect us to believe that
these people were bad and not martyrs or would-be martyrs who would do anything
to get rid of a man they knew to be an evil and fake prophet.
The witnesses accused Jesus of
being unable to do miracles for they said he could not demolish the
TRIAL BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN
Jesus was taken before the Sanhedrin who were
bent on finding him guilty of blasphemy to get him put to death.
Some scholars believe that
possessed and sick people were regarded as inferior beings and barred from the
The Gospels say they got their
wish when Jesus admitted to them that he was the Messiah, the Son of God and
God’s right hand man who would come on the clouds of Heaven. The council could not have found this
blasphemous or at least bad enough to merit death. This was one of the points in which Jewish
orthodoxy was flexible. Christians say
that Jesus was referring to Daniel which says that God will come on the clouds
of Heaven so he was claiming to be God.
That is mere speculation and Jesus never mentioned Daniel. God cannot be on the right hand of God even
though Christians say that Jesus though God is on the right hand as man. But Jesus as the man-God can make the
decisions of God so he is not on the right hand but on the throne. Perhaps it was offensive because Jesus was
claiming to be these things while espousing what the Jews abominated as heresy? It would be blasphemy for a heretic to claim
to be the Son of God. But heresy was not
mentioned so that would not be likely.
Mark is plainly blaming the Sanhedrin’s reaction on what Jesus claimed
to be. That is the simplest
understanding so the gospellers incorrectly think the Jews considered it to be
blasphemy for anybody to claim to be the Son of God and God’s next in charge.
It is a mistake to assert that
the word translated blasphemy might just mean insolence and not necessarily
insolence against God (page 290, The Unauthorized Version). But the reaction of the High Priest who
ripped his own robes in anger and the way it fuelled the hatred in the rest
shows blasphemy in the sense of insulting God is the correct understanding.
The meeting of the Sanhedrin to
try Jesus all night is untrue for they were not allowed to (page 102, Jesus: the Evidence, page 291, The
Unauthorized Version). Some say that the
rules about what the Sanhedrin could not do were recorded several decades after
it disbanded show we cannot be sure that it was not allowed (page 60, Jesus and
the Four Gospels). But still it is most
likely that the rules were used. We have
no reason to assume otherwise. Why keep
anybody out of their beds over something that could wait and should wait until
after the feast? And if all they were
looking for ways to make Jesus claim to be God’s Messiah and Son that was easy
to prove and there was no need to be up all night. It was not an emergency. Mistakes through tiredness and impatience to
get home could result from late trials so the law had to be in force for it
makes sense.
The New Testament says that the
Sanhedrin employed and listened to false witnesses who were unable to agree
among themselves. When they went to the
trouble of getting perjurers they could have and would have coached them first. All the witnesses had to do was say Jesus
claimed to be the messianic and supreme Son of God ruling out the danger of
conflict. Perjury is so serious under
Jewish Law that they would not have been careless.
The Jews allegedly believed
that Jesus had to die or
When Jesus was found deserving
of death it is impossible to see why they sent him to Pilate. They may have needed Pilate’s permission to
do away with Jesus themselves but there was no need for another trial or for
Pilate to meet him. When they found
Pilate was anxious to save Jesus’’ life and when he told them to kill him
themselves for he didn’t want him dead they could have taken Jesus and
destroyed him then in case Jesus would get off.
Also, they would not have taken Jesus to Pilate in case he would go free
in the first place. Pilate would not
have tried Jesus when the Sanhedrin had already done it and found him guilty of
capital crimes and when he heard Jesus say he was the Messiah which deserved
death under Roman law. He would not have
gone to the trouble of needlessly interviewing Jesus himself when there were
plenty of Roman magistrates to do it.
FICTITIOUS TRIAL BEFORE PILATE
Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, by the Jews
in the hope that he would be crucified.
The gospels say Pilate believed
that Jesus thought he was the king of the Jews and sought to release him until
the Jews reminded him that Caesar tolerated no kings. This is impossible. Expressing a desire to set a king free in
public would have cost him the trust of the emperor forever. And Caesar fired anybody he didn’t trust.
In John, the Jews beg Pilate to
crucify Jesus. But Pilate replies that
he finds nothing in Jesus that makes him deserve it. The Jews answer that he has broken their law
by claiming to be the Son of God. The
Jews would not tell Pilate to execute Jesus over their religious bigotry. The
Matthew 27:24 maintains when that
Pilate put a sign on the cross of Jesus saying, “The King of the Jews”. All he had to do was write,
“This man said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’”.
The Jews asked him to write that.
And yet he wouldn’t do it. Now,
would Pilate kill Jesus to pacify the Jews as the gospels say when he did a
thing like that? He was provoking the
Jews and asking them to riot. It would
be worse than the Police Force of Northern Ireland putting up a Union Jack in a
Catholic area during the Twelfth of July.
Yet the gospels say that he had Jesus crucified to keep the peace and
even released Barabbas, a killer who was beloved to
the Jews, in the process. For Pilate to
call Jesus a king was to insult the Emperor.
It was so unnecessary. Of course,
there was no sign because there was no cross to put it on because the Lord
Jesus was as unreal as a character in a fairy-story.
PETER IN THE COURTYARD
Peter allegedly let Jesus down three times when he denied knowing him. So the gospels say.
Peter was heating himself by the fire in the courtyard of the building
where Jesus was being tried by the High Priest.
A maid said she knew that Peter had been with Jesus and was his
friend. He denied this “before them all”
and when he went he went to the porch the same thing happened with another maid
(Matthew 26). Peter was afraid for his
life and would have fled once the first woman recognised him especially when
she said it in front of a group of people.
Peter was not afraid after all when he even let sat with the others at a
fire instead of staying in the corner or going away when the Jesus topic came
up which would suggest that Jesus was not being tried at all. Peter risked his life for lies didn’t he for
he went around with Jesus and risked his life for him and now he showed he
believed he was wrong for he could not stand by Jesus any more? Peter even denied knowing Jesus under oath
though he knew fine well those listening to him knew he was a liar. The penalty for doing that was death for
blasphemy.
Peter was deceitful in the
extreme and this was the man who was supposedly chosen as the prince of the
apostles (according to Roman Catholic fantasy) and the chief witness to
Jesus. Then the Christians tell us that
this central figure among the apostles, who according to legend, shed his own
blood to prove that his testimony to the resurrection was sincere and expect us
to be impressed! He risked his life by
attacking Malchus who was only an innocent slave and
despite the fact that the mob could have hacked him to pieces. The man was a looney
and you can be a looney with regard to your own life
and be sane in everything else so don’t answer me back that he was too sane to
be mad – all lunatics are a mixture of both.
So far so bad.
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THE HEROD TRIAL
Jesus was allegedly tried before King Herod who found no fault with him. We are told to believe by Luke that Herod had
not previously laid eyes on him. This is
stupid for Herod must have met him before when he was keen to see his miracles
and when Jesus was out and about meeting the public so much. Herod would have asked Jesus if he did not
want political power then would he take it for spiritual reasons. Jesus could not say no without confessing to
being a hypocrite and not a real Son of God.
So Jesus either did not answer or he said he would. Thus Herod could not have found him
innocent. He would have been determined
to get rid of him because he would be a rival.
Jesus would have been guilty of high treason. And Herod would have known that Jesus
regarded John the Baptist as his forerunner and supreme prophet – if the
gospels are to be believed. Herod threw
John in jail for condemning his marriage to his sister-in-law, Herodias, so he would have done the same to Jesus who would
have condemned him by implication. In
fact he would have reacted quicker against Jesus.
THE SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR LIE
The Bible says Pilate had Jesus scourged at the pillar and after Jesus
was mocked as a king and crowned with thorns he then tried to get out of having
to crucify him. If Jesus was dressed in
his own clothes to bear the cross to
WAS PILATE FORCED?
The gospel story that the Jews forced Pilate to kill Jesus by crucifixion
is incredible. It cannot be true. Even if Pilate wanted to he could not have
avoided sentencing Christ to death.
When Pilate told the Jews to
judge Jesus by their own law and put him to death (John
Pilate knew they wanted Jesus
dead when they accused him of capital crimes.
His telling them to judge him by their own law received the reply that
they couldn’t execute reveals that the Jews knew he was saying they could kill
him. They had Pilate’s permission to
kill and
In John 19, Pilate tells the
Jews to take Jesus and crucify him themselves.
They answer back that their Law needs him dead meaning that they want
Pilate to kill him though they can do it themselves. We are told both that this answer scared
Pilate who was afraid of violence in the crowd and that he killed Jesus against
his will. This is absurd. The Jews would not have rioted when they
could kill Jesus themselves by stoning and string him up nor would Pilate have
expected them to. The gospeller is
lying.
Jesus was claimed to have had
been carrying royal blood and to have been King David’s real heir to the
throne. Had Pilate been keen to save
Jesus he would not have said so in public despite the gospel report that he
did. He would not have told the world
that King Jesus was innocent when royal blood and Messiahs were just not
tolerated in the Roman regime. Pilate
would have known that arguing with the Jews was nonsense so there was no point
in him standing up for a Messiah. Caesar
would have been furious and would have fired him for a man who approves one
Messiah is giving the wrong message to other would-be Christs
who could hide their political aspirations behind a spiritual façade.
JEWS COULD HAVE EXECUTED JESUS THEMSELVES
The Talmud says that Jesus was sentenced to death and people were given
forty days to change the mind of the leaders and spare him and this didn’t happen
so he was executed by tehm.
In some cities, it is certain
that the people could execute without expressly appealing to the Roman
authorities. Christians state that the
permission was limited to these and was not extended to
The ancient book, The Golden
Ass, says that
Pilate would not have told the
Jews to put Jesus to death themselves unless they could. He could not have been joking or sarcastic
when the Jews answered him as if he wasn’t being. And no hint of sarcasm exists. What he said could have been used against him
if he didn’t mean it if it were against Roman policy to let a person be
executed without permission. Also, he
was empowering them to execute Jesus themselves. So why didn’t they? The scandal of Jews being granted the power to
stone Jesus to death or execute him and insisting the hated Romans should do it
would have generated the greatest Jewish scandal of all time had it
happened. There was no explosion of
uproar recorded in the world at the time over it so it didn’t happen.
BARABBAS
The New Testament informs us that Pilate had a custom of releasing a
prisoner, anybody they wanted, for the Jews at Passover time (Matthew
27:15). He invoked the custom during
Jesus’ trial in the hope that they would pick Jesus. He gave a choice between Jesus and Barabbas and they picked Barabbas. Barabbas was a
thief and a murderer (John
Look carefully at this. Pilate decided what choice they would
have. He would not have offered them a
monster who was a danger to Romans like Barabbas, and Jesus.
It would have been Jesus and somebody who committed a capital crime that
was not so serious or who was sentenced to life in jail. If he wanted to save Jesus what did he choose
Barabbas for?
He knew the Jews would choose him whether they liked him or not for they
admired him for his crimes against the Empire.
In Luke we read that Pilate was going to release Jesus even after they
had chosen Barabbas which indicates that Pilate was
not afraid of a riot and could have refused to let them have their custom and refused
to execute Jesus. Yet the gospels say he
allowed himself to be bullied by the Jews to keep the peace. Pilate if he hoped the Jews would choose Jesus, would have chosen a prisoner they hated more than
Jesus not one they looked up to like Barabbas. That Barabbas was
chosen proves that Pilate did not make the offer in the hope that he could be
allowed to free Jesus at all. It was a
gospel lie. Also, would he really want
to give Jesus back to the people who would tear him to pieces if they hated him
as much as the gospels say? If Pilate
offered the Jews a prisoner they hated as much as Jesus if not more then he was
not afraid of a riot though tensions were high.
Christians say Pilate did not decide that Barabbas
was an option for release under the custom but the people chose Barabbas. Matthew
alone says that Pilate offered them a choice and stated that only Jesus and Barabbas were on the menu (27:17). Cross-referencing with the other gospels we
are told that Pilate did this thinking he could get Jesus off.
It is a ridiculous custom and
there is nothing outside the gospels to suggest that it existed. The horrible Romans were unlikely to
establish such a custom. Why was the
popular John the Baptist not saved this way?
His execution contradicts the claim that the Jews could not kill Jesus
themselves for they needed the Romans’ permission. If
John has it that Pilate thought
that if he reminded the Jews of the custom he could have had a chance to have
got Jesus freed. John says it was
because he went and told them first that Jesus had committed no crime in the
hope that they would relent on their plan to have Jesus destroyed and then he
offered to let them keep their custom to try and get Jesus freed. First of all, Pilate could have appealed to
the Emperor or people in high places to let him release Jesus and that would
scare the people to let him have it his own way for if Jesus was put out of the
way in exile they had no reason to complain and John says they were scared of
Rome and that was the reason Jesus had to be vanquished. Pilate must have had friends who would have
done him this favour. Secondly, Pilate
would not have reminded them of the custom or let them avail of it until he had
found a way to persuade them not to reject Jesus. Thirdly, Pilate could have said that Jesus
was not a real prisoner but just somebody on trial so if they clamoured for
Jesus to be the one to be condemned they had to be ignored. That is another reason why the Barabbas story as told in the gospels is an
impossibility. Pilate would not have
made Jesus an option for condemnation for the custom if he had really judged
Jesus to be innocent. Fourthly, would it
not have been a better idea to send Jesus to a cell and say Jesus hanged
himself in the cell so that he could be exiled later? If Pilate wanted to save Jesus’ life he had a
strange way of going about it.
It is absurd that John (
Barabbas
was a zealot or an insurrectionist (John
Pilate knew that if the crowd
chose Jesus, Jesus would be put through the whole thing all over again anyway
and would not be so lucky the second time.
He would continue to alienate the Jews and boast of kingship as
before. Jesus had boasted even before
Pilate and incited the High Priest and the council of the Jews at his
trial. Pilate would have seen no sense
in saving Jesus.
If the gospels are true when
they say the crowed twisted Pilate’s arm and Pilate tried to get Jesus off by
offering them the choice then why did they let him make Jesus an option? It is very hard to predict what a crowd will
choose. The risk was there especially if
Jesus had the big reputation for making people change their ways the gospels
say he had. Most ran after him without
knowing him and obeyed him.
Luke states that the crowd said
that Jesus stirs up (present tense) the people of
If you look up your Revised
Standard Version footnotes on Matthew you will read that many ancients asserted
that Jesus Barabbas was the name of the man in
27:16. Jesus Bar Abbas
is Jesus, Son of the Father.
Interesting. Was it really Jesus
Christ who was released and are the gospels covering this up? When testimony about a miracle might be
interpreted without recourse to the supernatural even if it is only a vague
hint that testimony is invalidated for a miracle can only be accepted when one’s
back is to the wall. In this case, the
return of Jesus to life would be invalidated.
It would be explained by holding that Jesus was released and that it was
Barabbas who was nailed and mistaken for Jesus and
Jesus later pretended to be raised from the dead.
DID THE JEWS WANT CRUCIFIXION?
The New Testament blames the Jews and not the Romans for Jesus’ horrific
death by crucifixion. It says the Jewish
leadership got the people on their side and together they made sure Pilate, the
Roman governor, would kill Jesus by crucifixion. All the gospels say that Pilate was keen to
save Jesus and only crucified him because he was bullied into it. Pilate even proposed that Barabbas
or Jesus could be released even though Barabbas was
an insurrectionist in the hope that the people would pick Jesus. The plan was to put the blame on the Jews so
that the Roman audiences would be more susceptible to Christian charms and accept
the “gospel”.
Because Jewish tradition stated
that a Messiah would die in a brutal way the Jews would have arranged a
discreet assassination or execution for Jesus if they preferred not to exile
him. And even more so if Jesus had
miracle powers. They understood that
Jesus would use a public death to advertise his gospel by dying like a
martyr.
It is supposed that the Jews
abominated crucifixion for the Law said that the hanged person defiles the land
(Deuteronomy
The Law said that a hanged man
was cursed by God. Did the Jews surmise
that if Jesus was hanged on the cross it would prove he was not God’s Son for
God could not curse him if he was? But
the curse was promised for men who were not the immaculate Son of God but who
were sinners. God could not curse his
Son. He would have been an exception so
the curse proved nothing. If only the
deserving could be cursed then the curse could not curb Jesus’ good standing
with God or with the people for there was no curse. And if God curses only for a good reason
perhaps he could curse his Son. The text
seems to mean that God curses the dead body which is not the same as cursing
the person. Dead bodies are not nice so
they are cursed in that sense and in the sense that they are doomed to
destruction. However, the vast majority
of Jews did not see things this way and neither did their leaders. They did believe that crucifixion was a
desecration of the land and an insult to Jews and their faith and their
country. That being the case they would
not have handed Jesus over to Pilate unless Pilate forced them. They would not have wanted to risk Jesus
being crucified.
It is doubtful that the Jews
would have schemed to get Jesus crucified.
They detested the Romans and would not have collaborated with them.
The Jews believed in vicarious
suffering so they knew that there was a chance that the followers of Christ
could turn his death to their advantage by making out it was for sinners (page
23, The Metaphor of God Incarnate). To
make a martyr of Jesus was to give him greater esteem for Judaism did approve
of martyrdom (page 26, ibid).
The Jews only made themselves
unclean for the Passover if they schemed to get Jesus crucified and we read
that they would not even enter Pilate’s house to keep themselves clean. Inconsistent.
Yet we are told they took people away from their spiritual preparation
for the feast just to destroy Jesus and mix with unclean Gentiles and to stand
around an unclean area of death all of which made them unclean. They made themselves morally unclean as
well. They knew that Jesus should have
been allowed to live past the Passover and the Sabbath to give him time to
repent. They would only have dirtied
themselves all these ways in fiction and not in fact.
The idea of Jewish leaders
being desperate to have Jesus crucified when he could not be left on the cross
long enough because of a sacred Sabbath which had to be respected by getting
him killed and taken down before it started is mad. Death by crucifixion could take days. The Romans did not care about Jewish feasts
and the Jews could not risk forcing a Jew to work on the cross to fight for his
life on the Sabbath which was a day of strict rest.
The suggestion of conservative
Christians that since the Jews could not execute themselves they had to do all
they could to keep their law that apostates like Jesus should be killed and
then strung up as a warning to others is abominable and a mark of desperation. These people are saying that the nearest the
Jews could get to keeping the law was to have Jesus crucified by the Romans and
hung up for display on the cross. They
could have had Jesus taken out of the country and executed elsewhere. They could have persuaded Pilate to let them
execute Jesus themselves which would be a lot better than forcing him to kill
Jesus which the gospels say they did.
The Jewish law prescribed a cruel
punishment for false Messiahs as a deterrent.
And Jesus dying on the cross would remove the deterrent part of the law
which was what the savagery of the law was all about because Rome was not
killing Jesus because he was a false Messiah but or for religious grounds. They killed him for other reasons. Also deterrence had nothing to do with it for
the apostate disciples of Jesus were not crucified. Deterrence then was not the Jewish
motive. So we have no reason to believe
the Jews wanted Jesus to die that way for deterrence.
The Jews could not expect to be able to force Pilate to kill again when
they had done it the once. Jesus was an
unusual case and why would the Jews want to make an example of apostates of him
for the Romans were not interested in deterring apostates for they wanted the
Jewish religion to die out?
That is the worst thing about Christianity is the silly lies that look
believable until you take a moment to think that are continually being issued
especially from Christian quarters that want to keep the world in the dark
ages.
JEWS ACCUSED OF NAILING JESUS
Luke says that Pilate reluctantly surrendered Jesus to the will of the
Jews (Luke 23:25). Luke
24:20 states that the Jews handed Jesus over for sentencing and then they
crucified him. John 19:16 does
the same thing as Luke. It says Pilate
handed Jesus over to be crucified. And
when we ask to whom we have to go to the previous verse which mentions only the
Jews. This evidently accuses the Jews of
crucifying Jesus. This is a very serious
slander.
Luke and John must have been written very late
when it was able to make statements like that.
The Jews were not to blame for Jesus’ death. The gospel evidence that they were is
dubious.
The New American Bible, Living Word Edition, note for John 19:16
confesses that out of the desire to blacken the Jews John like Luke was
deliberately ambiguous to give the impression that the Jews were the killers of
Christ and that he was handed over to the Jews for crucifixion.
JEWS WERE SLANDERED AS CHRIST-KILLERS BY BIBLE
Acts 5 gives clear evidence that the Jewish leaders were innocent but
slandered by the apostles as the killers of Christ. Though the authority of the Jews forbade it,
the apostles preached the gospel of Jesus in
It is impossible to believe that
the apostles really had the freedom to preach their Jesus message. When Rome killed Jesus for claiming to have
royal blood and threatening their totalitarian set-up, there was no way they
would have wanted people going about saying that Rome’s treatment of Jesus was
against the will of God who can destroy Rome in the twinkling of an eye.
It is a lie that the apostles were allowed into the Jewish Temple. They could not have been when the Jews did
not approve of Jesus any more and considered him a fake Messiah. The apostles were heretics and heretics were
not welcome in the
The Sanhedrin and the High Priest who had
supposedly engineered the execution of Jesus, had the apostles brought before
them. They chastised them for preaching
about Jesus though they had told them before not to. But when they had had the apostles before
them previously and forbade them to mention Jesus the apostles must have
promised to do what they asked when they were granted their freedom. Otherwise, they would have been jailed or
exiled.
The High Priest and Sanhedrin
also chastised the apostles for saying they were to blame for the death of
Jesus. Now if this was common knowledge
as the gospels claim, it had to have been then, they would not have chastised
the apostles for that. The apostles were
being accused of slander. And obviously
the charge must have been true.
The Sanhedrin member, Gamaliel, is presented as pleading with the Sanhedrin not
to kill the apostles for if the movement they have is not from God it will die
just like the movements led by other false Messiahs which died soon faded away
and that it might be fighting God to fight the apostles. This was a foolish argument and yet we are
told the Sanhedrin bought it. Gamaliel knew that the false gods of
None of this makes any
sense. But the apostles must have lied
to the Sanhedrin that they would not mention Jesus again when they let them
return to the
It is totally certain that it is
most unjust to the Jews to have their ancestors accused of the crime of killing
the Son of God even if the gospels do it.
Accusations like that are very serious and we need proof before we can
make them but we have none. Nobody can
prove who wrote the gospels which are anonymous. And it is not fair to condemn the Jews
without having their side of the story.
Fundamentalist Christians like the pope don’t believe in innocent until
proven guilty when it comes to defending their religion.
The Jews, according to the
gospels, arrested Jesus secretly for they feared the people. Then why didn’t they dispose of him
themselves? If they were so corrupt this
should not have been a problem. The
Romans alone were to blame. The gospels
shifted the blame on to the Jews because they wanted to make the faith they
professed attractive to Romans.
Jesus himself plainly said that
the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath meaning that true
Christianity does not advocate harming others in the name of faith. The gospels are very offensive for implying
that he consciously refused to avoid his own execution thereby putting faith
before himself and his mother and friends.
But regardless, the gospels forbid what they themselves did. They spin-doctored and distorted
and slandered all in the name of promoting Christ.
Something should be done about
these gospels which promote anti-Semitism.
The Jews are a decent minority in our society and society tends to
despise them and anything that encourages that should be opposed.
THURSDAY OR FRIDAY?
The Gospel of John is not reliable for he flatly contradicted the other
gospels and said that Jesus was crucified on Thursday and not Friday.
The gospels apart from John have
Jesus dying on Friday. They say Jesus
died the day before the Sabbath meaning the Saturday Sabbath for had they meant
any other kind of Sabbath they would have said (Mark 15:42).
John denies that the Last Supper if he knew of
it was the Passover for the next day he has the Jews being afraid to get
unclean for they had to eat the Passover (John 18:28).
John says that the day after
Jesus died was a high Sabbath meaning a special Sabbath so it was not an
ordinary Saturday Sabbath but one of the other Sabbaths that the Jews
kept. The day after Jesus died was the
Sabbath of the Passover and then the Saturday Sabbath followed the day after that
(see page 101, In Defence of the Faith).
Again Thursday is the day we come up with as the day of Jesus’ death.
John says that Jesus died on the
Day of Preparation. The Day of
Preparation was the eve of Passover. The
Passover took place on Friday. Jesus was
shown to the people before he was taken straight to the crucifixion site on the
Day of Preparation meaning he died on that day (John 19:14).
John and the other gospels say
Jesus had to be taken off the cross and buried before the Sabbath but John says
that the Sabbath was a high day and a special day (19:31). So it was not the ordinary Saturday Sabbath
he means but the special Friday one. He takes
pains to show he doesn’t mean the normal Saturday Sabbath.
Clearly then
for John the crucifixion took place on a Thursday. This is indisputable.
The research of a physics professor of the
I.N.R.I.
The letters I.N.R.I you see on crucifixes
signify Jesus of
The Gospels state that this
sign was placed above Jesus’ head on the cross in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.
I don’t believe that.
If Pilate wanted to keep the
peace and was afraid to offend the emperor who demanded that all kings and
would-be kings be squashed underfoot like the gospels say he would not have put
up such a sign. It is dangerous to admit
there is a royal line. It would mean
that Jesus’ nearest relation would be the new King of the Jews. Pilate would have written, “This man lied
saying he was king of the Jews”, if he could have put up a sign at all which is
doubtful if Jesus had lots of angry followers and when many believed Jesus was
a king before they could again even if he was not one so this claim of Jesus’
was best forgotten about. If they were
all scared of Jesus’ fans instigating a riot like the gospels say then why was
Jesus nailed near the city with that sign up?
A gang could have went and pulled him down. It is hard to believe that there was a
sign. Matthew says that the Jews were
able to boss the Romans about to tell lies about the empty tomb so it would be
improbable if they let that sign stay up at all. There would only have been a sign if Jesus
was secretly crucified. But then there
would have been no need for it and it wouldn’t have been erected!
The sign would have been
invented if people believed or knew that Jesus had been executed anonymously to
silence those who were unconvinced that Jesus was crucified so it stayed in the
story when the version that claimed it was a public execution emerged.
We are told Pilate wrote it
himself and was defiant when the Jews asked him to take it down and put up
another one. He said that what was
written down was written down meaning that he would not retract what he wrote
for it was true. He did not speak like
somebody that didn’t write it personally.
When the gospel and Pilate both say he wrote it, it is not sensible to
say that they mean he told a secretary to write it for there is no need for
that idea. The gospels were written for
simple people. He would have written it
personally when the Jews came to him to complain. And they would not have been allowed to see
him if the secretary had done it but they would have gone to the secretary and
the secretary would have had a word with Pilate if necessary. He had the time to write it himself.
Pilate did not put the sign up
in mockery for the Gospels allege that Pilate asked Jesus in John if he was a
king and Jesus said yes and Pilate took his word for it and told the Jews he
could not kill their king. This is
incredible for you need documents to prove it and Jesus had none. Pilate would not have been that stupid. He would have been sacked for that. The gospels would say if Pilate did more than
just take Jesus’ word for it.
Mark states that the charge
against Jesus was his being king (Mark
The silly Carsten
Thiede has claimed that a piece of wood in a Church
in
Hebrews write from right to
left and the Greek inscription on the sign does the same though it should have
been written from left to right. Thiede claims that a Jewish scribe wrote the sign and made
this mistake. First of all nobody would
have been stupid enough to employ a man that stupid for such an important
job. Secondly, it would have been
checked before it was put on the cross for these things were serious. Thirdly, Pilate wrote it himself personally
and would not have made an error that a schoolboy would not have made. Fourthly, there is no evidence that anybody
took the sign after Jesus died. Fifthly,
the most likely explanation for the letters going the wrong direction is that
the author could not read but could engrave and was relying on dictation and a
book of letters and the person doing the dictating could not read either.
All that exists in favour of
the title is that it writes in a different order of languages from the gospel
of John which alone lists the languages when you would expect a forger to
retain the order. But John only said he
was listing the languages not their order.
And John gives a longer title
than the rest of the gospels which say “The King of the Jews” or “Jesus king of
the Jews”. John says, “Jesus the
Nazarene, the king of the Jews”. It is three against John who gives the longer
title. Stories get more window dressing
as they are passed on so it is no surprise that the longest title appears in
John’s gospel. The title or titulus of Thiede has the same
words as John which probably indicates inauthenticity. The fact that it was engraved does not bode
well for authenticity for it was only necessary to write on it and engraving
was slow.
The title was made of walnut
and walnut is available all over the Mediterranean countries so it was easy
enough for Constantine or Helena to have had one made and made to match ancient
scripts of which they had plenty of samples.
CONCLUSION
The gospels tell little else but lies when it comes to the arrest, trial
and nailing of Jesus Christ. They cannot
be trusted then when they say when Jesus was nailed for they alone do that and
they certainly cannot be trusted when they say Jesus appeared alive after he
died on the cross. The Jews were
slandered by the gospels and this caused much abuse of the Jewish people by
Christians. Do not honour anti-Semitism
by honouring the gospels.
WORKS CONSULTED
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley,
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh
McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
Handbook of
Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch,
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House,
In Search of Certainty, John Guest Regal Books,
Jesus and Early Christianity in the Gospels, Daniel J Grolin, George Ronald, Oxford, 2002
Jesus and the Four Gospels, John Drane, Lion
Books, Herts, 1984
Jesus Lived in
Jesus the Evidence, Ian Wilson Pan,
The Bible Fact or Fantasy? John Drane, Lion
Books,
The Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan,
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Michael Baigent,
Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi,
The Jesus Conspiracy, Holger Kersten and Elmar R Gruber,
Element,
The Messianic Legacy, Michael Baigent, Richard
Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi,
The Metaphor of God Incarnate, John Hick, SCM
Press Ltd,
The Passover Plot, Hugh Schonfield, Element
Books,
The Resurrection Factor, Josh McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation,
Bucks, 1993
The Resurrection of Jesus, Pinchas Lapide, SPCK,
The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton
& Co Ltd,
The
The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
The
The Virginal
Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Raymond E Brown Paulist
Press,
The Womb and the Tomb, Hugh Montefiore, Fount –
HarperCollins,
Verdict on the Empty Tomb, Val Grieve, Falcon,
Who Moved the Stone? Frank Morison,
Why People believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer,
BIBLE VERSION USED
The Amplified Bible