I was once very religious and among my family and friends I have some who are extremely religious but not fanatically so. I know a monk or two. Have been heavily into Theology for a bit, I know there are nuances in religion through which believers must be guided or they will fall into some fringe religious belief system that is of no good to anyone.
Although I no longer share that belief system as organized religion has morphed it I do not misrepresent the beliefs of others for my own ends, like with a book in a library, if something religious is not to my liking, I move on to another or none at all.
The ones who take a kernel of a commonly held belief and then twist it to subtly lead people to their way of thinking, not for the benefit of the led but the leader, for the sake of my friends I have to speak out.
Ever since Jesus Junior got arrested the first time, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s reaction has been gnawing at me, not because it was an unexpected unhinged response, but, in attempting to out Jesus the rest of us, Ms Greene revised the Christian origin story.
According to her,
“Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus — Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government.”
She need us to accept that it was the government that killed Jesus because her Q-anon inspired anti-government beliefs are her driving force and if she can win us over to her anti-government ideas by playing the Jesus card, no matter how misguided they are, she will do it.
However according Matthew in the Good Book,
“When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put Him to death. And when they had bound Him, they led Him away and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor.”
Obviously it was not the government who arrested Jesus and wanted Him dead, it was the religious leaders.
The government in the person of Pontius Pilate was not into the idea at all and showed it multiple times.
“Now Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked Him, saying, ‘Are You the King of the Jews?’ Then Pilate said to Him. ‘Do You not hear how many things they testify against You?’ But He answered him not one word, so that the governor marveled greatly.”
Hoping to end the foolishness, Pilate offered a no-brainer choice, Jesus or one of the worst criminals in the area, and the religious leaders surprised him by going with letting that guy go.
Even the Missus attempted to thwart the desire of the religious leaders by advising Pontius,
“Have nothing to do with that just Man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of Him.”
“But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?”
They said, ‘Barabbas!’”
In Roman law on which our system is based, you had to state a specific charge not just a general statement and would be required to back it up with evidence. So, of course, in this case the government asked for both.
“Then the governor said, ‘Why, what evil has He done?’ But they cried out all the more, saying, ‘Let Him be crucified!'”
Notice the absence of any real charge just a demand for death.
No charge, just lock him up.
In John’s version of events, Pilate came out said to the crowd,
“’Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.’ When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, ‘Here is the man!’”
The famous giggle inducing “Ecce Homo” that got many an altar boy chastised after the Good Friday services.
What did the Romans do? Nothing. But, “As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
“But Pilate answered, ‘You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.’ The religious leaders insisted, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he must die’. When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, ‘I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.'”
Could you blame him for his frustration?
The government had declared that the man had done nothing, offered a ridiculously obvious non-choice to maybe end the stupidity, and handed him over to the people who the religious leaders had fired up but who, themselves, are not mention among those crying,
“His blood be on us and on our children.”
The religious leaders had used religion and the crowd’s faith to get the dirty work done while their hands remained clean without having to be washed.
And if you notice, Pilate, unlike all the pictures and the rather slanted representations, did not hand Jesus over to the Romans to be whipped and crucified but, as the new Testament states,
“Then he released Barabbas to them; and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered Him to be crucified.”
You do not deliver what is already in your possession, as the government would be doing if it handed over its prisoner to itself, and Pilate did state that the government was through with this expression of firmly held religious beliefs after he had Jesus scourged, but as the New Testament clearly state it was not the Romans or the government who arrested Jesus. He was brought to it.
The government, in the person of Pontius Pilate made multiple attempts to get the crowd to see that this was wrong, even offering that no-brainer choice, pointing out the obvious, that Jesus hadn’t done anything against the law to justify government punishment, has him whipped maybe to satisfy the crowd’s frenzied blood lust., brings him back out in front of the crowd and had to be more than a little shocked they still wanted Pence.
And while we may bristle at the way Jesus was treated and the mockery He faced, we just got rid of a local county sheriff who would have been right in there with a select crew demeaning Him, so His treatment was not unique, and when the Romans were done and he was about to go out in public, they “put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified.”
Not a major thing, but a small act of kindness.
And although we get distracted by this action in thee Praetoria, we forget Jesus was there because of the religious leaders not the government brought him there. I am sure Barrabas didn’t spend his booking having a genteel experience.
As a matter of fact, the passage relating who was crucifying Jesus is vague as it states that after the Romans handed him over
“as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross. And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull, they gave Him our wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink. Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: ‘They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.’ Sitting down, they kept watch over Him there. And they put up over His head the accusation written against Him, ‘THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’”
Okay, who is “They”?
Religious leaders would have us believe “they” is the Romans, but we were already told that Jesus was handed over to be crucified after the Romans washed their hands of the whole thing.
Paintings tend to show Romans running the show from beginning to end, where the passage says those depicted should be the religious leaders. After all, it was the chief priest who were
“mocking with the scribes and elders, said, ‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ”
Even at the end there is no reference to any Roman when we are told that while “Some of those who stood there”, one of them “ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink. The rest said, ‘Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him.'”
“The rest” implies that person was one of them and “them” had been identified as passers-by not Romans.
The Romans, AKA the government, are only mentioned once in the passage,
“so, when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!””, in, I am sure, a very John Wayne voice
It seems it only took this one event for the Romans, the government, to see Jesus for who he was and not the three years of miracles that apparently were not convincing, or the room was a tough one, and the religious leaders, for their part killed him because of their firmly held religious beliefs with nothing political about it I am sure.
To further show this was not a government action,
“On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, saying, ‘Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.’
Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.’ So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.”
The government refused any further role in this religious action so the religious leaders had to employ their own security.
The governments’ not having arrested Jesus but the religious leaders having done it is
very clear in Matthew.
Now in Luke there are more references to a Roman presence as opposed to the more generic “They” of Matthew.
In Luke’s version Romans are mentioned, but only as part of the crowd and acting no differently than they. After all this was a large gathering of people and as Romans were retentive about order, their would have been a Roman presence like the police at festivals.
“The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One. The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’”
So, Marge, nice try, but some of us actually read the book and have studied it.
It was not government that arrested Jesus and then killed him, but the religious leaders by using the religion of the people against them.
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