Killing Jesus: A History

run him through with a sword or to wrap their hands around his throat and strangle him in his sleep. No, the Pharisees must play by traditional rules, and this means killing Jesus for a public violation of religious law.
    In search of such an offense, a select team of Pharisees and scribes now travels from Jerusalem to Galilee to observe Jesus in person. They are men well versed in Scripture. If anyone can find fault with the Nazarene, it is they.
    Or so the religious leaders believe.
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    Things go wrong from the start. The Pharisees and Sadducees are frustrated at every turn, for Jesus is a spiritual and intellectual rival unlike any they have ever faced. Despite their best efforts to weaken his movement by interrogating him publicly, the Nazarene outwits them at every turn, and his popularity continues to soar. The people of Galilee begin to monitor Jesus’s travels so closely that they anticipate where he is going and then race ahead to wait for him. Stories of Jesus turning water into wine and making the lame walk and the blind see have so electrified the region that it is now commonplace for almost anyone with an ailment to seek him out, even if that means being carried for miles to await his appearance. Indeed, the Pharisees themselves witness a puzzling event, as Jesus apparently heals a man’s severely withered hand on the Sabbath, 1 an act that the Pharisees promptly and publicly condemn as a violation of religious law.
    Jesus shows himself to be an adroit intellectual foil by using logic and words of Holy Scripture to upend their arguments. “There is nothing unlawful,” he reminds the Temple squad, “about doing good.” Making matters more difficult for the holy men is Jesus’s ability to amaze the peasants of Galilee by seemingly performing supernatural acts. The Pharisees now hear that he transformed two fish and five loaves of bread into a feast that fed five thousand people in the mountains near Bethsaida early this spring. And even more fantastic is word that Jesus allegedly brought a dead girl in Capernaum back to life. Finally, the most astounding happening of all: Jesus’s disciples claim to have seen him walk atop the Sea of Galilee in the midst of a violent storm.
    The Pharisees refuse to believe any of this, even though they have witnessed firsthand an unexplainable act of healing. Yet a staggering number of witnesses are attesting to each and every one of these pela’oth , othoth ,and mophethim . The Greek of the Gospels will later translate these Hebrew words into dunameis , semeia , and terata —power (or force), signs, and wonders. The simple Aramaic-speaking people of Galilee prefer just one word to describe the acts of Jesus: nes . 2
    The Pharisees believe in miracles but not in Jesus. Time and again throughout Jewish oral history—from Moses to Job to Esther—God reveals himself through such actions. When the Pharisees finally put the oral tradition of the Jewish people onto the page two centuries from now, the Talmud will be filled with stories of God’s miracles.
    But Jesus is not God, of that the Pharisees are sure. He is an agitator, a false teacher, a dangerous charlatan. Rather than a heavenly palace, Jesus takes a room in the simple earthly home of his disciple Peter. Clearly this cannot be the supreme deity whom the Pharisees have spent their lives contemplating.
    This troubles the Pharisees deeply. Jesus is undermining their authority. If allowed to flourish, his movement will destroy their way of life, stripping them of wealth and privilege. And that cannot be allowed to happen. For as much as the Pharisees say they love God, most of them are arrogant, self-righteous men who love their exalted class status far more than any religious belief system.
    It is a status the Temple priests have enjoyed for almost six centuries. Since the time of the Babylonian captivity, when the last true Jewish king was toppled from the throne, a power vacuum has existed among the Jewish people. 3 Holy men such as the Pharisees have filled that void by strictly interpreting the laws of Moses. They gained respect from the Jewish people by adding hundreds of new commandments and prohibitions to Moses’s original list of ten, then passing them on through an oral history known as the Tradition of the Elders.
    Few ever question these laws, especially not the uneducated peasants of Galilee. But now Jesus, through his actions and teaching, has shown many of these mandates to be