Killing Jesus: A History

assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” 3
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    Six years after washing his hands of the Nazarene’s execution, Pontius Pilate intervened in another case involving a messiah—and this time it cost him his job. The preacher was a Samaritan who had holed up in a mountaintop sanctuary in Gerizim. Concerned by the man’s growing legion of followers, Pilate suppressed the movement with heavily armed Roman soldiers. This resulted in many deaths and led Pilate to be recalled to Rome to explain his actions. He thought his appeal would be heard by his friend Emperor Tiberius . But by the time Pilate reached Rome, Tiberius was dead, done in either by disease or by being smothered, depending upon which Roman historian is telling the story. No matter, the seventy-seven-year-old debauched emperor was gone. The fourth-century historian Eusebius records that Pilate was later forced to commit suicide, becoming “his own murderer and executioner.” Where and how Pilate died is still debated. One report says he drowned himself in the Rhone River near Vienne, a city in modern-day France. There a Roman monument still stands in the heart of the city and is often referred to as “Pilate’s Tomb.” Another report says he hurled himself into a lake near Lausanne, in what is now Switzerland, where Mount Pilatus is said to have been named in his honor. There is also a rumor that Pilate and his wife, Claudia, converted to Christianity and were killed for their faith. Whether or not that is true, both the Coptic and Ethiopic Christian Churches venerate him as a martyr.
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    Tiberius was replaced by Caligula , the twenty-four-year-old son of Tiberius’s deceased adopted child, Germanicus. Caligula promptly squandered almost all the fortune he inherited from Tiberius—a fortune partially earned on the backs of Galilean peasants. He served for only four years before being stabbed to death in an assassination eerily similar to that of the great Julius Caesar. He was succeeded, in turn, by the emperors Claudius and Nero, who continued the ruinous policies that eventually led to the downfall of Rome. This occurred four hundred years later, in 476, when the Roman Empire was toppled by Germanic tribes. However, long before the empire’s collapse, Rome turned away from its pagan gods and began worshipping Jesus Christ. Christianity was officially legalized throughout the Roman Empire in 313, with the Edict of Milan.
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    With Pilate gone, Caiaphas was left without a Roman political ally. He had many enemies in Jerusalem and was soon replaced as the Temple high priest. Caiaphas then left the stage and disappeared into history. The dates of his birth and death are unrecorded. But in 1990, an ossuary containing his bones was discovered in Jerusalem. They are currently on display at the Israel Museum.
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    Herod Antipas may have been well schooled in palace intrigue, but it eventually brought about his demise. His nephew Agrippa was known to be a close friend of the Roman emperor Caligula. The Jewish historian Josephus relates that when Antipas foolishly asked Caligula to name him king, instead of tetrarch (at the suggestion of his wife, Herodias, who continued to get him into trouble), it was Agrippa who lodged charges that Antipas was plotting to execute Caligula. As proof, Agrippa pointed to the enormous arsenal of weaponry possessed by Antipas’s army. So it was that Caligula ordered Antipas to spend the rest of his life exiled to Gaul. His fortune and territories were handed over to the younger Agrippa. The former tetrarch was joined in what is now France by Herodias. The two lived in Lugdunum, which many believe to be the location of modern-day Lyon.
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    The tension between Rome and the Jewish people did not abate after the unjust crucifixion of Jesus. In A.D. 66, the Jews waged war on the Roman occupying army and took control of Jerusalem. Taxation was a key component of this struggle. However, the Romans did not accept defeat. By A.D. 70 they had surrounded the city with four Roman legions (including the legendary Legio X Fretensis, which set up its forces on the Mount of Olives) and were laying siege. Pilgrims arriving to celebrate Passover were allowed into the city—then not allowed to leave, which put considerable pressure on Jerusalem’s limited water and food supplies. Somewhere between six hundred thousand to one million men, women, and children were stuck