Did the Jews kill Christ?

[A71]

The rest of Acts of the Apostles 2 settles the issue.*

Remember that Jesus prayed,
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34 NKJV

*If you think about it, those that repented DID get Jesus' blood on themselves, after all...!

Yes, it was a sin of ignorance. But refusing afterwards to accept Christ was not.

1 John 8
8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

Guys, I was just looking at a TV show where a guest has created a documentary on the Holocaust and one speaker in the documentary said "the Jews did not kill Christ".

my thinking is the Romans physically killed Christ but it was the Jews who forced it so they were responsible and accountable, your thoughts on this please?

Indirectly the Jews killed Jesus by condemning him judicially. The Romans directlly killed Jesus. The Romans were the ones who carried out the demands of the Jews.

 

[A71]

The judicial process and apparatus is not 'who' is responsible, anymore than a gun gets sent to jail for a killing.

Deuteronomy 18:
15 One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.16 If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong;17 Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days;
18 And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother;19 Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you.

 

[Steve Petersen]

You are no longer Jew or Gentile when you become born again .

Then we are also no longer male and female, despite all evidence to the contrary?

 

[Chinchilla]

Then we are also no longer male and female, despite all evidence to the contrary?

I hope you know the difference between yourself and your body .

 

[JackRT]

.

 

[Protestantismvsthebible]

Mk 15:9 So Pilate answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?” 10 (For he realized that the chief priests had handed him over because of envy.) 11 But the chief priests incited the crowd so that he would release for them Barabbas instead. 12 So Pilate answered and said to them again, “Then what do you want me to do with the one whom you call the king of the Jews?” 13 And they shouted again, “Crucify him!” 14 And Pilate said to them, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they shouted even louder, “Crucify him!”

Acts 5:30
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.

 

[A71]

@JackRT
I thought blasphemy was a capital offence

Leviticus 24: 16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Galatians 3:28

Your point? There are still male and females too...

 

[Dorothy Mae]

Guys, I was just looking at a TV show where a guest has created a documentary on the Holocaust and one speaker in the documentary said "the Jews did not kill Christ".

my thinking is the Romans physically killed Christ but it was the Jews who forced it so they were responsible and accountable, your thoughts on this please?

The Jewish leadership had the greater share of guilt according to Jesus but otherwise, yes, the Roman (Italians?) put him to death. Gods plan in the matter doesn’t change who volunteered to put a known innocent man to death.

 

[JackRT]

Yes, you are right.

Judea/Israel was under Roman rule in 33AD. The Jews and Chief/High Priest had no legal authority to put offending Jews or anyone to death, eg for breaking Moses Law - adultery, homosexuality, incest, blasphemy, idolatry, etc - these were instead permitted under Roman Law. The Jews and Chief Priest wanted to get rid of Jesus because they desired for a Christ/Messiah who would militarily defeat the Romans and gift them back their kingdom of earth, ie Judea/Israel.(JOHN.6:15)
....... To get the Roman ruling authorities to crucify Jesus Christ, they made false accusations against Him as being a rebel "King of the Jews". Pontius Pilate was not convinced but had to acquiesce to them when a Jewish mob/riot threatened.

After "killing/murdering" Jesus Christ, they followed-up by persecuting His followers as Jewish heretics/cult, eg the first Jewish Christian martyr, Stephen, at ACTS.7.
....... They even appointed false christs to lead them into armed rebellion against the Romans = the Jewish-Roman Wars - MATTHEW.24:15 & 24, LUKE.21:20.

As per ROMANS.12:19-21, God's vengeance upon the Jews and Chief Priest for "murdering" His Son occured in 70AD when a mighty Roman Army arrived in Judea/Israel to squash the Jewish rebellion = the Jews were massacred and their Holy Temple of God in Jerusalem destroyed. Thereafter, no Jews were allowed to settle in Judea/Israel = became back to Palestine/Philistine.

I will reply by citing a portion of a sermon that I delivered almost 15 years ago:

Messiah means literally "anointed one" and was the common way in which the Jews referred to kings of the dynasty of David. "Anointed" refers of course to the method of investiture of the Jewish kings. It translated into the Greek as "Christos". The Jews regarded themselves as a "theocracy"... a kingdom ruled by God. The Jews also envisaged a (metaphorical) throne room in which there were three thrones. God occupied the central throne. At "the right hand of God" was the throne of the "king messiah" who was the reigning king of the house and family of David. At "the left hand of God" was the throne of the "priest messiah" who was the high priest of the house and family of Zadok. Ideally there were always two messiahs who were known collectively as the "sons of God". All these terms, "messiah", "kingdom of God", "at the right hand of God" and "son of God" were political rather than religious statements. It was a later generation of gentile Christians who re-interpreted these phrases in a very different religious sense. Both before and after the death of Jesus the early Christians, who were, after all, practicing Jews, understood these terms in their traditional sense. Jesus in claiming to be the messiah had not committed any blasphemy... there was no religious crime that the high priest could legitimately charge him with. That is why he went to the Romans to do the job.


Keep in mind as well that our gospels were written by practicing Jews for a primarily Jewish audience. The early Christians were not expelled from the synagogues until about the year AD 90. They were familiar with the terminology just mentioned. Unlike the average reader today they knew that a term like "son of God" carried the meaning mentioned above and did not infer in any way that the person so described was in any way divine. As a matter of fact the inference of divinity would have been profoundly shocking to them, indeed they would have called it blasphemy. Thousands of Jews and later Christians went to their deaths for refusing to admit that the emperor was divine. It was only later, when the Jewish influence on the early church had diminished to the point of non-existence, that Christian believers in their ignorance of these terms began to take them at face value. Whenever we read a document we should always ask ourselves "How were these words intended by the author and how were they understood by the reader?" We must never try to impose a modern understanding on words that are almost 2,000 years old.


He was, however posing a direct challenge to Roman political authority. As we have already seen, the Romans responded very vigorously to any such challenge. The fact that they did not respond immediately on his entry into Jerusalem can be attributed in the first place to surprise, but more importantly to the fact that the high holy season was at hand. Jerusalem was crowded with perhaps a many as a million pilgrims and any military intervention at the time could trigger a full scale riot or possibly a major insurrection. The Romans chose to bide their time, but from Palm Sunday onward the fate of Jesus was sealed.


Two days later Jesus and his disciples enter the temple and forcefully eject the merchants and money changers. Now he has the full attention of the high priest Joseph Caiaphas. Notice that Jesus still has not committed a religious crime (blasphemy). The notoriously brutal temple guards did not act against Jesus at this time probably for the same reason that the Romans did not act on Palm Sunday.


Two days later Jesus is caught away from the crowds in the garden of Gethsemane. One gospel informs us that the arrest was carried out by a Roman cohort plus a detachment of temple guards. A Roman cohort at full strength consists of six hundred heavily armed legionnaires. Even if it were only part of a cohort, say, a century of one hundred soldiers, it seems obvious that they were not taking any chances with Jesus fighting his way out of the trap that they had sprung on him.


He is now dragged before the high priest and the “elders’. It is quite unlikely that there was any kind of formal trial at this time. To begin with there was no substantive religious charge that could be brought against him. It was not blasphemy to claim to be the "messiah" or a "son of God". If there was a blasphemy, a trial before the Sanhedrin would have brought that out and a sentence of death by stoning could have been brought down. The Sanhedrin did not lose the right to impose the death penalty until the year AD 39. The execution would have to be ratified by the Roman governor. This was just a rubber stamp procedure, after all what did the Romans care about Jews stoning one of their own to death for some obscure religious crime?


We also must take into account the nature of the Sanhedrin itself. It was a very dignified body of seventy elders somewhat in the nature of a supreme court. The high priest chaired but did not control the Sanhedrin, the majority of whose members were Pharisees. The Pharisees opposed the high priest at just about every turn. The high priest was in fact perhaps the most hated man in Judea. Under Roman administration, the high priest was personally appointed by the Roman governor. Caiaphas was the personal choice of Roman procurator Valerius Gratus. The Pharisees regarded Caiaphas as a collaborator and a traitor. The Sanhedrin was not likely to respond to a sudden midnight summons from the high priest. As a matter of fact, it was explicitly forbidden for the Sanhedrin to meet at night or on a religious holiday. They were also not to meet in any place but the Chamber of Hewn Stone on Temple Mount.


You might recall from the Acts of the Apostles that Peter and some of the disciples were actually charged with blasphemy and brought to trial before the Sanhedrin. They were dismissed after being defended by Rabbi Gamaliel who was himself a member of the Sanhedrin and a prominent Pharisee. If Jesus appeared before the high priest at all it was simply to be remanded over to Pontius Pilate. The Romans wanted him for a lot more than disturbing the peace in the temple. They wanted him for sedition and treason.


I am also convinced that the trial before Pilate was a foregone conclusion... a trial in name only. The Bible, however, portrays Pontius Pilate as a reasonable person, a gentleman who thought Jesus was innocent, albeit a little deluded. We also get the impression that Pilate is somewhat of a wimp in that he allows himself to be manipulated by the high priest and elders into executing Jesus.


In truth this portrayal of Pilate is far from factual. He was an ambitious, greedy and brutal man. He once ordered his troops into the temple to loot the treasury. It must be noted that he was not the first nor the last Roman governor to do this. This serves to indicate just how much he was swayed by the opinions or threats of the elders or the high priest who was after all his personal appointee. He was also responsible for the suppression of a number of rebellions at great loss of life. His main objective during his tenure of office seems to have been to be to see just how much he could get away with in offending Jewish religious sensibilities. He was eventually dismissed from office by the emperor for "causing an unnecessary massacre". I suppose that this by way of contrast to all the necessary massacres he was responsible for. Are these the marks of a wimp? of a reasonable man? Certainly not! The trial of Jesus, if there was one, was in name only. Jesus had challenged Roman political authority...Jesus must die.

BTW --- are you really on Heard Island? That must be one of the loneliest outposts on earth. Are you a researcher? military?

 

[Chinchilla]

Your point? There are still male and females too...

Paul lying in galatians ?

 

[A71]

@JackRT Pilate equivocated at least partly because his wife had a bad dream. To say it was a foregone conclusion might be a stretch

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Paul lying in galatians ?

No, you just not understanding

 

[Chinchilla]

No, you just not understanding

No , you not understanding difference between your body and yourself

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

No , you not understanding difference between your body and yourself

Flesh vs spirit, sure! But again, there are still Greeks, males and females, etc...

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

No , you not understanding difference between your body and yourself

You do understand that then there was separation between Jews and gentiles, males and females, etc???

 

[JackRT]

@JackRT
I thought blasphemy was a capital offence

Leviticus 24: 16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

You are absolutely correct but claiming to be the messiah was a political statement, not a blasphemy.

 

[A71]

You are absolutely correct but claiming to be the messiah was a political statement, not a blasphemy.

Is it not both?
Jesus was tried in a religious court. Matthew 26

63 But Jesus held his peace, And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.65 Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy.66 What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.


Isn't the point that the Sanhedrin opted to get the Romans to execute him? A sleight of hand that would cause them severe blowback a few years later.

 

[Chinchilla]

You do understand that then there was separation between Jews and gentiles, males and females, etc???

Yea was , Peter for example would not eat with gentiles when there were Jews around he was hypocrite , then God told him to go eat with them , moreover to eat meat .