Who is Responsible for Killing Jesus?

jimmyjimmy

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The apostate House of Judah aka jews ordered His death but it was God the Father who sacrificed Him for our sins. He was the Sacrificial Lamb of God the Father.

Yes. Ultimately, the Godhead enacted this plan.
 
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jimmyjimmy

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Not robots, I believe we have the freedom to choose, yet not without influences on our choices, and God knows from all eternity every choice we will make, and He set it all in motion at creation, and He influences events through His people to accomplish His will. Judas chose to do what He did, but God allowed Satan to influence him (to what extent?) to do what He did. I don't believe in libertarian free will for anyone but God because all our choices are influenced by our limitations (including the corruption of sin on our hearts and minds) and circumstances (including influences from the spiritual world). We are not totally free to choose as we will because our will is influenced by the world, the flesh, and the devil as well as God.

Clear as mud, right?

Libertarian free will is a myth that I, for the life of me, can't understand anyone believing.

Back to the OP, how do we deal with the tension? God had a plan, and set out to accomplish it, and men are free to act as they will. Hold those two ideas as true, did God work with the hand He was dealt? That sounds rather impotent.
 
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JackRT

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Below is an old sermon of mine that pertains to the discussion at hand.

WHO WAS BARABBAS?

THE BIBLICAL ROOTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM

by

ALASTAIR MacDONALD

This is not so much a sermon as it is an historical investigation. Like any good historian, I must begin by setting the context of the story. You have all heard it said that the Bible must be read "in context", that you can't read or interpret a verse in isolation. Many would say that you must take into account the verses immediately before and after the verse in question. I would go even further by saying that you must at least try to look at the entire context and by this I mean the whole economic, social, political, religious and historical background. This can be a very tall order.

The most important fact of life in Judea and Galilee at the time of Jesus was the fact that they were Roman provinces under occupation by detachments of the Roman army. This was not a relatively benign occupation such as occurred in West Germany following World War II. It was much more like the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe... a brutal military repression. At the same time, the Roman authorities exacted an outrageous level of taxation through the notorious system of "tax farming". In this system the rights to collect taxes were sold to the highest bidders. These "publicans" then proceeded to enrich themselves by setting exorbitant tax rates and by brutally enforcing their collection. People were known to be driven to suicide or even to selling their children into slavery as a result of the demands of the publicans.

Combine this oppression with the two thousand year struggle of the Jewish people for independence and freedom and you have an extremely volatile political climate. It was so volatile in fact that in the time period from one hundred years before Jesus, to one hundred years after him, the Jews rose in revolt an amazing sixty-two times. Interestingly enough all but one of these revolts originated in Galilee. Is it any wonder that the Roman authorities viewed any gathering of Galileans or any Galilean leader with great suspicion? Although quite a few of these revolts were small and localized, two of them evolved into full scale wars. The end result of all of this was the complete destruction of the Jewish nation and the great "Diaspora" of the Jewish people.

One of these many revolts occurred in the year 6 C.E. in Galilee. At this time Jesus was probably about ten years old. The revolt was triggered by the calling of a Roman census. The sole reason for such an numeration was to consolidate and expand the already exorbitant tax base. The revolt was led by the Pharisee Rabbi Judas BarEzekias whose followers regarded him as the long awaited "messiah". After some initial success including the capture of Sephoris, the capital city of Galilee, the revolt was suppressed by the arrival of a Roman army dispatched from Syria. Rabbi Judas and about two thousand of his rebels were captured and crucified en mass. Judas was not to be the only messiah to die in this fashion. To this day Judas is regarded as a national hero of the state of Israel. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that the young Jesus may have witnessed some of the events surrounding this revolt since the city of Sephoris was located only an easy walk from Jesus's home town of Nazareth.

In view of what I have just outlined, the truly surprising fact is that the Romans are seldom mentioned in the gospels. The actual word "Roman" is used just once in the four gospels and the Romans are mentioned in just three contexts: first in the nativity story with the reference to the census, second in Jesus's cure of the centurion's child and finally in the events surrounding the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus. There is an excellent reason for this lack of reference that we will examine a little later.

Let us now look ahead in time to Palm Sunday. Jesus, together with his Galilean disciples, enters Jerusalem in precisely the manner foretold in the ancient scriptures. Some scholars are convinced that this entry was timed deliberately to coincide with the entry of Pontius Pilate and a cohort of troops moving up from Caesarea as they did each year at this time. There Jesus is greeted by the joyous population who acclaim him as the messiah. I am not completely convinced that Jesus ever claimed the title of messiah for himself, but his disciples and the gospel writers certainly did. Before we can proceed further, I must pause to examine the meaning of the word "messiah" itself.

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 coronation 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 reinterpreted 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 nonexistence, 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.

We come at last to the story of Barabbas. The key element here is the so called "Passover Privilege" whereby the Roman governor of Judea would grant the release of any prisoner of the peoples' choice at the time of the Passover Festival. To begin with there is absolutely no record of this practice in any surviving Roman or Jewish source. In addition it was never a practice in any other Roman colony or province. It is difficult to understand why they would do this with a people as difficult to govern as the Jews were.

The Romans also had a great respect for "the rule of law". They would never release a prisoner such as Barabbas accused of inciting a riot and murder. These crimes suggest a defiance of Roman authority with the consequent death of Roman soldiers or citizens. I am forced to conclude that the Barabbas story as recounted in the gospels is not historical.

What are we to do then? Do we throw out the Barabbas story completely? Did Barabbas even exist? Did the crowds shout for his release? Surprising as it may seem, I am going to answer "yes" to both of these last two questions.

To understand my rational let us examine the name itself. Jesus Barabbas is our version of the Aramaic name "Yeshua BarAbba". Aramaic, a language related to Hebrew, was the language spoken by ordinary people at the time. It was the native tongue of Jesus who himself would have been known as "Yeshua BarYoseph" or possibly BarMiriam. However BarAbba does not appear to be a recognized Jewish family name. We have on record from Jewish sources several hundred names in use at the time...BarAbba is not among them. It would be at best quite rare or at worst completely fictional.

Let us look closer at the name itself. "Bar" means "son of" just as the "Mac" in MacDonald also means "son of". "Abba" means "father" in the familiar sense of the word. We could even translate it as "dad" or "daddy". We also know that when Jesus prayed he frequently addressed God as "Abba". With this in mind, BarAbba translates as "son of the father" or even as "son of daddy". The very frivolous nature of the name suggests that it may be a nickname rather than a proper family name. Could it be that BarAbba is the nickname of Yeshua BarYoseph known to us as Jesus Christ? I am convinced that this is the case. The crowds that acclaimed Jesus as messiah on Sunday were the same crowds that were calling desperately for his release on Friday. He was not rejected by the Jewish people... they remained true to the bitter end.

You might at this point be a little disturbed that I have cast so much historical doubt on this Bible story. A Biblical literalist no doubt would be very upset. If these doubts are indeed well founded, we must then ask the question "why?" Were the evangelists ignorant or poorly informed? I really don't think so. The other possibility is that the story was written in this way deliberately or was perhaps rewritten by a later generation of copyists. To see why we must return again to history.

Biblical scholars are in general agreement that the earliest gospel was Mark and that it was written in Rome about 70 C.E. or possibly a little later. Just before, in 67 C.E. the Jews had risen up in a major revolt. The local Roman garrisons were quickly overrun. A Roman army dispatched from Syria was disastrously defeated in Galilee. A second, larger army was assembled under the generalship of Tiberius (later named emperor). This army laid siege to the city of Jerusalem.

It was the Passover season, so that in addition to the normal population several hundred thousand pilgrims were trapped in the city. Thousands starved during the siege. Those who attempted to escape were crucified when captured. These executions were carried out at a rate as high as two hundred per day. The entire area around Jerusalem was deforested to provide siege materials and crosses. At one point the Romans suspected that escapees were trying to smuggle out the temple treasury by swallowing gold coins. Two thousand were disemboweled in the search for the treasure. Tiberius put a stop to this practice because he thought it was "undignified".

In 70 C.E. the Romans broke through the city walls and a killing frenzy ensued. Witnesses recorded that the streets literally ran with blood. The killing only stopped when the Roman soldiers collapsed in exhaustion from the slaughter. Some Jews held out for another six weeks in the Antonia Fortress. Historians estimate that a million or more died. For the Jews it was a disaster of incredible magnitude. The temple was profaned, looted and put to the torch. The city itself was razed and a large portion of the city walls were torn down. Those who survived were either sold into slavery or were taken in chains to Rome for the entertainment of the crowds in the wild animal shows. It must have looked like the final chapter in the long story of the Jewish people.

The destruction of Jerusalem had an important secondary effect as well. The Jewish Christians of the Jerusalem Church died in their thousands alongside their Jewish brothers and sisters. The Jewish branch of the early Christian Church never fully recovered. If the Christian faith were to survive at all, it was going to have to do so in the Gentile world dominated by Rome.

By this point in time the Romans were already beginning to show hostility toward the Christians. It certainly did no good to the Christian cause to point out to their Roman persecutors that they were being held responsible for the death of Jesus.

There was certainly no denying the fact that the Romans had carried out the execution of Jesus, but perhaps the situation could be made more palatable if the actual blame for the execution was shifted from the Romans to the Jews. We are talking here about a matter of survival, the message of God's love as embodied in the life and teaching of Jesus simply had to survive. Putting the blame on the Jews must have seemed harmless, since at the time it looked very much like the Jews were finished anyhow.

In the end the Christian Church did survive and prosper. However the Jews survived as well. No one could possibly have predicted the depth of their faith, their great loyalty to their traditions and to each other and their tenacious resilience in the face of terrible hardship. The survival of the institutional Christian church has meant almost two thousand years of persecution for the Jews. It wasn't intended to be that way but that is how it turned out. They have been vilified as an evil race, as a people who have rejected God, and "Christ killers". It is simply not true!

To give an example of Jewish tenacity, consider the small town in Spain which "came out of the closet" about twenty years ago. In about the year 1490 C.E. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered the expulsion from Spain of all Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism. The great majority left the country often under terrible hardship. The remainder reluctantly converted. The inhabitants of this town converted but continued to secretly practice their Jewish faith. To have been discovered would have resulted in trial before the Inquisition and most likely torture and death. For over 500 years they kept their faith and their secret. Now that it is safe, they are openly practicing their faith again. I find it difficult to imagine a similar group of Christians doing this! In addition, many people of Spanish background are discovering , when researching their family tree, that they are actually descendants of Jews forcibly converted. A large number of these people have actually renounced their Christian affiliations and converted back to Judaism.

If it were within my power to erase a single verse from every Bible which has ever existed it would be: "His blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew 27:25). More prejudice, more persecution, more murder, more genocide can be blamed on that one little sentence than on any other sentence in any language at any time in human history.

Various Christian denominations are belatedly beginning to confront the horror of antiSemitism. The Roman Catholic Church has issued a formal statement to the effect that the Jews cannot collectively be held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. The Lutheran Church in the U.S.A. has more recently repudiated the vicious anti-Semitism of Martin Luther himself. This represents a hopeful beginning. However, the Christian churches have yet to confront the anti-Semitic bias in our own scriptures.

In this discussion today I have really only scratched the surface. We could examine quite a number of other Bible stories for a similar antiJewish bias. The story of "the Slaughter of the Innocents" by King Herod and the story of "the Betrayal of Jesus" by Judas Iscariot are but two of the numerous possibilities. Both stories admirably serve the purpose of portraying the Jews as an evil race.

As committed Christians we must confront the issues of antiSemitism and racism and our own historical complicity in them. We must ask ourselves "to what extent are WE collectively or individually guilty of these crimes?" We must then act to set our house in order. Before closing let me just mention that in November 1996 in the Toronto Star newspaper, I found an article concerning two congregations in Waterloo which have jointly built and are sharing a place of worship. The two are Westminster United Church and Temple Shalom. If this can happen, there is real hope for a healing between Christian and Jew.

AMEN

Sermon delivered to:

Carlisle / Kilbride United Church in July 1994.

Rockton United Church in November 1996.
 
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food4thought

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Libertarian free will is a myth that I, for the life of me, can't understand anyone believing.

Back to the OP, how do we deal with the tension? God had a plan, and set out to accomplish it, and men are free to act as they will. Hold those two ideas as true, did God work with the hand He was dealt? That sounds rather impotent.

God had a lot to do with deciding the type of people we become. He orchestrates where and when we are born, He influences our experiences. He can place the right person in the right place at the right time.

I can see where you are coming from, though. But God is NOT impotent. He chooses to allow us our freedom because love demands it. If anything, it makes God's job harder, revealing His unfathomable wisdom and understanding in bringing about His will. And God can directly intervene wherever He wills, as He did with Paul and the Pharaoh.
 
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LittleLambofJesus

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The direct agency of the death of Jesus were Roman soldiers carrying out the orders of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate. Indirectly it was the Jewish High Priest Caiaphas and his inner circle of Sadducees and Herodians. The Pharisees were not involved and certainly not the Jewish people themselves. I strongly suspect that even if the High Priest was not involved that the Romans eventually would have executed Jesus entirely on their own.
Sadducees make for an interesting study.

3. The Sadducees

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead or the immortality of the soul, since these doctrines are not mentioned in the law of Moses. Neither did they believe in heaven or hell. They interpreted the law literally and tended to support strict justice as opposed to mercy toward the offender. Since Jesus supported all these things opposed by the Sadducees, Jesus did not fit within the Sadducean movement.

Being closely associated with the Temple, the Sadducees disappeared from history when the Temple was destroyed in 70...........

The Destruction of Jerusalem - George Peter Holford, 1805AD

Revelation 14:11 And the smoke of the tormenting of Them is ascending into Ages to-Ages.

.
 
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JackRT

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Sadducees make for an interesting study.

3. The Sadducees

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead or the immortality of the soul, since these doctrines are not mentioned in the law of Moses. Neither did they believe in heaven or hell. They interpreted the law literally and tended to support strict justice as opposed to mercy toward the offender. Since Jesus supported all these things opposed by the Sadducees, Jesus did not fit within the Sadducean movement.

Being closely associated with the Temple, the Sadducees disappeared from history when the Temple was destroyed in 70...........

The Destruction of Jerusalem - George Peter Holford, 1805AD

Revelation 14:11 And the smoke of the tormenting of Them is ascending into Ages to-Ages.

.

I agree. The Pharisees are much misunderstood as well.

Over the centuries and going right back to the New Testament itself, the Pharisees have been viewed very negatively. In my opinion most of this negativity is quite undeserved.

At the time of Jesus the Pharisees were the most liberal and progressive aspect of Judaism. They were in several 'schools' or ‘bets’ --- the most progressive was Bet Hillel, which was in a minority position at the time of Jesus. The dominant group was the more conservative Bet Shammai. Towards the end of the first century following the destruction of the temple, Bet Hillel moved into the dominant role. Modern rabbinical Judaism traces its roots to the Pharisee movement.


Being a rabbi, Jesus was also a Pharisee and it seems most likely that Jesus was of Bet Hillel. To suggest that the scribes and Pharisees were in bed with the high priest and his little group is to betray a lack of understanding of Judaism at that time. The high priest, a Sadducee, was the most hated man in Judaism for the simple reason that he was regarded as a Roman 'quisling' --- he was after all personally appointed by the procurator himself and answered to him. The high priest did chair the Sanhedrin but did not control it. It was, in fact, controlled by the Pharisees who opposed the high priest at nearly every turn.


The Pharisees themselves became a major movement within Judaism in the centuries just prior to Jesus. They regarded their role as an effort to make the Law a possession of all the people not just the priesthood and the ruling elite. To this end they established synagogues in the cities, towns and villages. That is to say, they invented the 'community church' and most Christian churches today follow the same order of service established by the Pharisees --- several scripture readings interspersed with prayer and hymns and of course a sermon usually based on one of the readings. They also established schools attached to the synagogues to encourage literacy even amongst the common people. At the time of Jesus they as a group were certainly were not the hypocrites that the gospels portray them as. It is also very probably true that there were individual Pharisees who were over-zealous hypocrites.


In addition, they were able to successfully introduce legal measures to mitigate the harsher aspects of Torah law. This had the effect of virtually eliminating legal executions by stoning for offences like blasphemy, adultery, rebellious youths and the like. In those few executions that did take place, they ensured that the victim was rendered dead or unconscious by the first stone.


Scripture portrays a degree of hostility between the Pharisees and Jesus and his followers. It is doubtful that this was the actual case at the time of Jesus. I suspect that the majority of Pharisees would have been both curious about and friendly toward Jesus. In Acts 5:33-42 Luke portrays Peter and the apostles arrested and taken for trial before the Sanhedrin. Note that earlier in this same chapter it was the Sadducees not the Pharisees who were demanding that the apostles be imprisoned. It was Rabbi Gamaliel, a Pharisee, who successfully defended them before the Sanhedrin. Rabbi Gamaliel was a student of Rabbi Hillel mentioned earlier. Scripture even notes that Saul/Paul studied under Gamaliel.


About forty years following the execution of Jesus, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and with it they also destroyed the high priesthood. In the years following, the leadership of Judaism did devolve upon the Pharisees and we see rabbinic Judaism becoming dominant. Like all peoples threatened with cultural extinction, Judaism turned inward --- they circled the wagons and became very suspicious of any threat both internal and external. This is a fundamentalist knee jerk reaction --- we see something similar going on in the Islamic world today and also in the Christian right in certain parts of the USA.


This was the climate in which the gospels were written. By this time it was becoming increasingly apparent that the early Christian church was losing the battle for the heart and soul of Judaism to the Pharisee rabbis and there was a good deal of bitterness on the part of both parties. This explains the animosity toward the Pharisees. Let us then temper our attitudes and ‘Pharisee rhetoric’ because we now realize, for the most part, that they have been portrayed quite unfairly in the gospels.
 
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beebert

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I always understood the Gospel account - where Judas' betrayal (representing those closest to Christ), the Jewish leaders (representing God's chosen people) and Pilate's complicity (representing the Roman Empire, or in a broader sense, the rest of the world) - to be a condemnation of all of us; thus all of humankind is responsible for His death, including me.
Interesting. I guess then that those who belong to "the rest of the world" rather than those closest to Christ and those who are his "chosen people" are the least guilty to his death. Obviously, according to the gospel, the jews and Judas are more guilty than Pilate.
 
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jimmyjimmy

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God had a lot to do with deciding the type of people we become. He orchestrates where and when we are born, He influences our experiences. He can place the right person in the right place at the right time.

I can see where you are coming from, though. But God is NOT impotent. He chooses to allow us our freedom because love demands it. If anything, it makes God's job harder, revealing His unfathomable wisdom and understanding in bringing about His will. And God can directly intervene wherever He wills, as He did with Paul and the Pharaoh.

That view leaves God making a soup with the table scraps of mankind. I see Him as much more active in this.
 
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Who is responsible for the death of Jesus. Here are a few choices. Use your "free will" to choose one, and please add more, if you have others.

a) Jewish leaders
b) Roman guards
c) Judas
d) The Father
e) Me

Good question Jimmy.

In Jesus’ most intense pray for an hour repeating three times; we only have: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.”

This part of Christ pray would seem to be for our ears to hear, so why?

Jesus would know God’s Love for humans and that being the need for Him going to the cross, but why do we need to know there was no other way, unless we (I) could have provided that “other way”?

If a human had been able to fulfill his/her earthly objective without sin, than for that one person would Christ have to go to the cross?

If a person (me let’s say) had not sinned and fulfilled our earthly objective would that have provided “another way”?

God could certainly look down the corridor of time and see if I sinned or did not sin in fulfilling the earthly objective and if I had not sinned than I feel I would have provided “another way” and Christ would not have gone to the cross.

Unfortunately, I did sin, so it is personally my fought Christ went to the cross.

I can “blame” no one else.

This is the greatest tragedy I could commit and God has forgiven me of this, so should my Love be huge?
 
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JackRT

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Jewish Leaders and Roman Guards. I'd say it was more of a Jewish Decide, though. The roman guards were brutes, yes but they the Jews pushed his killing hard.


I wish people would stop saying "the Jews". This implies that the Jews as a people were responsible for the death of Jesus and that is not even close to being true. The vast majority of "the Jews" had never even heard of Jesus and those that had likely mourned him in quiet resignation as yet another failed messiah.
 
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bling

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No one "killed" Jesus. Scripture makes clear that he gave up (voluntarily) his life for us. Would it be possible for us to kill God?

God Bless
Jax
Acts 2: 36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Peter seems to be saying they crucified the messiah?
Look at my post 97
 
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bling

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I wanted that on the list with the other things. There is no one answer. Acts 3:15 (you killed the Prince of life), Heb. 6:6 (those who fall away crucify the Son of God all over again) - the Bible gives more than one answer. To say "choose one" is to ask the wrong question.
Look at my post 97
 
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