Steven Carr

For more than one hundred years, scholars of the Historical Jesus have been studying, inter alia, why Jesus was killed?

What is the consensus mainstream view on why Jesus was killed?

premjan

He caused trouble for the Jewish establishment?

Steven Carr

By doing what? Gathering fishermen and tax-collectors as followers?

premjan

Questioning the way they ran the temple for one. Reinterpreting Jewish texts to mean something socialist rather than conservative.

Vinnie

If Jesus was crucified by the Romans one has to consider why his followers were not. That was the best part of Paula Fredriksen's book on Jesus, IMHO.

Vinnie

gdeering

He was killed so that thousands of years later people would gather enough intellectual fortitude to realize he wasn't killed at all - but not in the way theists mean.

A serious on-topic answer, I've no clue. Which sums up the extra biblical evidence for Jesus' death nicely.


Gregg

yalla

He either had to be killed or go to heaven wherever in a puff of smoke or similar because otherwise people listening to the other stories would ask "Where he is now?"
Of the 2 choices the gospel writers decided to go for both.

aa5874

Based on the Jesus stories in the Gospels, Jesus was brought to Pilate by Jews initially or primarily for blasphemy. There is really no indication that Pilate or the Roman authorities were looking to apprehend or execute Jesus before the Sanhedrin or high priest arrested him.

In Josephus, the Roman authorities did try to kill the Egyptian prophet and his followers without a trial, they simply sent soldiers to attack them.

But, it is still indeed puzzling why was Peter and Saul/Paul allowed to propagate the same blasphemous message for almost thirty years when Jesus and Stephen were executed or stoned to death very shortly after they began to spread their blasphemy.

Once Jesus was deemed to be a false prophet, and had a large following then it would have been expected that the Roman authorities would have used soldiers to attack and kill Jesus and his followers, without a trial.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Yalla,

I think the writers really had another choice.

The story is about a prophet who predicts that God will come down from the heavens and create the kingdom of god on Earth.

The writers could have had God come down and create the kingdom of heaven on Earth. That would have been the happy ending.

This would have made the story highly unrealistic. That leaves us with the chosen ending: people kill prophet, God takes prophet up to heaven. That sets up the sequel for God to come down and kill the bad guys. This ending is more realistic, but terribly disappointing and unsatisfying.

Because they were never given the sequel and the happy ending, people have been acting out the sequel ever since.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Steven Carr

So the mainstream consensus Biblical scholarship , based on a survey of 100 top NT scholars, is 'Jesus was killed because....', because of what?

I'm not sure what the mainstream consensus view is, which is why I ask.