Who Killed Jesus?

The question “who killed Jesus” is a deceptively simple question. If you ask different people, you’ll get wildly different answers. Here are some that I’ve heard over the years:

• “My sins killed Jesus.” 
• “God killed Jesus.”
• “Satan killed Jesus.”
• “The Jews killed Jesus.” 
• “The Romans killed Jesus.” 
• “The religious leaders killed Jesus.”

Let’s look at each of these answers and see what we can learn. We’ll see that they fall into two basic groups, depending on what they’re trying to explain.

Did “Your Sins” Kill Jesus?

It’s common for Christians to say that their sins killed Jesus. The first thing to notice is that this is a theological claim. And what do I mean by a theological claim?

I mean that this is based on a certain set of theological assumptions that not everyone holds. An atheist would not believe that their sins killed Jesus. Neither would a Jew. Nor a Muslim. Nor a Buddhist. Nor a Hindu. None of these have a theology that would lead them to think their sins killed Jesus. 

But not all Christians have that kind of theology, either. A Christian who believes in the Moral Influence theory of the atonement would not think their sins killed Jesus. Nor would a Christian who follows the Christus Victor theory of the atonement. Now would someone who follows Rene Girard’s Scapegoat theory of the atonement. 

Christians who accept the Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory or the Satisfaction theory or the Ransom theory might well conclude that their sins killed Jesus. But then again, they might not. There’s nothing intrinsic in these theories of atonement that forces you to believe that your sins actually killed Jesus. 

It’s worth noting that “sins” are not physical entities that can pick up a hammer and nails. Whatever “sins” are, they are metaphysical. So a belief that your sins killed Jesus can only be a metaphor, at best. There needs to be more to it than that. 

Did God Kill Jesus?

Once again, this is a theological claim. Many people, whether Christian or not, would find it offensive to say that God actually killed Jesus. Killing Jesus was evil, and God isn’t evil. 

Christians who say that God killed Jesus don’t mean that God actually picked up the hammer and nails, even though God could in principle do it. 

What they typically mean is that God willed for Jesus to be killed in order to atone for the sins of the world, and God arranged things so that humans would kill Jesus, and God did nothing to stop it. The theory is that nothing happens unless God makes it happen, so if Jesus died, it’s because God did it. 

But not everyone accepts this idea, and even those who believe it seem uncomfortable with it. 

Did Satan Kill Jesus?

This is yet another theological claim. You can’t believe Satan killed Jesus unless you hold the theological belief that Satan exists. Many people don’t. Even if you believe Satan exists, this doesn’t force you to believe that Satan killed Jesus. Some Christians have argued that this attributes more power to Satan than it actually has.

And again, those who believe Satan killed Jesus don’t mean that Satan itself used the hammer and nails. In this view, Satan urged on humans to do the deed. 

We’ve now seen three different theological claims for what killed Jesus. And we can see a common thread here. A theological claim like these is trying to answer the theological question of why it was necessary for Jesus to die. 

There’s nothing wrong with theological questions, but some people prefer to ask the historical question: “What events happened and what actions did people take that led to the death of Jesus?” And that question leads to different kinds of theories. 

So now let’s look at the theories about actual humans who are said to have killed Jesus. 

Did “The Jews” Kill Jesus?

Many Christians over the centuries have believed that “the Jews” killed Jesus. And there are certain texts in the New Testament that they cite for this. The most notorious is Matthew 27:25, which quotes some in the crowd at the trial of Jesus as saying, “His blood shall be on us and on our children!”

For centuries, this verse was interpreted by most Christians to mean that all Jews through the centuries are “Christ-killers”—directly responsible for the murder of Jesus. The “blood curse” was used as an excuse to torture and murder Jews for many hundreds of years. It was used by Nazis during the Holocaust as a justification for Hitler’s Final Solution.  

Most modern Christians don’t believe that all Jews are “Christ-killers”. But it’s a very low bar to merely disavow the blood curse. We should be very clear on this. No more than a few hundred citizens of Jerusalem actually witnessed the trial of Jesus, and the number might have been much less—it could have been a few dozen. We have very little information on what actually happened at the trial. And furthermore, nobody can assign their own guilt to their children or anyone else. 

If some first-century Jews can be blamed for killing Jesus, they were few in number, and their descendants are not to blame. 

In any event, no Jewish hands picked up the hammer and nails to kill Jesus.

Did “The Romans” Kill Jesus?

It’s a fact that one man physically hammered Jesus to the cross. He wore the uniform of a Roman soldier, and he had the help of a small squad of others wearing the same uniform. But we don’t actually know the ethnic identity of these men. 

In the time of Jesus, Judea and Samaria were directly ruled by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. He had only about three thousand soldiers under his command, about half a legion, organized as either five or six cohorts. An ordinary cohort was 480 fighting men, plus officers and support staff. A “first cohort” was nearly twice that size, 800 fighting men, plus officers and support. 

One of these, the “Italian cohort,” presumably came from Rome or at least Italy. But the other cohorts under Pilate’s command were auxiliaries, men enlisted locally within Syria, which was the Roman province containing Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Idumea, Perea, Arabia, Iturea, Batanea, and numerous other ethnic districts. But auxiliaries who served in Judea usually were enlisted from Samaria. This was one reason Jews hated Samaritans.

So it’s not at all clear that any of the men on Jesus’s death squad were Roman or Italian. It seems more likely they were auxiliary troops, men from Samaria. So if you want to make bets on who actually spiked the hands and feet of Jesus, it was most likely a Samaritan infantryman. A guy just following orders. 

And those orders came from governor Pilate. Historians have argued for centuries over the gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus. In those accounts, Pilate comes off as an unwilling participant, with his hand forced by the Jewish leaders and a Jewish mob. 

Modern historians take a dim view of this idea. We know from other sources that Pilate was a hardliner who didn’t worry his head much over who was innocent and who was guilty. Pilate had the power to execute the innocent right along with the guilty, and we know that he used his power on several occasions. 

The bottom line is that most modern historians put the actual blame for the execution of Jesus on Pilate. You may agree or disagree with the historians, but you should be aware that they have a broad consensus on this. 

But there’s more to be said. Our only sources for the trial of Jesus tell us he was handed over to Pilate by a few Jewish leaders. These sources are theological documents (the four gospels) but theological documents often contain historical information, and these four contain quite a lot.

Did “The Religious Leaders” Kill Jesus?

All four gospels say that Jesus was arrested on the night before his death in the area now called “Gethsemane”. This word is an English rendition of “Gat-shemen,” meaning “olive oil press.” There’s a cave in the Kidron Valley at the base of the Mount of Olives that bears archaeological evidence of an olive press. Long local tradition holds that this cave is the exact location where Jesus was arrested. You can visit the cave to this day. There’s a very nice chapel there. I blogged about it in my article The Gethsemane Cave. 

The gospels assert that Jesus was arrested by Jewish soldiers, presumably Temple Guards. He was then taken to a hearing before the high priest Caiaphas and his father-in-law Annas, the most powerful chief priest in Jerusalem. No other Jewish leaders are named in the accounts of the hearing. Since this was late at night, it seems extremely unlikely that there could have been many others. 

But Annas and Caiaphas certainly had the authority, all on their own, to interrogate Jesus and then send him on to governor Pilate. One of the main duties of the ruling elite class in Jerusalem was to maintain the peace, to collaborate with Rome in putting down any insurrections. 

And Jesus was charged with insurrection. All four gospels name the same basic charge against Jesus, that he claimed to be “King of the Jews.” In those days and in that place, this claim was insurrection, grounds for immediate execution. 

There is no strong reason to believe any Pharisees were at the hearing before Annas and Caiaphas. The gospel accounts of these hearings don’t name a single Pharisee. Only Annas and Caiaphas are named, and both of these were Sadducees—the rabid enemies of the Pharisees. 

So it’s overstating the evidence to say that “the religious leaders” killed Jesus. The most you can say is that at least two religious leaders were involved. But Jerusalem probably had fifty other Sadducees and hundreds of Pharisees. It’s impossible to say which of them might have been there, if any. We just don’t know. 

The Bottom Line

So who killed Jesus? A small squad of soldiers in Roman uniform, probably born in Samaria. They had no personal malice against Jesus. They were following orders from the governor, Pontius Pilate. But Pilate probably knew very little about Jesus. He knew Passover was near, tempers were high, and insurrection was in the air. A few Jewish chief priests, Annas and Caiaphas and possibly others, handed Jesus over to Pilate on the charge that he claimed to be King of the Jews. 

That’s what we know from the historical documents. From those documents, different people have drawn many different theological conclusions. 

There is nothing wrong with holding theological beliefs. Everybody does. But it’s important to remember that there’s a difference between a theological belief and historical data. People having wildly different theological beliefs can agree on the same historical account.