Pilate’s Legal Path to Crucifying Jesus

            “He died on the cross for having done the wrong thing (caused a commotion) in the 
wrong place (the Temple) at the wrong time (just before Passover). Here lies the real tragedy of Jesus the Jew.”[1] 

See also Killing the Messiah: the Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025). 

By Nathanael Andrade 
Chair, Department of History
Binghamton University
March 2025 

          Writing about Jesus’ trial is humbling. At first it seems so simple. The four New Testament Gospels agree on various points: an indictment by the chief priests, a questioning by Pontius Pilate, a crucifixion alongside condemned brigands, a titulus reading “King of the Jews.” Ultimately Pilate inflicts on Jesus an excruciating punishment that Roman governors doled out to abject convicts, often for seditious offenses. These points of agreement are pivots of modern scholarship.
          Even so, on closer inspection the Gospel sequences for Jesus’ trial defy easy credibility. In all of them Pilate doubts Jesus’ guilt; in some he publicly proclaims his innocence. But as judge, he condemns to death a man that he has not convicted of any crime. He gestures toward a pardon. He is intimidated by a crowd demanding Jesus’ crucifixion. Pilate gives the chief priests and crowd what they want. But here the Gospels beg obvious questions. Did Pilate visibly kill an innocent man for convenience? If he did, why was it convenient? 
          For Geza Vermes, Jesus’ trial and crucifixion were determined by what he said and did at Jerusalem’s Temple in his final days. This context mattered more than his message or reputation. Even if Jesus was promoting himself as Messiah or, in Pilate’s eyes, as “King of the Jews,” his core following was apparently small, and he lacked the means to become one. But at the crowded Temple precinct during Passover Week, such posturing could foreseeably prove volatile and deadly. Vermes’ viewpoint implies that Pilate was not invested in Jesus’ innocence. He convicted Jesus of a crime because he thought Jesus had committed one. In Killing the Messiah, I argue that Pilate classified Jesus’ conduct at the Temple precinct during his final Passover week as criminal behavior worthy of crucifixion. The confrontational actions and incendiary message of Jesus and his core followers, which involved ostensible Messianic posturing, could have foreseeably incited crowd violence that got innocent people killed. It fit Pilate’s criteria for sedition, and he had Jesus crucified like other seditious people.[2] 
          Even so, such reconstructions are drops in an ocean. Scholars have staked an amazing variety of positions on Jesus’ trial. Some harmonize the Gospels’ variations and surmise that Pilate condemned Jesus to crucifixion because the chief priests and a crowd wanted it. He upheld Jesus’ conviction for blasphemy by a council the chief priests had organized. While doing so, he also maybe convicted him of treason or sedition for cover but schemed for his release.[3] In other theories, the hostility of Jesus’ message or activity to Roman authority spurred his execution,[4] or Pilate and the chief priests agreed that Jesus’ Messianic posturing, in tandem with his conduct at the Temple, warranted an execution as “King of the Jews.”[5] Some posit that Pilate had Jesus crucified because of the foreseeable impact of his popularity on crowds in Jerusalem during Passover week, perhaps without trying him for any crime.[6] Some maintain that Jesus was organizing an armed insurrection against Roman rule.[7] In one theory, Pilate thought Jesus was harmless but executed him for being mentally ill.[8] There really is no consensus. Why is this? 
          One serious reason is that scholars differ tremendously on whether the Gospels really capture Jesus. They all were ostensibly written at least a generation after Jesus died and after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in 70 CE. By then believers in Jesus as Christ were debating with other Jews about Jesus’ Messianic significance, laying the foundations for a distinctive Christian movement, and reinterpreting Jesus’ life. Nowadays some conceive of the Gospels as reliable even if they add Christian layers to Jesus’ preaching as a Jew.[9] Some believe Jesus never existed.[10] Some claim to distinguish between the Gospels’ historical and invented sequences through “criteria of authenticity.” Others surmise that the Gospels capture only who Jesus was in general.[11] Because the Gospels are so controversial, people differ about who Jesus was and why he died. No Gospel sequence for Jesus’ final Passover Week has escaped challenge.
          We ultimately encounter many thorny questions. Who was Jesus? What did he do in his final Passover Week in Jerusalem? What hastened his death there? Who arrested Jesus and brought him before Pilate? Did Pilate convict Jesus of an actual crime? What was it? 
          Perhaps such questions are irresolvable. When we try to reconstruct Jesus’ trial, we are ultimately measuring the plausibility of different theories, not what is demonstrably provable. But evaluating the legal practices of Roman magistrates and municipal authorities in the Roman empire can help.[12] If we weigh them against Mark, the earliest surviving Gospel,[13] we can make the following plausible inferences about Jesus’ final Passover and how the Gospels narrate it. 
          The Gospels inaccurately shift responsibility from Pilate to the chief priests and other Jews. All the Gospels agree that Pilate was Jesus’ judge and sentenced him to a punishment imposed by Roman judges on people convicted of serious crimes. He also had brigands crucified alongside him. By all appearances, knowledge that Jesus had suffered a Roman crucifixion was established among early Jesus Christ believers (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2, 2:8; Gal 6:14; Phil 2:8), and the Gospel authors could not dismiss it. But after the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple, believers in Jesus as Christ were distancing themselves from other Jews and claiming to be harmless to Roman authority. On this basis the Gospels crafted a sympathetic Pilate who believed in Jesus’ innocence but was outmaneuvered by chief priests bent on his death. This portrayal has had a massive impact on the history of global anti-Semitism.[14] But Roman governors normally executed people after convicting them of a crime, and if Pilate had not convicted Jesus of one, his reported pardon attempt makes no sense. We should accept that Pilate convicted Jesus of a serious crime, one that invited a scourging and crucifixion that Roman governors allotted to seditionists and brigands.
          Jesus pitted himself against the ordering of power and wealth that Roman magistrates, Herodian dynasts, and chief priests upheld in Roman Judaea. The Gospels support that Jesus anticipated a divine intervention for which he was a heaven-sent messenger or agent. It would unravel the order of power and wealth in greater Judaea, one in which Roman magistrates, Herodian dynasts, and the chief priests exercised privilege and governing authority. To this end Jesus’ preaching and behavior also invited Messianic interpretations and accusations of regal posturing. 
          The Gospels claim that Jesus criticized the chief priests’ management of the Temple. He was confrontational with money-changers and merchants there, envisioned divine judgement for the chief priests, and even predicted the Temple’s destruction. The accuracy of these claims remains heavily debated. They ostensibly reflect knowledge of the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE. Like his Jewish contemporaries, Jesus valued the Temple, its rituals, and its sanctity. But the Dead Sea Scrolls and later rabbinic texts support that some Jews believed the chief priests to be mismanaging the Temple, immorally benefiting from Roman Judaea’s order of wealth, or meriting a divine judgement that would alter Temple authority. The Gospels’ claims that Jesus shared in such perspectives are generally plausible.[15] 
          Jesus anticipated an arrest attempt at Jerusalem, but crowd volatility during Passover Week deterred it. Whether Pilate anticipated Jesus’ arrival at Jerusalem during Passover is debatable. But various Gospel passages support that Herod Antipas sought his arrest during his preaching in Galilee, just as he did for John the Baptizer. The Gospels also hint that Jesus anticipated arrest attempts when he arrived at Jerusalem for his final Passover. In Mark (11:15-14:17), Jesus often changes his lodging locations, which only his followers know, and acquires utilities in Jerusalem through coded messages.[16] He preaches at the Temple for two days, but after serious confrontations with the chief priests there, he stays away. On the Day of Preparation for Passover, some followers apparently go to the Temple for the lamb sacrifice or to find a house in Jerusalem for the Passover meal. Jesus remains on the Mount of Olives until sundown. 
          But why did neither chief priests nor Roman troops arrest Jesus during his regal entry into Jerusalem or his two days of confrontational activity at the Temple? Whether these events were as impressive and visible as the Gospels report, or even happened, is debated. Jesus was also conceivably not the only charismatic preacher in Jerusalem or at the Temple that warranted attention. The widely-noted volatility of crowds in Jerusalem during Passover is also worth emphasis. Their potential to be agitated into serious rioting or factional conflict could have deterred public attempts at arrest. Jesus and his followers may have been anticipating or leveraging this. Mark (12:12, 14:1-2) suggests that the chief priests initially tried to have Jesus arrested at the Temple precinct but desisted because the attempt could inspire crowd disturbance.[17] 
         As municipal leaders, the chief priests were fulfilling social obligations by arresting Jesus and bringing a capital charge before Pilate. According to the Gospels, the chief priests were threatened by Jesus’ popularity, authority, and criticisms of them during his final Passover Week. But fearing crowd volatility at the Temple, they opted to confront Jesus outside Jerusalem where only his core followers would be present. They organized an arrest party, had an advisory council assess Jesus’ liability, and brought charges before Pilate. 
          What the Gospels omit is that the chief priests were fulfilling a social obligation by neutralizing Jesus’ conduct at the Temple, in the eyes of both Roman authority and many worshippers in Jerusalem.[18] In first-century Judaea Roman troops commanded by the prefect were responsible for suppressing serious insurgent threats, large-scale brigandage, or mass movements spearheaded by charismatic preachers (Jos., Ant. 20.97-102, 167-72; War 2.261-63). By contrast, we could expect the chief priests, as Jerusalem’s municipal leaders, to organize the arrest of public agitators accompanied by a small group of followers. In later centuries, Roman soldiers handled small-scale policing, and so the Gospel of John (18:12) places them at Jesus’ arrest. But in the first-century empire, local civic authorities arranged policing action against small criminal bands, as surviving municipal charters show. In turn, Roman magistrates like Pilate and other prefects of Judaea judged capital cases.[19] 
         Ultimately, the chief priests were responsible for ensuring the safety of pilgrims at the Temple precinct and organizing the arrest of people engaged in incendiary behavior there. Roman soldiers overlooking the Temple could intervene in serious rioting or rebellion that agitators started. But in such situations, many people could die at their hands.[20] The chief priests had a conundrum. Jesus’ confrontational behavior could incite serious social instability that got innocent people killed or invite violence from Roman soldiers that they could not control. Even so, arresting Jesus there posed similar risks. 
            Ultimately, the claims of Mark and subsequent Gospels that the chief priests arranged Jesus’ arrest are plausible. What the Gospels do not state is that they were fulfilling a social obligation by doing it. They conceivably developed a strategy to arrest Jesus outside the city, without Roman soldiers or volatile crowds. After organizing an armed band to arrest him, they convened an advisory council to assess his liability for a capital charge. But having no authority to execute convicts, they brought charges before a Roman judge, as they reportedly did it in other instances (Jos., War 6.300-9). 
         Roman prefects of Judaea like Pilate exercised vast discretion in identifying criminal behavior and punishments. A main task of Roman magistrates who had capital authority was to rid their district of “evil men.” These included people engaged in brigandage, insurgency, or any behavior that could disturb the social order, including crowd agitation. To this end, they engaged in repressive violence during policing actions against immediate threats. Otherwise apprehended parties were supposed to be tried and judged. But much was left to the discretion of Roman magistrates, who were not legal professionals. In the first century, they often judged criminal matters without clear statutes, and the force of their own biases and moral worldviews could create unpredictable outcomes. Their advisers, local experts, and litigants at trials undoubtedly shaped their perceptions of criminal matters, but what was criminal or seditious could be ambiguous.[21] Armed insurrection or a mass movement organized by a charismatic preacher easily fit the criteria. But what if a preacher engaged in confrontational and incendiary behavior in a volatile public space without a mass following? Judges apparently differed, and one reportedly had such a preacher scourged, but not executed (Jos., War 6.300-9). If Jesus had been judged by someone other than Pilate, he may not have been crucified. 
          Roman authorities could be unaccountable for abusing power, but they also faced consequences for it. The Gospels convey that Roman judges like Pilate sometimes knowingly or willingly executing innocent men. It could happen. Some magistrates engaged in unwarranted massacres or executed without trials. The clamoring of crowds could influence verdicts. Roman judges had reputations for being capricious and unaccountable. But they could face serious repercussions for misconduct or unwarranted violence. We know of magistrates who were recalled, tried, exiled, or executed after aggrieved subjects petitioned senior governors or even the emperor. After a decade in Judaea, Pilate was recalled to Rome and tried for unwarranted violence against Samaritans (Jos., Ant. 18.85-89). He apparently believed it a justifiable response to criminal acts even if his accusers did not. These factors raise doubts that Pilate recognized Jesus’ innocence, or even proclaimed it publicly, before crucifying him at a crowd’s request.[22] 
         Pilate’s relationship with the chief priests affected how he responded to public agitation, but he did not kill at request. The first-century authors Philo and Josephus record moments in which Pilate responded violently to crowd disturbance and others when he did not. A key pivot was whether public agitation was sanctioned by the chief priests or spawned by charismatic preachers pitted against them. When it reflected hostility to the chief priests and their governance, Pilate classified it as seditious and behaved violently. He unleashed his soldiers, for example, on a crowd demonstration at Jerusalem that protested his using the Temple’s wealth to build an aqueduct, with the chief priests’ apparent complicity (Jos., Ant. 18.60-62; War 2.175-77). When the chief priests likewise prosecuted Jesus for Messianic posturing and inciting disturbance at the Temple, Pilate plausibly agreed with their perspective and convicted Jesus of sedition. But he did not crucify an innocent man just because they or a crowd wanted it.[23]