Related articles and links |  1 of 3

Newsweek asks, "Who killed Jesus?"
Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham is an award-winning reporter. But he's neither a theologian nor a historian, so one may wish that he "showed his work" a bit more in this week's cover story, "Who Really Killed Jesus?" (It's a subject U.S. News & World Report put on its cover four years ago.) It's clear that he did quite a bit of research, but some of his statements certainly raise the question, "Says who?" This especially comes into play when Meacham sets himself up as a better recorder of events than four well-known reporters: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

"The Bible can be a problematic source," he writes. "Though countless believers take it as the immutable word of God, Scripture is not always a faithful record of historical events; the Bible is the product of human authors who were writing in particular times and places with particular points to make and visions to advance. And the roots of Christian anti-Semitism lie in overly literal readings—which are, in fact, misreadings—of many New Testament texts."

The points to make and visions to advance depended on downplaying Pilate and emphasizing Caiaphas in the Passion narrative, according to Meacham (though this is common among many scholars today; this concept certainly doesn't originate with Newsweek). "The [Jewish Temple] elite looked down on Jesus' followers, so the New Testament authors portrayed the priests in a negative light," Meacham writes. "We can also see why the writers downplayed the role of the ruling Romans in Jesus' death. The advocates of Christianity—then a new, struggling faith—understandably chose to placate, not antagonize, the powers that were. Why remind the world that the earthly empire which still ran the Mediterranean had executed your hero as a revolutionary?"

Therefore, Meacham says, the account of the festival crowd before Pilate (something found in all four gospels), is probably exaggerated or made up entirely:

In the memorable if manufactured crowd scene in the version of the movie screened by Newsweek, Gibson included a line that has had dire consequences for the Jewish people through the ages. The prefect is again improbably resisting the crowd, the picture of a just ruler. Frustrated, desperate, bloodthirsty, the mob says: "His blood be on us and on our children!" Gibson ultimately cut the cry from the film, and he was right to do so. Again, consider the source of the dialogue: a partisan Gospel writer. The Gospels were composed to present Jesus in the best possible light to potential converts in the Roman Empire—and to put the Temple leadership in the worst possible light.

But Meacham, who will be discussing his article Thursday online, doesn't go as far as some. "The Temple elite undoubtedly played a key role in the death of Jesus," he notes. "But Pilate's own culpability and ultimate authority are indisputable as well."

But here's the problem in Meacham's approach (and, again, he's certainly not alone in this): all of the conclusions he says have been made by modern scholarship are found in the gospel narratives themselves. "In fact, in the age of Roman domination, only Rome crucified," Meacham writes. "The crime was sedition, not blasphemy—a civil crime, not a religious one.

Really? Why that's shocking! Oh, wait. That's what John said: "Pilate said to them, 'Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.' The Jews said to him, 'It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.'"

Furthermore, knowing the gospel accounts better would have thwarted a paragraph like this:

next page... |  1 of 3

February (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48