By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Although many people believe the question of who was responsible for the death of Jesus had long been put to rest, disagreements about that issue have occurred in recent months, for example, with complaints that a bill against antisemitism would make it impossible for Christians to declare that the Jews killed Jesus. Entering into this debate is Binghamton University Professor Nathanael Andrade with his new book “Killing the Messiah: The Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.” 
In an e-mail interview, Andrade, who has a Ph.D. in Greek and Roman history, and was raised Catholic, noted how his curiosity brought him to the research project. “I think two factors ultimately brought me to this topic,” he said. “The first is my background as a historian of the Roman Middle East who has long reflected on how its various peoples, including Jews and Christians, navigated Roman imperialism. The second factor is that I have long had a deep curiosity about the New Testament Gospels as historical texts and their relationship to Jesus as a historical figure. This is an issue that modern scholarship has long explored and, in a variety of ways, I wanted to do some of this critical work in the hope of lending some helpful perspectives or at least coming to terms with my own understanding.”
Andrade’s study led him to a different conclusion than the one that appears in the Christian Gospels. “As I did my research on the Gospels and the existing scholarship on them, I grew to appreciate more and more the contemporary relevance. I became more convinced that Pontius Pilate executed Jesus because he thought Jesus had committed a criminal offense,” he said. “The Gospels’ reports that he believed Jesus was innocent and had Jesus crucified only because the chief priests and a crowd at Jerusalem insisted on it distorted his role and agency in Jesus’ death. This distortion is in many ways the source of the harmful view that Jews are responsible for Jesus’ death, one that persists until this day.”
According to Andrade, the reason behind the version told in the Gospels has more to do with Christians looking to ingratiate themselves with the Roman world and to separate themselves from those Jews who were rebelling against the empire. “I do think that a desire among members of Jesus’ movement to find acceptance in the Roman empire and to distance themselves from Jewish insurgencies of the late first and second centuries is a key part of the picture,” he said. “Also, by the time the Gospels were being written, members of Jesus’ movement were receiving increased scrutiny and in some cases violence from Roman magistrates, and this informs the portrayal of a Pontius Pilate who essentially considers Jesus harmless and innocent of wrongdoing. The Gospels are basically arguing that Jesus and those who accept him as a messiah, are not guilty of anything that Roman authorities would or should classify as criminal. These factors, combined with the fact that contemporary Jews mostly did not accept Jesus as their messiah, in my view govern the shift that we see in the Gospels.”
Andrade noted that the original Jesus movement was a Jewish one. “For many scholars (with whom I agree), the first-century Jesus movement was a Jewish community that recognized Jesus as a heaven-sent Messiah and was recruiting non-Jews to join it,” he added. “An entirely separate Christian community had not yet taken shape. But like most Jewish communities in the Roman empire, Jesus’ movement had to define its own relationship with Roman authority. In this context, the Gospels portray Jesus and his followers as in conflict with other Jews who did not embrace Jesus as the Messiah while minimizing the concerns that Jesus’ messianic preaching at the Temple of Jerusalem would have raised for Roman magistrates like Pilate.”
The historian views his work from a secular rather than a religious point of view, noting that his research has not had “an impact on my religious practice or orientation personally. For me, asking historical questions of the Gospels is something distinct from believing in their theological or cosmic truth (though I know that not everyone agrees). I believe that religious diversity is to be celebrated, but my views on history and politics are best described as secular, and that is the lens through which I have long evaluated the Gospels as historical texts.”