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They Suffered under Pontius Pilate

Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha

Fernando Bermejo-Rubio

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bermejo Rubio, Fernando, author.

Title: They suffered under Pontius Pilate : Jewish anti-Roman resistance and the crosses at Golgotha / Fernando Bermejo-Rubio.

Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The Gospel reports about several men crucified under Pilate seem to have a reliable core. Taking seriously into account the collective nature of that execution, this book carries out a bold reconstruction of Jesus of Nazareth’s story in the framework of Jewish anti-Roman resistance, thereby making sense of that crucifixion”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023020710 (print) | LCCN 2023020711 (ebook) | ISBN 9781978709577 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978709584 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Pilate, Pontius, active 1st century. | Bible. Gospels—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Bible. Gospels—History of Biblical events. | Government, Resistance to—Religious aspects—Judaism—History. | Judaism and state—History. | Religion and politics.

Classification: LCC BS2555.52 .B48 2023 (print) | LCC BS2555.52 (ebook) | DDC 226/.06—dc23/eng/20230731

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023020710

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023020711

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To Henry Innes MacAdam,

as a token of gratitude and friendship

Contents

List of Figures xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Looking at Golgotha Otherwise xv

Abbreviations xxi

Part I: The Gospel Story as a Historical Problem 1

Chapter 1: Why a Historian Cannot Trust the Gospel Story: Deconstructing Common Wisdom 3

Chapter 2: Ways of Responding to the Textual Problems 31

Part II: Looking to the Real World: The Historical Context 57

Chapter 3: Palestine under Roman and Herodian Rule 59

Chapter 4: Jewish Resistance under Roman and Herodian Rule 79

Part III: Etiology of a Collective Execution 109

Chapter 5: Unraveling the ...

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About They Suffered under Pontius Pilate: Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha

Although, according to the Christian Gospels, three men were crucified ca. 30 CE outside Jerusalem under the prefect Pontius Pilate, both popular wisdom and mainstream scholarship focus solely on the fate of a single man. The story is indeed told, once and again, as if only Jesus of Nazareth had been the target of Roman repression, as if only his suffering were worthy of attention, and as if the other men crucified at Golgotha had nothing to do with him.
The present book forcefully argues that, from an epistemological and even an ethical perspective, this is an odd and worrying state of affairs: the prevailing approach entails one-sided oversight of significant information, betrays a strong bias, and prevents us from grasping the meaning of the episode, thus making no sense from the standpoint of ancient historians. The event which requires being elucidated is not Jesus’ crucifixion, but the whole episode of the execution by the Roman authorities of at least three men.
Who were the other men crucified at Golgotha? Were they actually unconnected to the self-styled “king of the Jews”, as the evangelists want us to believe? Why did the Roman prefect crucify all of them together, in the same place at the same time? And why are we told that Jesus’ cross was placed in the middle of the others? Taking seriously into account the extent of the implausible elements in the Passion accounts, the collective nature of the crucifixion, and the politics of Roman Palestine, They Suffered under Pontius Pilate: Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha provides fresh and consistent answers to these and many other pressing questions, offering a genuinely historical reconstruction. The conclusions obtained challenge many well-rooted assumptions, unveil Jesus’ story as a collective enterprise, have far-reaching implications for the history of Judaism under the Principate, and compel us to critically rethink the beginnings of Christianity.

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