Book Review

The killing of Jesus

The Passion

The advertisement on the cover of this latest book by Professor Vermes promises “the true story”. And indeed, “What really happened?” is the question he claims to be answering. The implication, of course, is that the gospel accounts on which any reconstruction must be based, along with the interpretations offered by most modern commentators, have hitherto concealed rather than disclosed the truth. But now, in less than 100 short pages (for a fifth of the book consists of gospel texts and a chart showing their differences from one another), with frequent reference to ancient texts but not to the work of any other scholars, Geza Vermes, formerly professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford, claims to be able to tell his readers “what really happened”.

He is well qualified to make the attempt. A renowned expert in ancient Judaism, he has also written no less than six books on Jesus. He writes from the standpoint of a student of history, and as a Jew and former Catholic priest always with sympathy for Jesus himself. Indeed, when asked at the end of a broadcast many years ago what he thought about the crucifixion, he answered, “A catastrophe!”. His criticism, often severe and sometimes refreshingly original, is directed at those Christian writers (particularly Paul) who in his view have distorted the historical record and perpetuated a false understanding of one who was no more and no less than “a charismatic healer and exorcist and a magnetic preacher”. And with regard to the Passion, it is the evangelists whom he particularly takes to task for having recast the story in such a way as to “whitewash Pilate and Rome, and correspondingly denigrate the Jewish leaders and through them the Jewish people at large”. The gospel writers may be “like virtuoso wizards”, but this does not prevent their accounts being “seriously undermined by repeated contradictions”. It is these alleged contradictions which place a tool in the hand of those who attempt to rewrite the story.

The attempt has been made many times. Indeed the gospel narrative contains paradoxes which immediately challenge historical judgement. The most basic of these is the apparent mismatch between Jesus’ career and his execution. That he was crucified by the Romans is a historical fact beyond all doubt; and we know what this implies – that he was regarded by the Roman authorities as dangerously seditious. But the record of his doings in Galilee, and even in Jerusalem, provides little basis for such a charge, and the simplest explanation of his crucifixion is that this record conceals his real activity as a political agitator and potential insurrectionary. A succession of Jewish scholars, anxious to exculpate Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, have drawn this conclusion, finding support for it in a very few hints scattered in the gospels (the violent demonstration in the temple, the two swords in Gethsemane and possibly the reply about tribute to Caesar). Vermes has spent many years studying and appreciating the gospels and would find this solution unacceptable. But the only other solution possible is that provided by the gospels themselves: Jesus was innocent of sedition, but the Jews framed other charges against him (such as blasphemy) and persuaded Pilate to execute him. It is they, therefore, who necessarily carry the main responsibility for Jesus’ death.

Vermes is not alone in wishing to shift the blame back on to the Romans. Since the Holocaust, Christian scholars have been equally zealous in their attempts to present the record in such a way as to give no pretext for anti-Semitism. Nevertheless he goes further than most Christian critics by regarding the entire narrative of the Jewish trial as the evangelists’ invention (believing the details to be historically implausible) and finding bedrock only in the Jewish leaders’ unusual decision to “hand over” Jesus to Pilate, presumably for the good political reason of avoiding further disturbances such as Jesus’ demonstration in the temple. The gospels are correct in saying that the Jewish authorities were responsible, but wrong in suggesting that their action was anything other than sound political strategy. It was a later Christian agenda which began the process of attaching moral and religious blame to them and “whitewashing” Pilate.

This analysis shifts the emphasis on to the action of “handing over” Jesus to Pilate. It is significant (and seldom sufficiently noticed) that this was the term most frequently used in the New Testament to summarise Jesus’ fate: “he was handed over for our transgressions and raised for our justification”. But “handing over” a prisoner to a foreign power was not only unusual (as Vermes observes) but a very serious moral decision: only in exceptional cases would such lack of solidarity with one’s own people seem justified. Yet this was the decision the Jewish leaders took, and in so far as it is appropriate to talk at all of “blame” for the crucifixion, they can hardly escape their share of it.

But something that we have now come to learn in historical studies is that events have not a single cause but multiple causes: if there was blame, it must surely have been borne by more than one party. Traditionally Christians have found the ultimate responsibility for Jesus’ death to lie in our shared sinful humanity.

The dispassionate common sense and informed historical judgement which Vermes brings to this complex chain of events tends towards exonerating the Jews altogether. Many may find that such a straightforward apportionment of blame hardly does justice to the sheer complexity of the events leading up to the death of Jesus. But they should be grateful for having the case so expertly and concisely presented in the format of a slim Penguin book.

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