sphemer. Was he turned over to Pilate because of their desire to keep the peace, or was it out of jealousy that maybe Jesus knew something they didn’t, or was it merely out of ignorance? There is no evidence that he committed some blasphemy, so he was handed over to Pilate for what? He was a threat to the priests’ stronghold over the temple, if Jesus was right, then there would be no need for them. As for Pilate, it seems he did his part because the crowd was calling for it. They traded Jesus for a convicted murderer named Barabbas (gospel of John). Well, I think to myself, that can’t be it. There has to be another real, solid answer to this question. Politically, what Jesus preached was a threat to the Roman stronghold. If the Jews were to believe that their freedom from Roman rule was at hand, and a new order was abounding, they could uprise against the Romans, and their main representative in Jerusalem-Pilate. This being true, what about the priests? Jesus was a threat to their “religious sensibilities”. Jesus was a revolutionary. His ideas did not interact smoothly with those priests’ ideas. His ideas challenged both the political dominance of the Jews by the Romans, and the priests’ dominance over the temples and the peoples beliefs. Jesus prompted people to search for the truth. Rome was not the truth and the priests certainly did not hold the truth within them. He questioned their authority and they did not like that, some really believed that he was the son of God, and they did not like that either. He was betrayed, first, by his own people; they bore false witness against Jesus to priests looking for incriminating evidence. But does this suggest he dies for religious reasons? Fredrickson states: “The query the high priest is made to utter- “are you the Christ, The Son of the Blessed?”-is precisely the Christian confession. Jesus is the Christ, he is...
