Explaining Jesus’ Crucifixion

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The author of the Gospel of Luke was a well-educated gentile Christian. He may have been originally a God-fearer—a gentile who had become an adherent of a Jewish synagogue community before he was converted to the message of Jesus. Luke had an excellent knowledge of the Bible of Israel (the Christian Old Testament) in its Greek translation. He never had any doubt that Jesus, a Jew from Galilee who came from the family of David, belonged to the people of Israel. When the angel announces Jesus’ birth to Mary, he says that “God will give to her child the throne of his ancestor David” and that “he will reign over the house of Jacob forever” (Luke 1:32–33). In her song, the “Magnificat,” Mary praises God that “he has helped his servant Israel” (Luke 1:54). It is also only this Gospel that includes the story of Joseph and the pregnant mother of Jesus going to Bethlehem, the city of David.

When Luke wrote his Gospel, some time at the very end of the first century, it was not clear who would emerge as the legitimate heir to the tradition of Israel and its scriptures. There were a number of groups who claimed that they were the only legitimate Israelites: the successors of the Pharisees of the time of Jesus, known as the founders of rabbinic Judaism; the Samaritans, who represented a significant Israelite constituency both in Palestine and in the diaspora; the followers of Jesus, who had just become known under the name Christians; other groups, such as the followers of John the Baptist; and the remnants of the defeated revolutionaries of the Jewish War of 66–70 against Rome. All these groups appear in Luke’s Gospel in relationship to the ministry and fate of Jesus, either as enemies or as sympathizers.

Luke is painfully aware of two facts:

(1) Jesus was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate while the authorities in Jerusalem were only too eager to cooperate with their Roman overlords; (2) followers of Jesus had repeatedly experienced the hostility of Jewish synagogues—a fact recorded by the apostle Paul (see Corinthians 11:24) and by the Gospel of John (9:22). Moreover, in the Book of Acts Luke reports, on the basis of reliable historical information, that Stephen was martyred by the Jews of Jerusalem (Acts 7) and that King Agrippa had the apostle James executed (Acts 12:2). Luke wrote this at a time when Christians were also persecuted by the Roman authorities. This is confirmed by the roughly contemporary letter of the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger (Epistle 10:96), written in about 112 C.E., to the emperor Trajan, in which he reports that he had executed several people because they had confessed that they were Christians and had refused to sacrifice to the emperor. At the same time, the Pharisees were desperately trying to reestablish whatever was left of the scattered Jewish people after the disastrous war with Rome and the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple.

Jesus, the Jew, had been crucified in Jerusalem. Luke tries to explain in his Gospel why this happened. Rejection by various groups in Israel came early in Jesus’ ministry. While Mark’s Gospel places Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth to a relatively later point in Jesus’ ministry (Mark 6:1–6), Luke begins the story of Jesus’ career with the account of his rejection there (Luke 4:14–30). Thereafter, in Luke’s rewriting of the story, Jesus preaches to the poor and heals the sick freely in Galilee and Judea. But the Pharisees are critical of Jesus’ breaking of the Sabbath (Luke 6:2, 11). That Jesus is in trouble is apparent again as soon as he sets his mind toward going to Jerusalem: The Samaritans do not allow him to pass through their country (Luke 9:51–55). One would expect that henceforth, in Luke’s eyes, the Samaritans would be singled out as especially hostile to Jesus. However, this is not the case. The man who rescues the victim of robbery is identified as a Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37), and of the ten lepers healed by Jesus, the only one who returns to give thanks is a Samaritan (Luke 17:11–19).

It is clear that the Samaritans did not pose a threat to Luke’s church, but some of the Jewish people did. One might think that the Pharisees, representing the Jewish leaders in Luke’s time, continue to be presented as the enemies of Jesus. They are indeed attacked in the “Speech against the Pharisees” (Luke 11:37–12:1), they complain that Jesus accepts the sinners (Luke 15:2) and a boasting Pharisee is contrasted with the repentant publican in the famous story of Luke 18:9–14.

The Pharisees, however, are not accused of having engineered the death of Jesus. They are never mentioned in the narrative of the trial and execution of Jesus. Rather, it is the leadership of Jerusalem and the high priests who have Jesus arrested by their servants (Luke 22:47–53), and the council of the elders of Jerusalem, high priests and scribes send Jesus to Pilate for execution (Luke 23:1). These are the people who are ultimately responsible for Jesus’ death, not the Pharisees.

Thus Luke distances himself from the leaders of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, but he knows very well that the Pharisees and their successors, the leaders of rabbinic Judaism at his own time, did not have any part in this travesty of justice. To be sure, they are the rivals of the Christians at the time of Luke—and so the Gospel of Luke 048presents them as Jesus’ opponents. But even in the continuation of Luke’s story, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Jewish hostility is mentioned repeatedly, the Pharisees are not described negatively: Gamaliel, their leader in Jerusalem, counsels against further persecution of the apostles (Acts 5:34), some of the Pharisees are mentioned as people who have become believers (Acts 23:9). If Luke describes the leaders of rabbinic Judaism at his own time with the term “Pharisees,” it is clear that he does not hold them responsible for Jesus’ death or for the persecution of the apostles.

Christians today should take note that neither the Gospels of Luke, Matthew or Mark accuse the Pharisees or “the Jews” in general as the parties responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, but rather the leaders of Jerusalem, who first collaborated with the Romans and later caused the disastrous revolt of the Jewish people against Rome.

The author of the Gospel of Luke was a well-educated gentile Christian. He may have been originally a God-fearer—a gentile who had become an adherent of a Jewish synagogue community before he was converted to the message of Jesus. Luke had an excellent knowledge of the Bible of Israel (the Christian Old Testament) in its Greek translation. He never had any doubt that Jesus, a Jew from Galilee who came from the family of David, belonged to the people of Israel. When the angel announces Jesus’ birth to Mary, he says that “God will give to her child the […]