Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

716 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:711what I’ve come to know, though: that there is an ongoing debate on whokilled Jesus; fingers point to both Romans and Jews. Jesus, born a Jew, issaid to have upset the powers that be with his preaching and was turnedover to the Roman authorities. History tells us that the Romans were incharge, not the Jews, and had the power to kill Jesus. The Romans also hadthe power to write history at the time, and to blame the Jews for Jesus’sdeath. And anyone who disagreed with the Roman rulers or put them in anegative light, such as fledgling Christians by charging them with deicide,would surely have been put to death.Moreover, Princeton University professor Bernard Lewis notes in hisbook Semites and Anti-Semites that it was the Romans, not the Jews, whowere the “unchallenged rulers of Judaea” and who used crucifixion as a“form of capital punishment.” 10 Thus, if you are a early Christian seeking toconvert Roman pagans, the less negative you portray them the more favorablythey will look toward Christianity. One could well suppose that, realizingthis, Christians seeking converts made the executioner, Rome’sgovernor, Pontius Pilate, seem sympathetic to Jesus when in reality historypaints Pilate as a tyrant who ruled with an iron sword, never hesitant toexecute anyone.To this point, Steve Baum, the editor of the Journal for the Study ofAntisemitism, when interviewed about who killed Jesus, noted that “theRomans convert to Catholicism so you’re not going to blame someoneinside Christianity.”Or, to be seen as part of being in a collective enemy of the Jews,Christians seeking to survive in their fragile beginnings may have sought anally in the Romans by depicting Pilate as sympathetic and scapegoating theJews. As the saying goes, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Christians,like Jews, were seen as threats to the Roman Empire for their monotheismin an era when nothing could be viewed as above the empire. Thus,Jesus could have been seen as one seeking to usurp power, as he was knownas “King of the Jews,” king being the highest authority figure; indeed,Pilate’s question to Jesus that ultimately led to Jesus’s being found guiltywas “Are you the king of the Jews?” Christians may not have posed a realphysical threat but more a symbolic threat by their God and Jesus. So Jesusmay have been considered a political criminal and charged as one. 11 Inaddition, it’s been suggested that the Jewish leadership was pressured intotrying Jesus by the Romans, who saw Jesus as a problem and, seeing thatJesus was a Jew, they demanded that the Jews deal with the problem inter-10. Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton& Company, Inc., 1999).11. Perry and Schweitzer, 28.