Camp Gagnon - Crucifixion of Jesus Christ: Every Moment Explained by Dr. Andrade

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

🚨Remember to Rate us 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟Dr. Nathanael Andrade is a Greek and Roman historian who has published various works on the Roman and later Roman Near East. Today, Dr. Andrade talks about his book "Killing the Messiah: The Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth" which will be released March 5th. WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsor: HuelHuel: https://huel.com/camp🏕️ TODAY IN HISTORY NEWSLETTER: https://camp.beehiiv.com/Pre-order Dr. Andrade’s book here:https://global.oup.com/academic/product/killing-the-messiah-9780197752487?cc=us&lang=en&TIMESTAMP: 0:00 First Century Judea7:41 Jesus’ Early Life10:54 Journey to Egypt11:52 Jesus’ Early Teachings18:11 Pontius Pilate22:10 Why Jesus Had Such a Big Following26:49 Jesus’ Arrest32:12 Synoptic Texts vs John37:10 Jesus’ Interrogation 48:04 Jesus’ Disciples + Judas’ Death51:16 The Trial of Jesus55:43 Who Was Pontius Pilate?1:01:13 Capital Punishment In Judea1:06:35 Jesus’ Crucifixion + Humiliation 1:11:27 Religion of Roman Soldier1:14:18 Site of Crucifixion1:15:30 Who Was Crucified Next to Jesus?1:18:21 Were Bandits Crucified?1:20:16 Witnesses To Crucifixion + Length of Crucifixion1:22:50 Armed Rebellion1:24:13 Holy Lance + Burial For Crucifixion 1:27:42 Crucifixion Records1:29:33 Spread of Christianity 1:34:27 Pilates Life After Crucifixion1:40:59 Influence of Romans1:42:53 Ancient Stenographer 1:44:18 Historical Truth In Gospels 1:46:35 What Happens If Jesus Wasn’t Crucified?1:50:05 Execution of John The Baptist

Take us all the way back to 4 BC. What does the Roman Empire look like at that point? What is this little place, Judea? What is about to happen? He had some sort of relationship with John the Baptist. A wild guy. Charismatic, very influential, you know, very holy, right? And I had a lot of respect.

But at a certain point, he starts his own movement, and he has his own core following in Galilee, which is governed by the son of King Herod Herod-Ary, Antipas. He's responsible for having John the Baptist killed. But then once Christ enters into Jerusalem, now he's entering to the jurisdiction of this prefect Pontus Pilate. So he's arrested, taken to the house of the high priest. What exactly are they assessing at that inquisition? He sees himself as a messianic figure and that the day of judgment's near.

And by implication, it's not going to work out well. I see. I think at this point the charge is basically sedition. Right. And part of the accusation is that when Jesus is doing this stuff at the temple, he's claiming to be some sort of regal figure. right? You know, he's a king. Capital punishment. Why is that, I guess, the punishment? Why crucifixion? Because that is serious.

Why not banishment or, you know, long-term imprisonment? You know, pilot was convicting him as something more serious. Maybe even some sort of seditionist behavior, however, defined. And that explains the punishment and the publicity of the punishment. So where is the actual site of Christ's crucifixion? This exact location in, like, Jerusalem, I think, has been debated, in part because... Nate, how are you, sir? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing excellent. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. I know you, you trekked a long way in the snow to have a very interesting conversation. You have a book that's coming out that basically details the trial of Jesus Christ, killing the Messiah. I'm very excited to get into it. So tell me, take us all the way back to 4B.C. What does the Roman Empire look like at that point? What is this little place, Judea? And what is a back?

out to happen to this, you know, this little place of Nazareth and later Jerusalem. So tell me, tell me where do we start? Yeah, so if we're starting around before BCE, and I don't know whether we can pull up a map, but yeah, Christos, if you want to give it a try. Let's do it. Yeah, first century Judea, something like that. But essentially what's happened is that a few decades earlier, the Romans have showed up. And what they typically do when they show up is they make a decision about,

but places they have conquered or intervened in, whether they're going to be part of a province, or whether they're basically going to make an alliance with some local dynast and promote them as a king. So by 4BCE, that's essentially what has happened. There's been a king ruling over Judea, that part of the world for many, many decades, very powerful. Also, in many ways, very controversial. That's, of course, Herod I won't say commemorated, but he was infamous, right, for chasing after the baby Jesus and the gospel of Matthew. And he doesn't really come from a traditional priestly line or anything like that. There had been chief priests that were there when the Romans arrived.

But his father had been a very successful member of the court of the Hasmanian chief priest, who were the people on site when the Romans showed up. And because he's very effective politically, he gets a lot of support from the Romans. And they think of him as sort of the Roman governor of Judea. And they give him a royal title. And it's basically his job to maintain that area in his interest, but also to make sure that the Romans' interest are accommodated. So he's there pre-Roman occupation. He's actually there after Roman occupation. So we typically would date Roman occupation to the 60s, BCE.

You know the famous Pompey who ends up getting killed by Julius Caesar, basically? So Pompeius Magnus, the person that fights a civil war with Caesar in the 40s, he's this serious general in the 60s, and he leads this massive expedition, which actually is the reason why a lot of the Middle East ends up under Roman control. And Judea happens to be one of those places. And he creates a province called Syria. and south of it is Judea and that he decides should have basically priest kings were already there

so we got a map here yeah so this is Judea in first century BC you say BC I always just say BC I know you're an academic you have to say but look we're talking about Christ okay it's before Christ all right

this whole common era stuff we know we know we know we're really talking about you know I'm happy to go with either as you wish yeah okay so this is what's going on you have Herod who is brought up sort of as a, he's ethnically, I guess, Judean, like he's of the people of this land.

He's not Roman. Right, he's an Idemayan and Judean. Okay. In terms of his ancestry, yeah. And so he's sort of brought up to be a king through this sort of dynasty. He sort of displaces that dynasty, but his father was sort of like a main henchman of this dynasty of priest kings,

the Hasmanians. And so that's sort of why his, reign and part is so controversial because legitimacy is a real problem. He traditionally isn't a member of like, you know, the clans or families that would have taken care of the temple at Jerusalem.

His detractors can sometimes even critique how Jewish he really is, based on his ancestry being partly Edomite or Idemian. And so when he consolidates power, he sort of has this problem, right? How do I manage, right? This priestly lineage that I don't really belong to. And he does it in part by intermarrying with it,

but also in part by deposing priest and in some cases killing them or having them executed. And he appoints people often from the Jewish diaspora that presumably he thinks are more manageable to him. Was he well liked amongst his constituency? The Scotland Yard detective's hand trembled. as he opened the letter. Dear boss, it began.

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the newsletter that delivers history's most gripping mystery straight to your inbox, from unsolved crimes to unexplained disappearances, from ancient enigmas to modern conspiracies, ready to unlock history's greatest secrets. Scan the QR code now or click the link in the description to sign up for today. I would see he's probably liked by some, but, you know, hotly contested by others in terms of, you know, the narratives that we have about how he's remembered, right? And so by the time we get to the first century AD or CE, what has happened is that there are people that are critical of the fact that Romans are in the area, that there's this,

you know, dynasty of, you know, well, in the heritage case, a king, but his kids don't typically have that title. There's this dynasty that's been working with the Romans. And it's governing on a basis that seems to be very much about the relationship of the Roman Empire and their own capacity for violence. And so there are people that are critical because Herod does intervene heavily at the temple, right? He really expands it. He enlarge it.

He makes it very massive. But he's also intervening in things like priestly succession. And he's also still very much under the tutelage of the Roman Empire. He's still very much working closely with those rulers to do their bidding as well. Yes. He has a great relationship with pretty much everyone who's governing Rome when he's alive. And at least in the early part of this career, that's actually quite a few people because there's a lot of civil wars and factionalism. He's very successful in that regard.

And politically, that stabilizes his rule, but it also is not something that all of his subjects necessarily like. I see. And he's referenced in the Gospels because as Jesus of Nazareth is born, he, According to the gospel records, he's basically trying to quell the birth of the Messiah. Is that fair to say? Yeah, precisely. That's how the gospel of Matthew reports it. He doesn't like that there's someone else who apparently is more kingly than him, right?

And he sees that as a threat. Now, does that account exist in non-gospel records that he's aware that there is this bubbling of a Messiah or a new king that's born? Or is that strictly known in the gospels? I would say the gospel of Matthew is the earliest to report it. There are other apocryphal gospels that expand on that aspect. And I think that there's actually recently a movie about Mary actually that refers to one of those other gospels quite a lot. For talking about other source material like Josephus, for example, who is basically our main source for what we know about Herod, he doesn't mention that at all. Although he does talk about how at various

points, particularly after Herod's death, when things get shaken up a bit, there are other people that, you know, seem to be making messianic claims. I see. Or have an alternative vision for what it means to be king over Judea than what, you know, the Herodian dynasty represents. Okay. Yeah. So now Christ is born. And there's, I guess, some type of murmuring within the land of Judea that there's a, you know, a messianic figure that exists. And as Christ is growing up, I know according to the gospels, there's like a little bit of a gap from what we know of him. I think there's early writings of him maybe as young as, you know, seven or eight. And then there's a little bit of a, of an unknown period. Some speculate that, you know, he's gone off to, you know, schools and

learned under different rabbis and things like that. I'm curious, based off your scholarship, do you have any ideas to what Christ was doing kind of into, in that middle realm? I mean, honestly, I don't, His early life is so complicated because, you know, technically the Gospels say different things, right? You know, the Gospel of Luke's chronology seem to suggest that Jesus is born after Herod dies, right? Which makes it very hard to tell which to, you know, buy into the most. The Gospel, the Mark, which for me, and for many scholars, is probably the most historical of all the Gospels. really talk about Jesus' early life, right? Jesus is, I don't know, around 30. When that gospel begins, he's interacting with John the Baptist. It doesn't seem to have much of an interest in

talking about that stage of Jesus' life. And so when I was writing the book, I just, I think I reconciled with not knowing. I'm really having no idea. Yeah, that makes sense. If you had to speculate based off of what you know about Judea at that time, you know, hypothetically, broadly speaking, if you are the son of a carpenter and you're living in this area, what would life have been like for the average person? Right. Well, there would have been a lot of poverty. And whenever Jesus is born, it's certainly the case of that when he's growing up, right, he's living in Galilee, which is governed by the son of King Herod Herod-Aar Antipas. And it's around that time that the Judea proper, right, not greater Judea, which includes a lot of these.

other places like Galilee and Samaria, but the district around Jerusalem, that's now being controlled by an equestrian prefect. So that Roman Herodian presence is very much there. Herodontapas is starting to engage in various building projects and, you know, enlarge in palace sites for himself in Galilee that might create employment, but it also might draw people away from traditional households, you know, to various cities and things like that. Otherwise, there probably is a lot of poverty because there always seems to be in the ancient world. And there's a lot of debates about how impoverished Galilee would be relative other places in antiquity. And it's hard to make comparisons based on the information at our disposal.

But typically in the ancient world, you know, there's a government and that government consists of landed elites that's working for other landed elites. And those landed elites benefit from the labor of other people who might own some. small plots of land but are struggling to support themselves or who might have no land and no steady work. And so they, you know, they help harvest, but maybe they're not making a lot of money. They go to Egypt at one point, according to the Gospels, the Holy Family, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. Do you know at what point in the chronology that that happens? If I recall correctly, it's something mentioned by the Gospel of Matthew, in part to escape from Herod, right, while he's, you know, engaging in what Matthew reports to be, right, this

bloodbath. It's infanticide. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're following Matthew here, pretty early childhood, it doesn't appear in other Gospels, so it's really hard to tell, right? And the way that people approach the gospels is they have to make a decision about whether they harmonize them or not.

And that was actually a big decision I had to make when working on the trial. particular. So if Matthew's accurate in reporting that shift, it would have been happening when Jesus was infant, toddler, I would say. I see. Yeah. Okay. So now we have this gap. It's sort of unknown exactly what happens. But then Christ comes back online, late 20s, early 30s, as a teacher, a rabbi in this land and is sort of gathering these followers, specifically these apostles. Could you just kind of take us through a little bit of the chronology of like his early teaching and ultimately what is happening with the governmental structure that ultimately leads to his arrest. Okay. In terms of his early teaching, the gospel seemed to be in agreement, right, that he had

some sort of relationship with John the Baptist. A wild guy. This guy is John the Baptist. Right. Charismatic, very influential, you know, very holy, right, and I had a lot of respect. And in fact, you know, he's someone that actually gets targeted by Herod Antipa. us, right? And that's something that the synoptic gospel tradition talks about. He's responsible for having John the Baptist killed. So at some point, right, in his 20s, let's say, right, Jesus may be interacting with the following of John the Baptist in a way that, you know, people have reconstructed variously. But at a certain point, he starts his own movement, right? And he has his own core following in Galilee, whereas John the Baptist has concentrated Father

South, right? The district of Judea as well as Transjordan. And at a certain point, Jesus' movement seems to be thinking of him as a messianic figure, as opposed to say, John the Baptist, whose fathers may be thinking the same thing. And the gospel say nice things about John the Baptist and treat him as a holy person. But of course, it's emphasizing that Jesus is the the true messianic figure, and that even John sort of acknowledges this. So he's starting to put together that core following in Galilee, and it's governed by Antipas.

And from there, people debate to what degree Antipos is concerned with someone like Jesus. And who is Antipas? Herod Antipas, the son of Herod I first. So he has Galilee. He's part of this dynasty. He's Jewish. but he's also what the Romans would think of as their governor in Galilee.

And it's his job to make sure that there's peace and stability. And he's also someone who's engaging in these big building projects, and he is supporting landowners where he's governing. And what Jesus is preaching, according to the Gospels, and that most people accept is some sort of message that involves people parting way with their wealth, or parting ways with their wealth, right? And so as his message seems to have a relationship with wealth that you wouldn't associate with the Herodian dynasty or landowners, right, that they have propped up and things like that. And he's also apparently preaching some sort of day of judgment, right, in which there's going to be a reign of God that restores governance to people who deserve it.

And by implication, that's not going to be Herod Antipas, right? And so that's why his message can be something that concerns figures of authority, whether they're Herodian or closer to Jerusalem, where we now have Roman prefects, right? Roman prefects. So that's like the early movement. It seems to be concentrated on Galilee, right, where Jesus is from naturally. It seems to be a message for the poor there, right, who in various ways are not benefiting necessarily from the social economic situation. It's a message that can be certainly deemed hostile to wealthy people. Particularly if they're not, if they're doing things that are exploited of the poor. And the message is, of course, ideally wealthy people part with their wealth, right? They have a different relationship with wealth than rich people do.

Right. It's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy man to enter the kingdom of heaven, I think, is said in the gospel. So I can see how you have these messages that are sort of contrary to the power structure of the wealthy people of the time and probably very empowering to the impoverished, right? Like, oh, this guy understands. He's speaking for us. I can see how that message is very palatable, especially depending on your faith tradition, if he's, you know, performing these miracles. All of a sudden, I think, to the people around, they would say, oh, this is certainly the Messiah and what he's saying is true. So I can see how he builds this devout following very, very quickly.

Yeah, and he, yeah, he has that reputation for miracles. Even though he seems to come from a humbler background than a lot of people that have, like, say, scribal training or have reputations for being interpreters of the, say, the Hebrew Bible, he builds that reputation, right? He's competitive in that environment. People trust his interpretations more than others. Certainly, that's what the Gospels, that's what they're portraying. And, yeah, that message does resonate. And it probably would have resonated in a lot of places in the ancient world, but it certainly seems to be resonating in greater Judea, right? So now the prefects of the area are aware of this guy, Jesus.

He's building this following. He's performing miracles. Does this get all the way back to the power structure in Rome? Like, are they aware of what he's doing, or is it still sort of isolated to Galilee in these early days? It's hard to tell. If I had to guess, I would say it's largely isolated to Galilee in Greater Judea. a prefect that Pilate might basically be aware. But what's intriguing about the Gospels is they seem to depict a sort of, for lack of a better word, jurisdiction, right?

When Jesus is doing this stuff in Galilee, he's largely here at Antipas's problem. But if he goes to, say, Jerusalem and starts doing it at the temple, right, it becomes more of a problem of, say, Pontius Pilate, right? a prefect, also, you know, the chief priest at the temple. And the degree to which they're sharing information and coordinating is sometimes hard to tell because although they're supposed to be doing that to, you know, curb threats, right, to the ruling structure and so forth, they also are technically competitors. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

So can you explain, so I understand how Herod's son, what was his name again? Antipas. Antipas. I can understand how Antipas increased was, would you mind pulling the map up again? I think it's actually helpful to kind of get an idea. So Antipos is specifically sort of ruling over Galilee and some of the other areas surrounding that. Right. And where's Galilee here?

It's actually even farther north than that map is. I see. Okay. He rules Peria, right? That's actually where John the Baptist is arrested. Okay. And then farther north there's Galilee. So he actually has these two almost non-adjacent areas.

I see. So then once Christ enters into Jerusalem, now he's sort of entering to the jurisdiction of the prefect, Pontius Pilate. Yeah. Now, can you just tell us a little bit about Pontius Pilate? How does he become the prefect of this area? He's Roman, I'm assuming. Yeah.

But what can you tell us about him at this point? Yeah. Well, the intriguing thing is that both the Herodians, oh, nice. Yeah. I see. Okay. This makes more sense here. Okay.

Both the Herodians and like Pontius Pilots technically have Roman citizenship. And that's sort of how the Roman Empire sort of works. A lot of people, not from Italy, especially if they're helping. with governance. Increasingly, they have Roman juridical status. So in that sense, what's intriguing is that Antipas and Pontchus Pilate have many of the same responsibilities and sort of the same, a similar legal status in the Roman Empire. But the difference is that Pontchus Pilate is a Roman from Italy, right? And the way that the Roman Empire works at this time is that typically the emperor's making a decision, ideally in conversation with the Senate, although we're now no longer in the

Republic as we traditionally define it, the emperor has to make a decision about who's going to represent Roman authority in an area. If he decides that it's going to be province, important provinces typically have governors that held the consulship in Rome, very senior senators. And for various reasons by 6C.E., the emperor has decided that the area around Jerusalem, like, let's or Judea, Samaria, that's going to be handled by a prefect. And a prefect is basically someone of equestrian rank from Rome, basically meaning wealthy, but not quite a senator. And his job is to go to Judea in this case. And he's a subordinate to a more senior governor. And that's the governor of Syria. Yeah. So the way to think about it, I suppose,

is that there's the governor of Syria up here, Pontius pilots here, Herodontas is here. they have different backgrounds, but they have a lot of the same status and powers. And in instances in which the emperor decides not to make a place part of a province, they think of it as essentially a place that the Roman state has the right to intervene in. But they allow an ancestral member of the community there to govern. I see. Right. And so in many ways, Antipas and Pontchus by that, they're sort of peers. but the way that they get Roman authority in a sense is totally, you know, different and they have different backgrounds.

And I could see how they would be cooperating because they both have sort of the same boss, but also at odds with each other because they have sort of different ethnic backgrounds. I'm sure Pontus Pilots is like, look, I'm a Roman, you know what I mean? I'm of the, you know, higher lineage. I have, you know, a greater sort of bloodline, whereas Antipas would say, no, no, no, I am of the people. I'm of this land. I'm Jewish. I understand who these people really are. So I'm actually the greater leader.

So I can see them being, you know, cooperators, but also political opposition in some way. Yeah, precisely. There are tensions like that, you know, that manifest themselves. And that sort of relationship when we're dealing with like Roman governance, especially when people from Italy are interacting. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. So then how does Christ go from?

And again, I'll speak about Jesus as a historical figure because I think that's the nature. that your book sort of takes. Yeah, that's more or less where I lean. Sure, sure, sure. But so for the nature of our conversation, I think that'll be helpful. So how does he go from this, you know, early sort of like rogue rabbi that's taking these people and sort of gathering these acolytes to then becoming a political threat? Right. Well, in my opinion, and this is where I think a lot of people very tremendously and how they write about the trial and their crucifixion.

I think insofar as people like Pontchus Pilate or Antipas are aware of Jesus, they're concerned about his message that he has this charismatic following, right, that in various ways seems poised against the ruling structure. The way that I read the gospel mark in particular, and there are other scholars that read it this way, when Jesus is moving about in Galilee, he typically isn't going to palace cities. He also is often leaving Galilee, right? particularly after John the Baptists is executed. And so his message, for one thing, does seem to be a concern for Antipas. And Antipas, probably, in my view, has an interest in having him arrested and executed. And I think Jesus actually knows this and sometimes leaves Galilee, where Antipas himself doesn't really have direct jurisdiction. But I think in terms of what actually happens, the reason why Jesus,

Jesus ends up dying in the time and place that he does is because he has a message that can be pretty incendiary. But when he's preaching it, he's doing it at a place, and that is the Temple of Jerusalem. That is known for outbreaks of serious violence, especially during holidays. It's a very sacred site, but it's also in many ways in first century Judea, a very politicized site. And it's not unusual for there to be riots, factional violence. moments when Roman troops engage in very repressive violence, even massacres, either at the temple or in Jerusalem generally. And in my view, what happens is he's preaching this message, and he's also engaging in behavior that could be considered confrontational that the Gospels, right, point to. Like what? Like, you know, overturning money changers tables, that sort of thing.

And I think what, I think the concern at this point is that, okay, he, He has this messianic message, right? This business about being a king that's not really sanctioned by Rome. But he's also preaching this in a place where people can have very, very, let's say, volatile emotions, a lot of social friction. And if you're someone like Pontchus Pilate, one of your jobs is basically to ensure that social instability doesn't occur, right? that people don't incite violence, moments of intense factionalism. And I think Jesus is preaching, and particularly in Passover week at the temple, leaves him susceptible to being accused of doing something like that.

And so when Hylett condemns him to crucifixion, he may be doing it for something different than from what antipause might have been thinking about, in Galilee, for example. I see. And is there a specific moment that leads to the arrest? I think in following, say, the gospel of Mark and the way that it narrates the sequence of Jesus' final Passover, I think really what has happened is that, you know,

for at least a couple of days, he's preaching at the temple precinct. And as I mentioned, some of his behavior might actually be considered very intimidating and confrontational. He has a small falling. He has a lot of sympathizers according to the Gospels, but he has a small following at the temple. They don't like certain things that are happening there. And so there are altercations, right?

I see. And I think one of the main jobs, say, of the chief priest, who of course are trying to make sure that these religious observance are happening the way that they should and that people are safe while doing it is to, you know, neutralize problems of that nature, right? if someone's doing things that could predictably lead to violence at the temple precinct, the chief priest and pilot in one form of coordination or another are supposed to, right? I see. So the religious power structure of the time, these high priests, they're not happy with this sort of confrontational nature of Christ. And then similarly, the power structure of Pontius Pilate is obviously not wanting some type of rebellion. Yeah. So the two of them kind of both have their eyes on this guy.

And so the 24 hours prior to his arrest, this is the last supper? Yeah. Is that the time frame? It's roughly the day before. Is that specifically stated? In the synoptic tradition, yeah, he's arrested on the night of Passover when it starts, right? The Passover meal is being celebrated. It's in a synoptic tradition after, right, the lambs have been sacrificed.

You know, in preparation for Passover. The Gospel of John dates it a little differently. He moves, I think, how do you put it, a day later, right? Jesus dies on the day of preparation for Passover. So that's the synoptics dating. And I think what has happened, if you follow like Mark's sequence, Jesus has done a lot of his activity at the temple that week. he doesn't actually appear to go back to the temple the couple of days before his final

Passover meal actually and it's just interesting to think about why that is right has something happened right is he detecting that if he goes back there might be a problem of some sort because at the end right in a gospel mark in particular the chief priest are portrayed as discussing whether they should arrest them in front of crowds. And the concern is that if they do that, violence or some sort of major fight or some sort of social disturbance they can't really control. And so they opt to try to arrest Jesus away from a large crowd, which is actually according to the gospel of Mark and the other gospels, what they end up doing. They're able to do this outside of the city. And Gethsemini? Yep. Okay.

So take us to that scene. Okay. So he's in Gassimini. And what is that place and what is the significance, I guess, in the Gospels for why it happens here? It's obviously away from people and who's there that witnesses the arrest. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you need more time. It is the most valuable commodity that exists.

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that life might throw at you let's get back to the show right I mean for me if I'm talking about in terms of like not say theology but in terms of historically what it means

I think the significance is that when the chief priest or Pontius pilot, and people vary in terms of whether who they think arrest Jesus, and sometimes they follow the gospel narratives more closely, sometimes they don't. But I think the significance is that when a decision is made to do an arrest, the authorities in play, whether they're the chief priest, as the synoptic suggests, or maybe more Roman, as the gospel of John indicates, they really want to arrest him maybe in the presence of his core followers, but not where there are a lot of people. particularly people who might be, say, sympathetic to him, or maybe, you know, people who might be sympathetic or unsympathetic who might, you know, enter into conflict of some sort. So I think the significance, and I think what's happening the days before Jesus' arrest is that he's not really at the temple. But people don't really know where he is either. And they need to find out, right? They want to know where he's lodging.

And how do they find out? Well, in the gospels, right, he's betrayed by his support. order, right? And that's, of course, the infamous Judas. One way or another, the chief priest or pilot are able to collect information about, you know, where he's lodging. And he does shift his locations noticeably during Passover week. He lodges in different places and so forth. And so I think what's happening there, even though the Gospels don't always make it explicit, is that Jesus is someone cognizant that there's going to be an interest in arresting him. Mm-hmm. He succeeded at preaching in the temple and not being arrested there just because it's sort of dangerous to do an arrest. Mm-hmm.

But when he's away from large crowds and places like the temple or precinct, he doesn't necessarily want people to know where he is unless they're trusted followers. And for an arrest to happen. Right. Right. It happens when, you know, people who want to arrest him are able to collect information on where he is. And it's reporting the Gospels that he's extremely stressed during this time that he's sort of agonizing, that he's sweating blood. Yeah.

And that he's more or less aware that the arrest is imminent. I'm curious, the arrest occurs. According to the gospel record, it is Roman soldiers that arrest him. In John, there seems to be a Roman cohort and tribune present. In the synoptics, right, you know, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, it's actually the chief priest who portrayed as exercising more agency, which strikes me as somewhat plausible because local municipal leaders in the Roman Empire in this period often organized posseys. If they're trying to confront someone who doesn't have a massive following or an army or something like that.

I see. Yeah. Now, this actually might be a helpful time to kind of delineate the synoptics versus John. Yeah. You know, people point to these as sort of being anachronistic from each other. Could you just kind of explain, I guess, scholarly, like, what is the scholarship around the synoptic Gospels versus John and where do they differ insofar as the trial of Jesus, like up to this point? Yeah, of course. Well, when I've been saying the synoptics, as I'm sure you know, right, it's referring to Mark, Matthew, and Luke. And they're called that because it's basically derived from a Greek word meaning that you can basically look at them together and see a lot of the same material. And if you've read the three gospels, and I'm sure that you have, you notice that there's a lot of material. It's been a little, right?

Yeah, precisely. And so it's clear that those three gospels have some sort of relationship with one another. And that relationship has been debated, right, which comes first, which is derived from the other. Is there a cue source that maybe Matthew and Luke are getting information from that isn't in Mark? but the way that scholars often think about it, again, not with like universal consensus, you know, these high-stakes debates about, right, biblical text, Marks often thought of as being the earliest. And whatever early gospel tradition or traditions associated of Jesus, right, Mark is closer in proximity chronologically. And then from there, Matthew and Luke seem to be taking material from Mark, but also doing some things of their own. And also some things in common that aren't in Mark. And from there, scholars debate about, you know, how historical this other stuff is that appears in Matthew and Luke, especially if it's not dependent on Mark. So that's basically those three texts. And then John is always been treated as something

as an outlier because it's so different, so different theologically. It also changes a lot of the chronology of Jesus' activity. And there's a debate about whether whoever wrote John is actually aware of the other synoptics, particularly Mark, right, or common traditions and reworking them. And so for me, what I was doing when I was writing the book is that I was privileging Mark, which isn't too unusual. I often thought of that as maybe having the substrate that's closest to being historical, where the other gospels doing things because, you know, there was a theological message or a

cosmic message that they're communicating, but that might move us a little bit more from the history of Jesus per se. Yeah, I've heard that justification given for John, that it's sort of written more with like almost a romantic, symbolic and, you know, more literary lens that, you know, trying to draw more symbolism with Christ's sacrifice and sort of the tradition of the Jews and Passover and things like that to create a more robust literary message, whereas the others seem to be a bit more historical, which is why you have these sort of anachronistic disparities between, you know, those texts. Yeah.

Does that, do you feel like that's a fair assessment amongst, you know, broadly speaking, you know, scholarship of these texts? Yeah, I would say that's generally accurate. You know, John has typically dated the latest. And where it departs on the synoptics, it's either doing a lot of resequencing or it's getting information from somewhere that we really can't, you know, define very easily. That makes sense. Yeah. And John, intriguingly, is the only gospel to place Roman troops at Jesus' arrest. And so from there, what happens, the scholars say, okay, either John has access to some sort of early tradition that maybe the synoptics decided to veer away from, right? Or maybe John, being a bit later, is writing in a period where maybe Roman troops would normally have done that sort of arrest instead of, say, a posse organized by municipal elites.

right? I see. Policing technically changes in the Roman Empire over the course of time and maybe the gospels depending on their dates reflect those changes. I see. Yeah. And it's an important question though because, right, and I know that it's something that people have discussed quite a lot, right? It's the issue of who exercises agency in killing in killing Jesus, right? There's been a lot of, right, anti-Semitic views on the basis of that. And so when we're reading the Gospel of John and his Roman Truman Troops doing this, right? You know, it can be very compelling because it's a moment where it's really, you know, according to that near it, it's the Romans doing it. And that might be, you know, another reason why people privilege that text. Because, yeah, you know, the discussion of who's responsible, who exercises agency has a lot of high stakes in that regard. Yeah, of course. And I get, we'll get to that and kind of discuss that as it comes to the actual trial itself. Right. So from the arrest, when and where does the trial take place? Right. Well, following the same Mark, which I've been doing so far, right, what basically happens is Jesus is arrested and he's taken to the house of the high priest.

Mark doesn't give the name. It's commonly assumed to be Caiaphas, which is the name Matthew gives. Although what's intriguing is at this point, right, and first century Judea is that a lot of ex-high priest also still get called a high priest. And Caiaphas's father-in-law also can technically be labeled that. And that's actually what John says. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So there's some variation there. But the text in unison indicate that he's basically brought to the house of a senior priestly figure to be questioned. And from there, scholars debate intensely about how accurate, right, what is reported is. Or even whether this episode took place because there are these concerns are the Gospels maybe shifting authority or agency away from Romans to the chief priest. In my view, I think that given what I know or think I know about policing in the Roman Empire, it actually would have been pretty reasonable, right, to assess Jesus' liability for a serious charge, right, and to have a conversation of some sort, even if it's not necessarily verbatim, right? what the Gospels are reporting, right?

And so when the chief priest, they basically organize a council of other priests of the elite and scribes and so forth, in my view, what's happening is they assess Jesus' liability. Should he be liable for a capital charge? And when the answer is yes, that's when they bring him to Jesus

to pilot's headquarters for trial, which is, of course, by the next morning. Okay, so he's arrested, taken to the house of the high priest, and that inquisition, what exactly are they assessing at that inquisition? I think they're basically trying to determine what his message is, for one thing, right? And what does he say his message is at that inquisition? Well, in the gospel reports, he basically makes statements that clarify that he sees himself as a messianic figure and that the day of judgment is near. and by implication it's not going to work out well. I see.

I've heard some scholars dispute that Christ refers to himself as a God or a messianic figure. Right. Do you find based off of your research and the Gospels that it's clear that at this point in this inquisition that he accepts that title? Or do you understand where the dispute comes from in that regard? Yeah, yeah. that's a fascinating question. I think in the gospel of Mark, right, that's actually the moment in which he sort of owns that label very visibly. And I think that's one reason why people debate how historically accurate it is. It almost seems too convenient that at that pivotal moment, right, when before he seems to be suggesting he doesn't really use the term for himself a lot. He's calling

himself son a man, which I would say certainly has messianic connotations. But he's also telling his disciples or apostles, right? You know, be careful who you tell about me, right? And so there does seem to be, you know, traces in the synoptics of an unwillingness, right, to basically label himself that. And that's why sometimes when scholars reconstruct Jesus's life, they even argue that he didn't even argue he was Messiah at all. Those arguments do exist, actually, because of stuff like that. I do think that in terms of his social performance, that say, the way he presented himself to others, I think there were things. things that would have landed messianic for audiences, both of people sympathetic to him and people

not. I see. Do you remember any specific text or I guess moments where he would say that that you feel like for the audience, they would understand that he's saying that he's the Messiah? Oh, for the audience. I guess the audience of that time, right? To say the son of man, to us may not have the same connotation. But I'm assuming to the people of Judea at that time or of Jerusalem at that time, they would

hear that and go, oh, we understand what you're saying. So what did he say specifically at the Inquisition with the high priest that you feel like is conclusive that he's accepting the role. Yeah. So what happens is, according to the synoptics, they have somewhat different phrasing. You know, he's asked basically whether he thinks of myself as the son of God. And he basically says, yes. And then he does a quotation from the book of Daniel, and I think connected to some Psalms. which is highly communicative of that messianic stature, right, that he's going to be seated at the right hand of the god, right? So there's a statement that taps into a lot of parts of, say, the Hebrew biblical tradition,

that spell messianic. I see. And he is interacting with those quotations. I see. So for the priestly class of that time, they would be aware of that, you know, him referencing these other texts, that they would have have an awareness. You know, he's referencing Psalms. He's referencing Daniel. And they would say, oh, okay, this is, you know, heresy to some regards for you to claim that you're the son of God.

Yeah. And, you know, in Mark and the other synoptics or Matthew anyway, that's actually what happens. And when he says that, they instantaneously get really upset. And the high priest basically says that he blasphemed, which seems to be a way of saying that he put himself on par with God or too much proximity to God to be acceptable. And so there's a cosmic message there, but it's also very much a political message because, right, if Jesus is the Messiah, you know,

it implies that the chief priest, their governance of the temple isn't. legitimate, right? I see. Okay. So that's grounds for them to say, all right, capital punishment is acceptable, and they take them to pilot the next morning. And the Gospels that certainly presented as something that motivates them. I see. I think the grounds for capital punishment from like a Roman vantage point would be something different. And it really would be what Jesus was doing at the temple that we discussed earlier. And scholars often notice the pivot, right, in the account.

So when the chief priest or the high priest is asking Jesus questions, there seems to be an interest in figuring out, right? Does he think he's the Messiah? Does he think that he's some sort of, you know, heavenly sin agent, right? But when they, you know, bring him to Pilot, that pilot's really interested in knowing whether he's king of the Jews, quote unquote. And at that point, there does seem to be a reframing, right? is Jesus doing something that's seditionist in the eyes of Romans. I see. Okay.

So he's taken to pilots of residence, like to his actual home? His headquarters, which would be also his home. But it would be on the western part of the city and where Roman troops are present. Okay. And it used to be Harris Palace, actually. But after, you know, that part of Judea is taken away from the Herodians and put under the control of equestrian prefects. So they actually live in that palace that Herod built on Jerusalem's western end. And so, yeah, the chief priest and their supporters take Jesus there.

And outside of it, presumably maybe inside of it, but I think outside of it is where Pilate would have often held court. So what does that scene look like? Could you paint the picture? They take this man, Jesus Christ, and they say, this man is deserving of capital punishment. The charge is, you know, blasphemy, saying that he's, you know, on par with God. And where would Pilate be? Would he be sort of in his headquarters? Who would be around him?

How many people would have gathered for this trial? Right. So if Pilots inside of his headquarters, there's basically like a Roman, you know, garrison there. And he would take quite a bit of troops with him whenever he went to Jerusalem. He normally is in a place called Caesarea on the coast. And that's where the Roman true presence at the time tends to be. There's a garrison at the temple and a tower called the Antinia. But for the most part, when he comes to Jerusalem during, say, festivals, he has probably at least as many as several thousand troops.

Oh, wow. Because there is this concern of social instability and one thing, how to prevent it from happening, but what do you do if it happens, right? And you had mentioned that around the holidays. days. There are typically, you know, moments of rebellion or there's moments of violence. So they would have had probably many troops there around this time of Passover. Yeah. I see. Yeah. Okay. And from there, it's not unusual for trials just basically to be in public, actually. Outside, maybe, you know, if there's a colonnade or a basilica or a place, maybe that can, you know, hide from the shade. That's where, you know, a prefect would set up their tribunal. People theorize where exactly from there. say the trial of Jesus would have happened inside the the headquarters or just outside it. I tend to prefer just outside it. Although intriguing me, John again,

departs from the other gospels. And according to John, the chief priest don't want to go in the headquarters because they're concerned about pollution and how it might, in fact, how it might impact they're having the Passover meal. So in John, what's happening is pilot's sort of moving back and forth. He's questioning Jesus inside his headquarters, you know, that complex where the Romans are garrisoned, and then he goes outside to talk to the chief priest.

Some people find that plausible. Others don't. I tend to think that the trial would have happened in one another's presence. I see. And outside the pritoryum, and generally visible to pass her by. So there could conceivably be a fair amount of people watching. especially during Passover week where there are a lot of pilgrims,

a lot of people in Jerusalem. I see. And they would see this gathering of people and be curious as to what's going on. They might be. I see. And then were Christ's disciples present at the trial?

Well, according to the Gospels, they're not. Right? When Jesus is arrested, there's a brief moment of resistance, but for the most part, right, Jesus is detained. and at least in the gospel narratives, that diffuses the situation,

the people who did the arrest got what they came for. People debate how accurate that is, but I would certainly say that for the apostles, they are anticipating that they could be arrested too. I think they, what is, Peter is accosted and he's sort of interrogated in some capacity, according to the gospels. Right, and he goes to the house

where Jesus is being arrested, and you need to think of it as like a courtyard house Mediterranean style where there's a large central courtyard where people can be hanging out and it's almost a semi-public place and that's where people are saying, hey, are you one of the Galileans following Jesus and he denies it? In the Gospels, he's the one that comes the closest, right, to that sort of danger. For the most part, what they portray is Jesus' core followers basically distancing himself, right, once to themselves once he's arrested.

And, you know, subsequently that will often be commented on because, you know, early Christians will think of this as a moment where the apostles are relatively weak, but then they subsequently do great things and risk their lives and turn it around. At Jesus' arrest, what happens to Judas between, like, his arrest and the trial? Is that clearly stated? And some Gospels he commits suicide. Yeah. I can't remember which particular Gospels or Gospels says that. Right. Yeah. And do other Gospels say? that he does something differently. I always, I forget, my Sunday school is escaping me. But I believe Judas, like, is involved in gambling away, like, the belongings of Christ in some capacity.

There are gambling among Roman soldiers, right, in the gospel traditions, right? They gamble for whatever possessions he has, which, of course, given his message, are not very ample, right? I mean, in the gospels, he's paid money, right? you know 30 shekels something like that right and um i don't remember the gambling part to be honest his involvement in it but but judas is paid for the attorney over of information that's what the gospels yeah say and from their people debate how accurate that is did they you know because the fascinating thing about the gospels is that they're they're telling a story about jesus's life

but they're you know um they also have a sort of cosmic message which might affect how they tell the story. And some people, you know, think maybe they collected information from other means or maybe pilot knew where, you know, arrested Jesus before Passover even really started, right? I see. Would that have been outside of the nature of Roman prefects to pay for information? Or do you think that's plausible? I think they would try to get information wherever they can get it. 30 shekels would have been a pittance compared to the power and the wealth of the prefect, right? I'm sure, yeah. I'm sure you could afford it. Okay. Yeah, that's something that you really wants. I see. So at his trial, how many other people would have would have gathered? Like, would enemies of Christ and, you know, people of like that sort of priestly class, would many of them have gone to ensure that pilot delivers a punishment? Or would it have been just the sort of high priest that had arrested him?

Well, as the people that are technically bringing the prosecution, right, the high priest would be there. Conceivably other people are there. And the Gospels, of course, indicate that some of them are people supportive of the chief priest of Jerusalem. There could potentially be sympathizers of Jesus there, although the gospel suggests that there aren't many, and they may be keeping a distance, of course. Right. But it could just be curious bystanders. Sometimes trials could be entertaining enough for people to actually want to watch them, right? Right. So how does the trial begin?

How does Pilot begin to assess the crime and therefore the punishment for Christ? Right. I mean, what happens in Mark is that, you know, Pilot is basically just asking them, are you king of the Jews? And Jesus doesn't really respond to that. And I think what's happening here, assuming basic historicity of that sequence, is that Hylett is trying to find out what Jesus was saying at the temple precinct, right? I think at this point the charge is basically sedition. Jesus is saying and doing things at the temple, which could cause a social disturbance in which

people could get hurt, including potentially even innocent people. Right. And part of the accusation is that when Jesus is doing this stuff at the temple, he's claiming to be some sort of regal figure, right? you know, he's a king. You know, there's going to be a reign of God in a day of judgment, and he's, you know, the point person for all of that. I think that's what Pontchus Pilate is trying to assess.

And when Jesus isn't really denying it, I think he convicts, right? He says something to the effect of if you say that I am or something to that effect. He basically says, like, if you say I'm the king of the Jews, then, or I guess something, he says, that's what you say or something to that effect. Is that fair? Yeah, I'm just if I recall correctly. Okay. And so now it seems like pilot, according to the gospel tradition, is a little bit, you know, like, hey, I don't know what's, you know, what this guy did.

It seems like he's innocent. And there seems like there's a mounting pressure to, you know, go forth with punishment regardless. So can you kind of take us through the gospel's rendition of, you know, pilots kind of ambivalence to the actual, you know, punishment? Right. So the way that the Gospels portray it is that they all do it in somewhat different ways. And the later, the gospel, typically the more elaborate. But what essentially happens is that pilots really portrayed as being, well, convinced of Jesus' fundamental innocence of any serious crime. Right.

And he doesn't want to execute. He's aware that, according to the Gospels, that the Chief Priest had their own motivation. for bringing Jesus before him, right? He's a rival for authority, or he's popular, and they don't like it. That's basically the motives that the Gospels are attributing. And so what Pilot does is he's basically trying not to get Jesus executed. And the card that he plays is essentially to honor what is in the Gospels presented as a tradition in which the prefect would release, right, a prisoner during Passover.

if requested by a crowd. And so the way that the gospel's portrayed is that pilot, he feels a certain pressure to do this. From the crowd, also from the chief priest to, technically of the people that he has to coordinate with a lot for governance in Jerusalem. He's feeling that pressure. He also doesn't want to make a decision that might upset a crowd, right?

You know, because it's his job to deter, you know, social unrest and so forth. But at the same time, he doesn't want to kill Jesus because he thinks Jesus hasn't done anything. And so he's trying to come out with sort of a backdoor way to save Jesus. And it involves seeing if a crowd will, you know, request his release. Yeah. The crowd is not request his release. Nope.

Not in the gospel, certainly. Yeah. Right. And I could see, I'm curious what you think, looking at not only the Gospels, but other literature, other historical literature of Pontius Pilate. I've kind of heard conflicting stories. It seems like, you know, some people suggest that in the Gospels that, Pilot is a little bit wishy-washy, that he's a little bit unsure. I've heard that there are other accounts of, you know,

pilot being like a very, you know, fierce and sort of authoritarian ruler. I'm curious, like, how does the gospel's account of Pilot, you know, how does that line up with some of the other historical accounts of Pilot? Right. That's a fascinating question because, you know, as far as ancient people go, we know a bit more about Pilot than most. which isn't to say necessarily a lot, but enough to, I think, to make some inferences.

So his career is narrated by the historian Josephus that may have already come up, right, who was writing at the end of the first century, but is really our main source, right? For first century Judea and the Herodian dynasty and all the people like that. And the pilot that is portrayed there is someone that doesn't shrink from violence,

for one thing, who in some cases actually, at the end of his career, even massacres an uprising of sorts of Samaritans. Josephus and Fytho, who also writes about pilots, they sometimes depict him as being actually an overly violent governor, maybe too violent. And that's not unusual to see about a lot of Roman governors, right? and it's hard to say how different he might have been from other governors in that respect. But he's certainly someone that from time to time did things that Jews deemed sacrilegious that caused some social friction. And in my assessment, what happens is that pilot tends to be a little hesitant to inflict

large-scale violence among people in Jewish society. if he's really not doing it to enforce Roman and chief priestly rule. So he's more likely to do it if, say, there's a charismatic who has a following and doing stuff that raises the suspicion of, say, the chief priest who are municipal governors at Jerusalem or other Roman authorities. And the way that I think it connects to the trial is that, you know, if the chief priest are bringing charges, that does matter. their opinion about whether someone might be doing something subversive matters to pilot. But I also don't think that he's just going to kill someone because other people want him to.

I think he doesn't hesitate when he thinks someone has convicted a crime to convict them and execute them. And I think that's more or less what Josephus supports. And yeah, but certainly in Josephus and Fahlo, he's not depicted as someone who gets pushed around, right, at trial. by other people or anything like that. Right, which to me seems, you know, fairly similar to the Gospels. Like, in my experience in reading the Gospels, I don't see Pilot as weak. I see him as a very savvy politician. Yeah.

That he can sort of say, look, I don't think this guy really did anything wrong and sort of placate the followers of Jesus. But at the same time, I want to, you know, support the people that are bringing him to me and the people that think that he's, you know, blasphemed or, or. a heretic in some capacity. And I see him kind of playing both sides. So you're innocent, but I will kill you. And by doing that, you kind of are able to play both sides. Because if you just release this guy, then now of a sudden you have the high priests that are going to be, you know, causing some type of rebellion. Jesus is not going to go away and his teaching will go on

and that could cause more strife. So it seems like he kind of does what is in the best interest for pilot and, you know, the Roman Empire at that point. That's the way that, I interpreted. Is that a fair interpretation, you think? I think it's a fair interpretation. I interpreted differently, to be sure. In what way? But I think personally that he just, he thinks Jesus committed a crime and convicts him,

and that the Gospels are sort of resequencing it to make it appear, that he thinks that Jesus is innocent. But having said that, you know, I'm just one opinion, and this has been written about a lot. and, you know, we're dealing with complicated texts where we're basically trying to come up with plausible scenarios and sort of hash them out. And so your interpretation is one that scholars do argue for quite a bit, right? At some level, Pontius Pilate, you know, maybe doesn't think Jesus has committed a crime, but he is politically savvy. And also sees that there's a window maybe to have him convicted of a crime, but also try to find a way to sort of exonerate him or have him released.

and it just doesn't work out. Or maybe by having the crowd acclaim, right, he can basically make himself a peer populist and things like that, right? And so there are those reconstructions where, you know, in essence, people argue that, you know, pilot thinks that Jesus is innocent, but he's looking for a savvy way

to get to the end point of execution that's politically astute. I see. And, yeah, that is definitely one way to read the Gospels and try to like, you know, make sense of all that's happening. Now, why, I guess, capital punishment is the first question. And then the second question we can get to in a second is why crucifixion specifically. So capital punishment, why is that the, I guess the punishment?

Why not banishment or, you know, long-term imprisonment? Right. That's a fascinating question because people often ask, right, if pilot executed a person just because, let's say, other people wanted him to, why crucifixion? Because that is serious, right? And, you know, in terms of the arsenal of, like, capital punishments that Roman prefects do allow, that's really the top. You know, and later juridical text, crucifixion is often thought of as, like, one of the top two worst ways to have someone executed burning alive is considered actually approximate. So it's really, really serious. So something that scholars ask is, you know, if pilots having someone killed. Right. Not because he thinks that person's committed a crime, but because he's politically savvy, right? It's under certain pressure. Why so gruesome and why so public? Why does it have to be those things? What other punishments were doled out by prefects of that time? Like, would lashings have been a punishment that someone could have taken? Yeah, he could have theoretically last Jesus and let him go. And there are parallels for that in Josephus actually to return to a similar example. I think an important similar example. So, you know, if he convicted Jesus of a crime, even one that might have been moderately serious, he could have actually decided to have a less harsh punishment. Governors in the first century have a lot of flexibility on this. There aren't necessarily like a lot of hard and fast rules governing how they make these sorts of decisions, right? So a lot is really up to pilot. I think he could have

had Jesus elashed and released, even if officially convicting him of something. Right. Or if capital punishment, you know, beheading, something like that, right? Which is gruesome and awful, but you know, arguably quicker and, you know, not as much

agonizing and suffering. And there is a precedent for that in first century Judea, that, you know, beheading would have been an option. Picture this. 1945, as Nazi Germany falls, American agents race against Soviet spies to capture the Third Reich's top scientists. The mission? Operation Paperclip. A classified program that would bring rocket scientists, including Werner von Braun, to American soil forever changing the space race.

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I wouldn't be able to pull up a textual example. But what's been happening, you know, really for the previous 100 years or so, as Roman governors go to different provinces, is that, you know, it's really largely up to them to identify what criminal behavior is and whether it warrants a certain form of punishment and whether it should be capital or not. And if capital, what sort of punishment, right? So he could have done something more mild, right, than crucifixion, which is a lot harsher, at least according to the way that Roman jurists seem to think of it. But crucifixion is something that had been inflicted on, you know, people that often had engaged in notional conduct that was hostile to the political order. Right. It's not unusual to see, like, insurrectionists and seditionists crucified, which is something that a lot of scholars writing about Jesus emphasized, right? If, you know, let's say we're following the gospel sequences, right? The chief priest seemed to think that he said something blasphemous. That's the way it's couched there. They take him to Pilot and Pilot is asking whether he called himself King of the Jews, right? The question that comes up is, okay, would that in itself be something that would necessitate or warrant a crucifixion, right? You know, that's just just really serious. And that's why I think sometimes when people are trying to make sense of it all, they think that maybe.

You know, pilot was convicting him with something more serious, maybe even some sort of seditionist behavior, however, defined. And that explains the punishment and the publicity of the punishment. And that if he really was executing someone because he's, you know, he's just making his way, right? And he's trying to, you know, come up with the best solution in a volatile situation, you know, for himself included. Right? He could have opted for other forms of punishment that weren't that as serious, even if they were a capital. Was crucifixed for by the people or by the high priests? Or was that doled out by pilot himself? In the gospels, it's called for by people and watching the trial. But something that scholars emphasize often, and I think correctly so, is that it's a distinctively Roman form of punishment.

Right? That's actually the tradition in which we can most obviously locate it. It's not, at least in an obvious way, like a practice that would have been customary, you know, to say Jews in Jerusalem. And so when people are reconstructing the trial and they're trying to sit through the gospel narratives and assess which is more historical, which isn't, right, what do we prioritize? The crucifixion, that mode of punishment is actually an important starting point because it spells Roman. And it spells a Roman punishment for a form of behavior that a Roman identified as somehow criminally subversive. I see. Right. Yeah.

So how quickly after the trial is he then taken to be crucified? Pretty much immediately. And I think that would have been pretty standard, right? Once you're convicted of a capital crime, right? Execution follows quickly. So now, as it's kind of told in the gospels, like there's lashings that Christ suffers, he has to carry the, cross to the point of the crucifixion, are these things common amongst the Romans at that time that you would have to sort of suffer the sort of humiliation aspect of the crucifixion?

Or, like, how do you understand that as it's written in the Gospels compared to other historical texts? Right. I think that would have been everything that the gospel says on that respect or the gospel say strikes me as very plausible, given, I think, what we know about. Roman imperialism and so forth. Could you take us through just sort of the key moments in that sort of that crucifixion? Yeah. And so once Pilot makes that decision, however he makes it and whether or not he formally convicts, which the gospel sort of, you know, they make it unclear whether he does that.

And Luke, he even says that Jesus is innocent, but it hasn't killed anyway, right? And, you know, that is often, you know, to some degree, perplexed people. but once he makes that decision that crucifixion is happening and the crowd hasn't accepted Jesus and so forth, you know, what he essentially does is he has Jesus scourged, right? Which involves, you know, whips and, you know, maybe metal barbs on them. And that form of punishment is serious. You know, I don't want to say as serious as the crucifixion that follows. But it's a very disfiguring punishment.

and Roman governors, they have the discretionary power typically to have people last with rods for disciplinary reasons, even if it's not clear that they committed a crime. But when you start to have whips, including whips with barbs on them, typically they're supposed to be a criminal conviction. Right? And for me, the scourging as well as the crucifixion

is indicative that pilot convicted Jesus of something and something that was at least supposedly serious. Whereas, you know, other accounts sometimes even, you know, make the argument that there might not even have been a trial or anything like that, right? Or pilot may not have actually formally convicted them. I find that unlikely just because of the way that that punishment plays out. And if you're a governor and you do that to someone who's freeborn in the Roman Empire, even if not like a Roman citizen, that's really serious without a criminal conviction. So that actually strikes me as very plausible, right? If the crime is serious. enough. You have the scourging, the carrying of your own crossbeam, you know, things that humiliate, things that amplify suffering, things that send perhaps a message if they're public enough, right? Yeah, when I read the Gospels, I've never really, never doubted the plausibility of that basic element of it. Now, the specific humiliation of like the crown of thorns and things like that, Would that have been plausible given, you know, the Roman punishment structure? Like, would they have singled out a specific person to humiliate them further?

Like, this idea of the crown of thorns, obviously, to mock that he's claiming to be the king of the Jews. How does that fit within your historical research? Yeah, and so in the Gospels, it's the soldiers who do that. And whether they do it on Pilots' orders, in my recollection, somewhat ambiguous, right? But they, yeah, they start to mock him as a royal figure, right? I think they dress them with like a purple robe and there's that, you know, a mock crown that's, you know, also harmful. And I think the way to think about it is that once Jesus or anyone really is convicted of a crime, particularly a serious criminal offense, sedition, something like that, I think the way that it's thought of is that they basically don't have, for lack of a better term, what you would think of as any civil rights anymore. So whether Pontius pilot orders it is unclear.

But I think once he convicts Jesus, the soldiers more or less, they have to follow through with the crucifixion, but otherwise they're sort of just doing what they want in mockery, which is what the Gospels are portraying. And yeah, I think that whether we call that a structure, I guess, is another thing. But I certainly think at that point, what's happening is that, you know, Jesus has been handed over to soldiers. They have a lot of discretion over how they humiliate and hurt him. And is there a historical record of humiliation of other crucifixion victims? Is there any other record that, you know, to say someone else they got crucified was humiliated in some other similar fashion? I wouldn't be able to pull up a quotation off the top of my head. I'd have to, you know, do more research on that.

That's a great question, though. And it's helpful to find those types of parallels. Yeah. And the religious structure for Pilot and these Roman soldiers, they would have likely been of the, of the, I guess faith of maybe like the Roman pantheon of gods. Is that for a certain? Like they would they wouldn't have been Jews. They would have been religious and some other type of polytheistic fashion. Yeah, quite probably. Okay. Is that ever mentioned in the Gospels like their faith traditions or their belief in divinity? I don't think that there's a huge emphasis put on that. Do you think they're strongly

pious like Pontius Pilate and these other Roman soldiers like do they have a strong faith in their Roman gods? Like, do they see Christ's claim to be divine, also blasphemous to their faith? I think that they do believe in many gods. And I think what happens with the Romans is that their cosmic understanding of what divine is, is quite pliable,

and it can always have more divinities involved. Right? You know, if Jesus is claiming, right, to be somehow, let's say a figure of divinity or a heavenly sent agent. I think they might have thought that was maybe in their own minds perhaps unlikely. I see. Or something like that.

Whether they would have been offended, I think is a little bit harder to pin down. Because, you know, they're in a tradition where like Roman emperors, they sort of receive, you know, divine recognition of some sort of. right um interesting i could also see just roman soldiers in general looking down likely on the population that they were governing uh that i could see them saying like oh this poor jewish guy thinks he's god you know what i mean like like we're from rome we know what gods are we've seen you know our religious temples in rome we understand divinity and this this guy thinks he's he's god or the son of god so i could almost see like uh an air of pompousness from them to say like oh this guy and which part of me can rationalize that would kind of increase the desire for humiliation

or the cruelty that they took out against him specifically. Yeah, I can see that definitely. And in fact, related to your point, you know, just see if this records a moment where Roman soldiers at the temple, sometimes they would be on top of the colonnades because they were attached to a fortress there. One of them actually exposes himself to the crowd while they're, you know, there to worship. Right. And so there are examples of people in the Roman army in Judea just doing, you know, very, very disrespectful things. And yeah, that might impact me be their part of their motivation, right? Interesting. Yeah. So where is the actual site of Christ's crucifixion? I've heard some like conflicting kind of things, but what is it? The M. Golgotha? Right.

That's, if I'm recalling that correctly, is that accepted amongst historians? Yeah, I mean, that name is accepted. It's exact location in like Jerusalem, I think, has been debated, in part because I think where scholars typically place it is different from where a pilgrimage traditions place it. Right. So people, you know, for obvious reasons, will often go to Jerusalem on pilgrimage and want to, you know, be in places where Jesus spent, right, his final time, right, in Jerusalem. them. And so I think most people would have just placed it right outside the city walls, and that's

typically a normal place to have executions, and, you know, near the headquarters of pilot, right, not very far away. And crowds would have gathered to see these crucifixions? There's nothing that would prevent them. Yeah, so conceivably if that person's famous enough, or, you know, if, you know, the scene of people suffering that way was something that they wanted to see yeah that makes sense and so now when Christ is crucified there's two other people that are crucified with him

right according to the gospel records yeah one is a thief if I'm recalling correctly I forget who the other guys do you do you know anything about these other two people that were crucified with Christ yeah the portrayed basically as both being um the word that in Greek that appears

is basically brigands which sometimes gets translated as thief um like a bandit. So people who steal, but, you know, with sometimes I think a harsher connotation of the word thief might be because sometimes we think thieves are pickpockets or something, as opposed to people who do like, you know, armed robbery, right? They're more sort of on the armed robbery side of that spectrum according to the wording of the Gospels. Interesting. And I mean, it also seems stark that, you know, this type of cruel capital punishment

would be taken out against these men as well. Yeah. I'm curious if that comes up in, in historical debates. You know, you have this Christ who's potentially a threat to the power and political structure. It seems, you know, that I can rationalize and say like, oh, I understand why the power structure would want to take him out in a very public way, right, to send a message to anyone else that's interested in, you know, causing some type of rebellion. But these guys that are, you know, armed robbers, it's interesting that they also have received the same capital punishment, not just lashings or something like that. So I'm curious what your thoughts are on their punishment. I mean, in a lot of scholarly reconstructions, that detail is actually quite important, right? It suggests that Jesus's

criminal conviction is unpar with whatever they were doing, right? And for some scholars, that's a reason why they think that Jesus was convicted of some sort of seditionist behavior or even outright insurrection. There's been a recent revival of arguments that, you know, Jesus and his followers were armed insurrectionist, for example. I don't think that they had to go that far to be convicted of sedition, because I think inciting a social disturbance, if they seem to be doing that in the minds of Roman authorities, that would be enough. But that detail is oftentimes very important, right, for reconstructions. And sometimes even when people challenge the gospel narratives that Jesus was arrested of his followers, right, and executed by himself, some people even hypothesized that they

me have even affiliated of Jesus in some way. You know, obviously, you know, one way to construe it. I'm not sure if I entirely agree with that. But, yeah, the presence of Briggins, bandits, right, when he's executed is often an important detail that people hone in on. And especially that Jesus was reportedly executed between them, which suggests that he did something worse, maybe, or some of a more. important to be executed, right?

Interesting. And would, would bandits have been crucified, like, in the Roman Empire and Judea? Like, would that, does that strike you as strange, or you think that's on par with, you know, the punishment of the time? That definitely strikes me as something that a Roman governor would do, if apprehending, yeah, brigands are bandits. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm curious. What other crimes would have been, like, is there historical literature on what other crimes would have been justified for crucifixion? Yeah. Called for crucifixion, rather? There aren't some juridical texts, and they typically come a bit later. And if you also read Josephus who is earlier, you know, sometimes as narratives, I think of a good indication of what people are doing that might end up getting crucified.

Almost invariably in the source traditions, it's associated with like civil disturbance of some sort. So I guess if there's large scale, you know, banditry or armed robbery, that would be a social disturbance worthy of capital punishment. Yeah. In part because the way that the Roman authorities often thought about it is that, you know, if people are saying the countryside engaging in banditry or brigandage or however they want to classify it, now pertinent to your point or your earlier question about Galilee, right? There are a lot of poor people and maybe they don't have other options. But that's not the way that the Roman authorities typically thought of it. They didn't really care why necessarily people were doing that. They just actually thought about that sort of activity. as, you know, one of the most debased forms of criminal behavior and warranting a very severe punishment, especially if it pacified things, right? And so if, yeah, if you're involved in, say, brigandage, which, you know, in some interpretations might be a way to, you know, reallocate wealth, right, in a society that's poor, right? You know, Romans are just not thinking of it according to that perspective. Hmm. Oh, that's interesting. Now, which of Jesus' followers?

have seen or saw the crucifixion? According to the gospel record. Basically, none of his immediate core followers. There are women attached to his following that witness it. And intriguingly, they are depicted as, you know, more proximate to his execution and also his burial, intriguingly. So do we know how long a victim of crucifixion would have been on the cross or would have on display. Like, is that a matter of hours? Is a matter of days? Is that sort of historically

disputed? I don't think that there's so much of a dispute as, you know, just variation and the decisions that governors could make. It could be a few hours. It could be longer. The golfs will indicate that pilot wasn't in a real hurry, right, to have Jesus taken down. But, you know, people wanted him buried before the Sabbath and made a formal request. which was adhered to that was accepted yeah and the gospels he honors it and so they are able to take jesus down later that day and then have them buried um or interred um i think what's happening here is that first century governors they have a lot of person let's say personal discretion on how they handle things like this and although there are certain rules that they sort of have to follow if they um don't want to expose themselves to being recalled or put on like criminal charges for corruption or something like that, which for me would include, you know, acquitting someone publicly and then killing them. By and large, what's basically happening is that they have to make a lot of ad hoc decisions.

And, you know, they have their own counsel and they're interacting with people locally that have, you know, political and legal expertise in the region. You know, for pilot, there would have been the chief priest to probably a considerable extent. But what's happening is that they're confronted with a situation. And relatively quickly, they have to decide, okay, is this criminal or not? And they may not have clear statutes, right? They have to kind of figure it out as they don't. And then from there, they have to figure out what is the appropriate punishment.

And again, there probably is a lack of clarity there sometimes. I think when people are engaging in something like armed insurrection, it probably makes it easier for them because they sort of know generally how, what kind of response that's supposed to elicit from women authorities. I think in greater areas, there could be more variation. When you say armed insurrection, because you had mentioned that a couple times, is there parts of the gospel that indicate that it was armed at some capacity? Yeah, in the gospel of Luke, right,

some of Jesus' father is up here to have swords when he's arrested or is the in-stay person of the chief he's getting his ear chopped off. Oh, that's right. Yeah, and so what some people do there is they say, oh, Jesus' followers were armed. Maybe they weren't as peaceful as the gospel's let on, and that's something that's, you know, layered by, you know, the gospel authors at a later time. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, who got their ear cut? Who was that? An enslaved person of the chief priest. And who did it? By the time you get to John, I think it's actually Peter. I don't remember if the followers named in, like, the earlier synoptics. During the resistance of Christ's arrest, that one of the actual people that are arresting him gets attacked. Yeah.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I guess when I was reading about this and, you know, when I was younger, I never really put that together. Like, oh, yeah, he's getting arrested and his followers or, you know, attack the people arresting them. Yeah. Oh, wow. That resistance is interesting. So I guess it's very easy for them to say, oh, this is a political rebel who has an armed militia that's working, you know, together. Basically, yeah.

Oh, that's interesting. Now, we talked a little bit earlier off air, the Holy Lance, the Roman soldier that actually stabs Christ in the side. You know, this is a focal point of the gospel. Water kind of comes out of the wound. Right. I'm curious, like, how does that fit in with the story of crucifixion in the Roman Empire? Is that done as an act of pittance to, you know, sort of speed up or expedite the execution process? or is that done to ensure that the, you know,

job is carried through that this is done to make sure that the person that is set to be killed is actually dead? Right. I think it's done to make sure that before burial, the person who's been subjected to capital punishment, yeah, is deceased. Interesting.

Yeah. And now he's taken off the cross. Right. And received by Mary Magdalene? Who is the actual people that receive Christ's body as he's sort of taken off the cross? cross. Right. There might be some variation in the Gospels that I'm not remembering very vividly, but Mary Magdalene is involved, I think, in the dominant traditions,

maybe even his mother. And someone called Joseph of Arimathea, who is one of the people that really ask, right, for the body. Now, some people have tried to sort of, you know, maybe revise the historical tradition and say that Christ never actually died, that, you know, the only way to have some, trying to basically create some type of logical conclusion between the resurrected Christ and people were reporting to see him alive, but also this, you know, crucifixion that perhaps he didn't actually die, that his body was taken while he was still partially alive, he was, you know, revived and, you know, given medical aid, and then he was able to seem as though he resurrected.

Right. Do you think there's any historical credence to that, or do you think the Romans, you know, satisfactorily executed him? It's hard for me to imagine that sequence that you just shared. Right. But I think, I think it sometimes goes to show how often things happen either in the Gospels or other ancient texts that are just so hard to explain in historical terms. Right. I would never have a good answer for that, I don't think. Right.

But you do, I guess, from a historical perspective, suppose that the Roman. soldiers would have carried out the crucifixion fully, that he would have actually died. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then as far as a burial for, you know, someone charged with political insurrection or someone given the punishment of crucifixion, would being buried in a tomb be on par with, you know, other crucifixions of the time?

Is that seem historically accurate to you, or does that seem anomalous in some capacity? I think that's in general accurate. And your question is one that actually has been accurate. asked quite a bit, right? Is it plausible that someone convicted and, you know, killed in such an awful fashion, you know, but would have been restored to people who wanted to put them in a tomb? I think it depends on the judge and what they allow. But the basic narrative sequence in which people ask for Jesus' body and they bury it as they see fit,

that's something that a governor can grant or a judge can grant. Now, I imagine that the Roman, I guess, you know, stenographers of the time that, you know, the Roman courts would have had a fairly, again, I'm just assuming, I don't necessarily know, but based off what I understand of Roman history, that they would have had some type of record of the people that they had punished and for what reasons. And that this would have gone into some type of, you know, library or filing system that then would probably be discussed with, you know, the Syrian, you know, governor or, you know, So forth. So I'm curious, are there any surviving non-biblical accounts of a person named Christ that got crucified? Or were those lost? Like, what do you make of that? Right. I mean, your interesting is definitely right. There's usually some sort of transcript at a trial. Intriguingly in Egypt, sometimes those are on earth because papyrus preserves much better. And from that, we might extrapolate that there's a similar mechanism and even some effort to capture verbatial. them, how people communicate.

Unfortunately for us, right, we don't have any of that material should it had been used, right, or produced at Jesus' trial. A big challenge, I think, in terms of other accounts of the crucifixion, is that they typically are later derived from the Gospels. There's a very controversial passage from Josephus that seems to mention Jesus and how he died. but there's a big debate about whether that's a later Christian interpolation of some sort, right? So in terms of finding that sort of corroboration for Jesus's trial and crucifition, specifically, it's a bit hard, right? It's hard to find a separate tradition, you know, that isn't influenced by the Gospels or something like that.

I see. Now, after Christ's death, obviously, he's buried according to Christian theology. he's then resurrected, appears to very many people, appears to the disciples as well as to a crowd of, you know, four or five hundred people. Obviously, this is difficult to, you know, historically corroborate this type of miraculous event. But I'm curious, after that moment, the rest of the apostles, how quickly do they go on to spread Christianity? And when do the Gospels of this event actually get written? Right. Well, according to, you know, what we can reconstruct from, say, like the letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, you know, pretty rapidly. In my view, there's probably

maybe some hiatus while Pilots still governor. The weeds that we don't necessarily have to dive into. My thinking is that whose governor might matter, right? But certainly shortly after Jesus' crucifixion, right, some sort of movement starts. and it's at least preaching locally or regionally in Judea before people start to preach elsewhere. You know, if we're thinking of like Paul, his early's letter typically dated to around 50, his time in Damascus, you know, very famous,

probably, you know, late 30s or so. That gives us a general chronology, I think, about, you know, when, you know, the word starts to spread, so to speak. So I think we can think of them as starting a movement in the 30s and one that starts to work outside of Judea by the late 30s and even the 40s. Now, I think some people point to this and they say, oh, like these letters appearing, you know, many years or even decades after Christ's death kind of add sort of like incredulity to the writing. So they challenge the historicity of the event. I've always kind of saw it as logical in some capacity that if, you know,

Christ is killed as a, you know, an insurrectionist or some type of political rebel against the Roman authorities as well as the high priests of the area, that many of his apostles would probably lay low and not necessarily want to have their name on anything, you know, directly acclaiming, you know, the words of Christ or what his message was because they would likely, you know, befall a similar fate, which many of them later did. But I could see that as being a logical reason why you would kind of, you know, work in the fray a little bit. Is that reasonable? I think especially during that initial moment, right, when pilot stole governor, because if he's executed, right, Jesus, right, you could do the same to the other apostles.

And there are hints that they're sort of lying low initially. But otherwise, I think what happened in my view is that, you know, so many documents are produced in the ancient world that don't survive. And, you know, I know that there's long been a debate and one that's been revived about the historicity of Jesus and, you know, what the documents support. But when you think of most people from antiquity, even pretty famous ones, they often aren't really supported by the type of robust type of documentation that we might associate with, like, modern people. So the way I imagine it is that, you know, Paul's doing his thing. There are other followers doing their thing. They're exchanging letters to some degree. They're communicating.

But how much of it can we expect to survive, right? Or to be deemed important enough by like subsequent generations for it to be transmitted and copied. You know, so much of what survives to modern times from antiquity in terms of textual material. you know, it's, it almost seems like it's luck. I mean, there's a logic to it, and there are certain texts that are prioritized and thus copied, but there are also many texts that were important in antiquity that barely survive at all. Right. I could imagine many of like the, you know, banal tribunal records that may not have been seen as as important to the early church, to the early apostles.

Those things might not have been preserved in the same capacity. And that, you know, as we've seen, you know, from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nagamati Library, Like these are texts that are seen as very important, so therefore they're sort of kept away. And their discovery is, I mean, purely chance, it seems like, right? Yeah. You have a shepherd boy that throws a rock and discovers, you know, thousands of fragments of ancient texts. So it's possible that there's texts that have not been discovered yet. And it's equally possible that many of those texts just, you know, sort of weathered away to time.

Yeah. That's really interesting. Now, as far as the rest of pilots reign, do you think or do you know, if there's any historical record support that he sort of felt like, all right, I doled out the judgment, I appease the high priest, you know, this rebellion that this guy was leading has sort of been quelled and job well done, or did he face any blowback in his lifetime for this act specifically? Right. What happens with pilot intriguingly is that, you know, in Josephus, there are different moments where he gets into confrontations with people in Jewish society. And in one instance,

actually even inflicts violence on people at Jerusalem that leads to people dying. I don't think there's ever any blowback in Jerusalem because I think typically when pilot engages in repressive violence, it's against basically charismatic leaders whose following is confrontational of Roman authority or of the authority of chief priest. And I think that largely guides, right, his decision making when it comes to violence. There are moments in which things couldn't gotten violent, right, where a pilot did something that Jews deemed sacrilegious and there's like a mass demonstration against what he's doing

where he bags down. And I think to some degree, it's a matter of whether, right, people who are engaging in that sort of confrontational behavior, whether they're like aligned with the chief priest and are protesting something, right, wrong that a woman governor did or whether they're led by a charismatic who operates outside of that hierarchy and is technically opposing, right, the political economic order. I think for the most part, when pilot makes these decisions,

there are decisions that don't really blow back on him until the end of his tenure where he does end up massacring Samaritans were doing some sort of marched and some apparently had weapons to Mount Garazim. And that's where Samaritans traditionally had their temple. They don't really worship at Jerusalem. They worship their, although their temple at that point had been destroyed. And what was the faith tradition of the Samaritans at that point? They basically are Israelites.

They think of themselves as Israelites. And to a considerable degree, they share a lot of the scriptural text with the Jews. And they thought of themselves as the descendants of like the Northern Kingdom of Israel. but by that point despite some of their many similarities with Jews, their sacred site is in a different place I see it. Right. And that's why when you read like the Gospels, there seems to be a sense of difference there.

But yeah, they basically have their own religious elite and they also have charismatic creatures kind of like Jesus and Pilate seems to have massacred someone who organized right, a following. And and what happened after that is the leadership in the Samaritan society, they don't really protest his violence in that instance, but they claimed that that movement had happened because of something he had done. Either he had been too harsh in his policies, too repressive, too disrespectful, too disrespectful.

There was a reactionary political force that he started. Yeah. Interesting. And because of that, they petitioned the governor in Syria, his superior. and that governor sends him back to Rome. Oh, wow. And that's really the last we hear of him. Like, he's apparently about to be brought up on charges.

There is probably some disruption because when he's heading back, the Emperor Tiberius dies as far as we can tell. But in, like, the sources we have for, like, the first century, that's really the last we hear of him. There are, like, later traditions, right, that he converts to Christianity. And there are various texts that might purport to be, like, either his testimony or his notes or, you know, lies about him. Yeah, in the apocryphal literature, typically deemed not to be very historical, but to, you know, fulfill a certain, you know, spiritual purpose.

What, what text are those that have his conversion? I wouldn't remember the titles offhand. I seem to recall that there's sort of an acts of pilot, for example. Oh, interesting. Various things like that, yeah. Because, you know, the apocryphal literature in Christianity is huge when you get to late antiquity, right? Oh, that's fascinating. So there's some, I've never heard that before, but there's some.

some literature that suggests that he converted. Yeah. Oh, that's fascinating. You know, for the book, I didn't really research it that closely because I just didn't think it would help for that particular book, right, what it was trying to do. Sure. So I wish I could say more with any great depth. But, yeah, that literature does exist.

Oh, that's interesting. And would it likely have been the case that a Roman prefect, after their tenure, would just kind of go and live in some coastal city in Italy and kind of retire? Or would they try to strive for some other type of political position? that case by case. It's probably to some degree case by case, but normally you would expect them to try to get another appointment and intriguingly pilot and there's none recorded. Interesting. Right. Which is strange because in spite of how things ended, he had apparently been prefect a long time, which usually means that at least for a duration of time, his activity

was acceptable to, you know, people in Roman leadership positions, the Roman emperor, governor of Syria and also presumably at the local level, like, you know, not so awful that he's generating more problems than he's resolving. So, you know, what happened with that final episode of the Samaritans must have been, at least, you know, in my imagination, serious enough that he just never gets another appointment. Maybe he's convicted of something exiled. I can only speculate. Just we just don't really hear more. Interesting. Is it likely that the Roman Emperor Tiberius or the Syrian governor would have ever heard about the crucifixion of Jesus?

They very well might not have. At least, you know, not the contemporary ones. Maybe later on as that movement takes shape and you're trying to figure out, you know, who are these. Ostensibly Constantine heard about it, of course. But the ones at the time of the crucifixion, they probably didn't. I imagine no, just because, I mean, there were probably a lot of these, you know, sorts of executions done by various people of that authority.

and so it's not really clear. And if they did hear about it, it's hard to say how much it would have really been, right, on their radar. So interesting. Now, I'm curious about how Christianity spreads through, you know, from this point, spreads through the Roman Empire,

then even into the East. And there's obviously a lot of historical literature about sort of that movement, but that might be a topic for a different episode. So I'm curious, Is there anything from this specific moment, the crucifixion and trial of Christ that we didn't touch on that you found particularly interesting in your research?

I mean, I actually found it very challenging to trace that early movement in certain respects. And, you know, I found myself while doing that research, thinking a lot about Paul and Damascus and, right, how were there followers of Jesus there or people, right, who believed he was Messiah or son of God, right? And what that means. I'm sorry, was there anything from the actual trial

though that we didn't touch on so far that in your research you found particularly interesting or that you really tried to score in the book that you feel like more people should pay attention to. Well, I think the main thing to pay attention to is really the agency of the Romans. That could be reconstructed variously. But as we touched upon earlier, right, there's been a tradition of thinking of pilot as someone who just really didn't want to kill Jesus at all. and like the people who exercise that agency

or people in Jewish society. Right? I think that there are justifiable epistemological reasons to challenge that narrative. But I also think that when we're thinking about the trial, we have to think about that dimension of it

because I think it is plausible anyway that, you know, high that identified Jesus as guilty of some sort of criminal behavior rightly or wrongfully that governed his decision-making and that for various reasons the Gospels are shifting the agency.

to people other than Roman authority. And that decision has, you know, reverberated, right? And of course, world history, I think. Interesting. Yeah. Now, just purely as like a thought experiment, if I could grant you a piece of historical documentation that you, that doesn't exist ostensibly,

that you as a historian would love to get your hands on, specifically from the crucifixion of Christ, is there any one document that you would be like, oh, this would be, you know, like the most amazing thing to look at from, from, you know, your perspective. Like, what would be that one document that you would love to see? Right. I think you actually asked about that document earlier. It really is a stenographer, taking down what different people are saying at that trial situation. I mean, a big challenge of the Gospels is, you know, we have a narrative from the perspective of the people that wrote the Gospels and of that particular movement that Jesus was so pivotal and starting.

You know, and they ascribe motives to pilot and they ascribe motives to the chief priest, but we don't get their own voices, right? Maybe they thought of themselves as having totally different rationales from what the gospel say. You know, maybe if we actually, you know, saw them, had a document in which they're actually talking to one another, right? Yeah. That's something I often wish that I had access to, I think, when I was writing the book and always felt like there was probably, you know, so many. serious things I'm missing or not getting access to just by not having it. Right. Yeah, that's really interesting. And of the Gospels, I know you had mentioned Mark as being typically accepted by scholars

as like the most historically accurate. But I'm just broadly speaking, specifically the synoptic gospels, do you find that those outside of obviously the symbolic and sort of theological messages, do you find them from a historical perspective to be having great historical truth? I know many people have disputed the truth of the Gospels. Many people think that, you know, these oral traditions get written down many years later, not even by the observers themselves. Right.

Do you find that challenging as a historian or do you accept that these synoptic gospes are generally telling a correct historical account? I think from the synoptics, I think you can get a good sense of speaking in generality what Jesus was like, right, what his message was, right? where in a sense he was kind of situating himself within Second Temple, Judaic society, and maybe in a sort of, you know,

cosmic order and how he was situating himself in relation to, you know, prior scriptural traditions. I think it's more challenging when we're talking about like the specificity of an episode, did it happen or not. I think that just gets so, so hard.

And I think, you know, that's evidenced by the fact that very often, just about any sequence from the, the Gospels, people have accepted their historicity or have dismissed it or have been agnostic about it. But I think that's also part of the fascination of the work, right? You know, it is so challenging. So in that sense, my approach has been to say, okay, there are certain things that the Gospels capture about Jesus.

There are also perhaps some inachronistic material, some interpretations that people will think of as maybe like more Christian than maybe accurate to like, you know, Jesus's particular lifetime in Judea. But how you differentiate one from the other, right? You know, that's why people debate and I think that's why there's so much biblical scholarship. And, you know, it's just part of the allure, but it's also, you know, part of that, that sort of aporea, the sense that there's such a lack of closure from a strictly historical perspective, right?

Right, absolutely. Now, I love historical what ifs. Yeah. So just purely as Nate, okay, just a student of history, someone that loves to research this stuff. And, you know, I'm going to pull you outside of your historical scholarship here. This is not Dr. Andrade. This is just Nate. Okay, of course. If Christ had not been crucified, let's say he had gone to this trial and Pilate said, he's done no crime, release him. Or even if he said, all right, he'll get some lashings, but then he'll be released. What do you think would have happened? Oh, gosh. If we had to speculate. Yeah. If I had to speculate, I imagine him as...

This is just, yeah, Nate's guesswork. Yeah. Maybe having something of a similar career arc as, well, John had Baptist up to the point of his death. You know, maybe having that regional following, a popularity among certain, you know, people in Galilean society or Judea. Yeah, but maybe it doesn't become the same, you know, religion that Christianity becomes, right? You know, maybe he's another, you know, important voice in Second Temple Judaism. And, yeah, you know, he has a following in that context, but maybe, yeah, maybe, you know, there aren't people around, like, just as there aren't, to my knowledge, many, many people who follow John the Baptist, right, these days.

Do you think his death was inevitable that, you know, based off of his message and the power structure of Judea, that, you know, he would have gone and continued to preach this message and it potentially could have gotten, you know, more rebellious and that he would have then brought to a tribunal again? That's a fascinating question. I think both scenarios are possible, right? the way that I think about and particularly in terms of his preaching in Judea as opposed to Galilee, right? I really think that it's the message that raises concerns but it's also where he is preaching it, right? Right?

The thing that, you know, puts him in the clutches of Pontchus Pilate is that he's saying the things that he's saying at the temple precinct at a time where there are tons of pilgrims when a place where and at a time when historically, right, social disturbances occur. If he's out somewhere, say, in the Judean desert and doing this, does pilot care? Does he pay attention?

It's sort of an open question, right? And that's why I don't really know the answer. Sometimes when I think of like, you know, the Qumran text, the Dead Sea Scrolls, in certain ways, the message is so much similar, right? there's a reign of God or a day of judgment that's being envisioned. There's a message that's actually, you know, that pits the people at Kumran against, like, the chief priest, against the relationship with the wealth that dominates in Judea. But they're not actually receiving, I think, right, that same repression by Pontius Pilate in particular. And I think sometimes it's worth asking why, right?

if you're living in like your own community and you have this belief but by in large you're not doing anything visibly destabilizing maybe Pontus pilot doesn't pay attention to you but if you do it at the temple he wants to pay a lot more attention interesting yeah now was there any word from herod's son what was his name again antipas was there any word from him after the crucifixion of christ like was there any any historical underpinnings to how he felt, was he happy with this? Right. Well, what's intriguing is that the gospel of Luke, and only Luke has a moment where when Pilots trying to get Jesus off his hands, he sends him onto pause, who according to Luke is actually in Jerusalem for Passover,

which would make sense. And according to Luke, he doesn't see Jesus as guilty of anything and sends him back to Pilot. And Pilate then says, this man really is innocent. We, you know, not just Pilate, but Antipa, see nothing wrong with him. And that's what makes Luke so interesting. Because Pilot is going on at length about Jesus' innocence in the eyes of Roman authorities other than him, but then has him executed anyway. And in a way that doesn't always make sense, right? You know, you don't usually acquit and then execute.

It's not the pattern. So Luke has that tradition, and people debate how, you know, whether that represents a separate tradition that Luke knew about, that maybe is accurate, or whether that tradition, you know, was inserted into the gospel narratives later. It doesn't appear in Mark, Matthew, you know, for example. But we do know a bit about him otherwise from the 30s because Josephus actually talks about how he has John the Baptist executed. And what was his charge, John the Baptist? Well, in the Gospels, or at least Mark and Matthew, right, John the Baptist had criticized Antipa's marriage. In Josephus, he had been stoking some sort of seditionist activity that was the framing.

And whether you harmonize them or whether you see them as saying different things is sort of in the eye of the beholder in that respect. And how was John the Baptist killed again? Antipaz had him arrested and then had him executed. And Matthew and Mark, he's beheaded and, you know, because of a dance, right? And what do you mean? Antipas had promised his stepdaughter that if she danced at a banquet, he would confer a request. And since John the Baptist, according to that gospel tradition, had criticized Antipas's marriage to his stepdaughter's mother. The mother was able to get the stepdaughter to request John's head on a platter.

That's right. And what's intriguing about that sequence is that, you know, that appears in Mark and Matthew. you, Luke, doesn't say that. And, you know, Josephus doesn't say that either. And people have a hard time working it out because in Josephus, if we had the map up and we don't have to pull it up again. But in Josephus, it's clear that when John is detained and executed, that it's basically in that area called pariah, right, in Transjordan, not in Galilee.

But Mark suggests that it happened in Galilee. And so, you know. And from there, it's a big question, right? Do these details matter? Do they not? Do we reconcile them? Do we trust one right version more than the other? Yeah. But Antipazes around in the 30s. And then what happens is that he kind of fights an illegal war against another client of Rome and loses big time. And that seems to set him up for falling out of Rome's, you know, the graces and he gets deposed and so on and so forth. But that's actually the context and more or less in which Paul is in Damascus. And trying to evade Nabatian ethnarchs, according to his own testimony. It's actually in that political sequence. Interesting. Well, that seems fascinating. I would love to talk about Paul and Thomas and a lot of these early disciples and how they go on to spread the message of Christ and what ends up happening to them. But we'll pick that up in another conversation. Dr. Andrade, thank you so much

for sharing your work with us. This has been fascinating. Thanks so much. This is a blast. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Let's do this again soon. Excellent. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction. And we deeply appreciate that about you. I'll be honest. That's exactly why I personally invite you to sign up for today in history.

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