Who killed Jesus, and who cares?

I’m currently reading Elaine Pagels’ The Origin of Satan, which despite its title seems so far to be mostly concerned with the ways in which the gospel writers shifted responsibility onto the Jews for the death of Jesus. Historically, of course, most scholars now agree that the Romans were primarily responsible for executing Jesus, though they likely had some assistance and support from certain Jewish leaders.

This work of historical clarification is an insistent theme among many liberal Christians, and while I obviously agree with the historical point that’s being made, I find something unsettling in the way it’s approached. What if events had gone down pretty much as the gospels presented them, with Jewish leaders pushing a reluctant and cowardly Pilate to execute Jesus? Would anti-Semitism then be justified? The insistence on the historical innocence (or at worst, secondary responsibility) of Jewish leaders of the time seems to imply a certain anxiety that it would be justified — or at least to indicate the limits of the liberal strategy of focusing on historical facts without mounting an explicitly theological counter-argument, with the effect that the “traditional” theological framing remains very much in place.

Another question: what are we to conclude from the Romans’ responsibility? The radical interpretation of this — which I share — is that it indicates that early Christianity was a profoundly political movement opposed to the Roman Empire. More liberal thinkers don’t seem to go in that direction, however, instead preferring to fall back on the notion that “it was all a big misunderstanding.” But again, if Jesus really had been preaching sedition, would the Romans have been justified in torturing him and then murdering him in one of the most painful and dehumanizing ways ever devised? I’m going to say no. Even worse, it seems to me that the “big misunderstanding” interpretation fits perfectly within the traditional framing that would make the poor unwitting Romans into the instrument of the Jews.

This seems to me to be a familiar pattern in liberal Christianity — the traditional framing is never seriously questioned or countered, and instead the battle is moved to a terrain with higher stakes. We can see this in arguments that fundamentalists don’t really follow the Bible literally — the hidden premise being that they should. Or from the opposite side, we see a reluctance to take the Bible too seriously — the hidden premise being that the fundamentalists have it right. Or in the insistence that the historical Jesus was a teacher of moral and spiritual edification — the hidden premise being that he is still a source of divine authority.

I believe that this pattern contributes to the widespread perception that liberal Christians aren’t “real” believers — they continually appear to be attempting to superficially “hijack” Christianity for liberal ends, rather than daring to make the properly theological case that Christianity should support those ends.