Did Kevin Sorbo Kill Jesus?

You may have missed former "Hercules" and right-wing "Christian" extremist Kevin Sorbo's recent rants against African-Americans and Jewish people. One thing that caught my eye was his statement, regarding Jewish people who protested Mel Gibson's portrayal of Jews in "The Passion of the Christ": "News bulletin: you did kill Jesus!"

Now, aside from the blatantly abusive racism, what Sorbo claims is wrong. Historically and theologically, it's like saying that "Garfield" is directly responsible for climate change.

First, let's look at the historical landscape. I've always had a problem with the Gospel accounts claiming that the Jewish religious leaders couldn't kill Jesus because they had no law allowing execution (See John 18:31). If this is so, how was Stephen killed? The book of Acts says that members of the Sanhedrin (the same group which met to condemn Jesus) dragged Stephen outside of the city and stoned him.

Further, note that the standard method of execution in Jewish religious culture was stoning. Crucifixion, the method by which Jesus was killed, was a practice of the Romans (as well as other cultures).

"Crucifixion was often performed to terrorize and dissuade its witnesses from perpetrating particularly heinous crimes. Victims were left on display after death as warnings to others who might attempt dissent. Crucifixion was usually intended to provide a death that was particularly slow, painful (hence the term excruciating, literally "out of crucifying"), gruesome, humiliating, and public, using whatever means were most expedient for that goal. Crucifixion methods varied considerably with location and time period." (Source)

While many sources point to the Gospel accounts themselves as the source of anti-Jewish sentiment concerning the crucifixion of Jesus, I would contend that, while the view has some merit, it is more an issue of lazy scholarship, perpetuated through the millenia, which is more to blame.

The chief culprit in this seems to be the Gospel of John. The writer of John's Gospel throws around the phrase "the Jews" to describe enemies of Jesus, and it really does sound like he means all the Jews!

Setting aside the obvious argument that Jesus, the Apostles, and most (if not all) of those who accompanied Jesus in the Gospels were themselves Jewish (thus the enemy could not have been "all Jews"), there remains the issue of what purpose the Gospels (and specifically, the Gospel of John) were serving when they were written.

In his "Introduction to the Gospel of John," the late Raymond E. Brown makes an excellent case that the writer of John was speaking of, and to, a specific, limited group of people.

The Johannine believers "...faced charges that they were making Jesus equal to God and thus were introducing another God alongside the God of Israel (see 5:16–18); they were put on trial before the authorities and other opponents in the synagogue; they marshaled arguments from the Scriptures and the Jesus tradition to answer the authorities; they were expelled from synagogues and reacted in alienated hostility toward their former coreligionists (ch. 9)."

Thus "...there may have been a hope to reach and persuade one group of Jews. Having been expelled from the synagogues for what they regarded as the courage to stand up to the authorities and confess Jesus, the Johannine Christians could not help being critical of those who lacked that courage—those who believed in Jesus but did not confess it publicly. It is not implausible that in the 80s and 90s such Jewish crypto-Christians were undergoing a crisis as to whether to stay on as part of synagogue Judaism or openly to join one of the developing churches or communities."

In short, the Gospel of John (like every other book of the New Testament) was intended to impact a specific set of individuals for a specific purpose or purposes. There is no rational reason to think that the writers ever imagined they were penning the New Testament; rather, their message was for this church here or that group there. While this cannot excuse language that is uncomfortably racist in the Gospel of John, it shines a glaring light on those who magnify the language as a way to "prove" that the Jews were ultimately to blame for the death of Jesus.

Returning to the Romans, there seems to be an idea, hinted at (or blatantly promoted) in the Gospels and trumpeted in passion plays, that Pontius Pilate was a sympathetic character forced by overwhelming public outcry to crucify an innocent man. Many scholars have long had a problem with this idea, and with good reason.

Don Cupitt and Peter Armstrong write: "...we know a good deal more about Pilate form a variety of sources outside the New Testament. It confirms what Gospel critics already suspected from internal evidence, that Pilate was really a very hard man who would unhesitatingly order the execute of a Galilean who seemed to him sufficiently troublesome. The tragic myth of Pilate as a decent fellow pushed into a terrible mistake has to go. It was evolved by way of reconciling Christianity with the Roman State, but it is not historical.” (Cambridge and BBC)

Candida Moss writes, "Why would the Gospel writers create such stories? There are a variety of explanations. As Jews writing in the volatile aftermath of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans, followers of Jesus found themselves adrift. They may have been trying to avoid attracting attention from the Romans. They may have been embroiled in religious disputes with other Jews who rejected their claims about Jesus. They may have been trying to “divorce Jesus from Judaism” in order to win Roman converts. The fact that historians always disagree is one reason they’ll never form a Justice League. But whichever explanation we follow it is clear that neither the Gospel writers nor Jesus intended to sow the seeds of anti-Semitism."

As is true of every area of Scripture, we are far better served when we search the Scriptures for what God says to us and our generation, rather than for evidence that "those people" are wrong.

So who did kill Jesus?

From a purely theological aspect, we all did. "'He himself bore our sins' in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; 'by his wounds you have been healed.”' (1 Peter 2:24)

From a historical standpoint, Jesus was murdered by oppressive systems. The Jewish Temple system of the day was either in collusion with, or beholden to, the occupying forces of Rome. The Herods owed their power to Caesar as well.

In other words, religion and government were in cahoots. I leave it to the reader to draw the obvious parallels to modern American Christianity.

The saddest thing about all of this is not that some formerly hunky B-grade actor is saying things that are both stupid and incorrect. It's that Kevin Sorbo continues to have a platform for his ignorance, not because we like to point and laugh, but because he is (a) a little famous, and (b) far too many people agree with him.

And while I fully support anyone's right to be a blithering idiot, when Kevin Sorbo or anyone else says these things, he doesn't suffer for them. Instead, those who suffer are the Jewish people, African Americans, and others he insults.

This is not a Biblical principle. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

Jesus did not die so we could feel superior to others, Kevin.