Jesus Was Crucified Because His Disciples Were Armed? New Testament Analysis Published


Was Jesus crucified because his disciples were armed? According to a “scholarly analysis” of New Testament books by a religious studies professor, this could be why the crucifixion of Jesus Christ really took place.

In a report published by Newsweek magazine, Dale Martin of Yale University states that this is an often overlooked part of stories about Jesus in the gospels. Martin says that “the man of Nazareth was not the pacifist he’s usually made out to be.”

The books of Mark and Luke state that at least one or more of of Jesus’ followers was carrying a sword when Jesus was arrested after the Last Supper, during the Jewish Passover. Martin says that disciple Simon Peter used his sword to cut off the ear of one of the people arresting Jesus, according to the Gospel of John.

Speaking to Newsweek, Martin tells the magazine that no historical documents reveal it as being illegal at the time to walk around Rome and other Roman cities. No legal records are in one piece from Jerusalem, but leaders wouldn’t have allowed the Jewish to be armed during Passover, according to Roman history.

Martin theorizes that this would be reason enough for Jesus to be killed.

“Just as you could be arrested in Rome for even having a dagger, if Jesus’ followers were armed, that would be reason enough to crucify him.”

Harold Attridge is a former dean of the Yale Divinity School who who didn’t participate in the New Testament study. He tells Newsweek that Martin’s analysis has merit, and that “likely the Romans would have been severe against someone seen as a political threat.” Jesus would have fit this category.

New Testament scholar Hal Taussig, with the Union Theological Seminary in New York, says that the paper “reminds us that the early followers of Jesus and perhaps Jesus himself were inevitably thrown into conflict with arbitrary state terrorism by the Roman Empire [in which] Romans practiced both random and intentional violence against populations they had conquered, killing tens of thousands by crucifixion.”

Another question raised is why would Jesus’ followers be armed, especially during a religious festival? Bart Ehrman, a professor at the University of North Carolina, thinks Jesus may not have been against fighting. It’s possible he wasn’t the “pacifist” he’s believed to have been, Ehrman says.

“It’s making me rethink my view that Jesus was a complete pacifist. And it takes a lot for me to change my views about Jesus.”

Martin says that Jesus’ followers were probably anticipating “an apocalyptic showdown” to come. It would be one in which “divine forces (in the form of angels) would destroy Rome and Herod’s temple and usher in a holy reign. And this might require some fighting by Jesus’ disciples,” the report cites Martin as saying.

A similar situation is laid out in the Book of Revelation, Martin mentions.

Not all historians of Christianity agree with Dale Martin’s analysis that Jesus was crucified because his disciples were armed. Newsweek highlights what Paula Fredriksen, a historian of ancient Christianity at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, has to say about Martin’s analysis.

Martin says that most scholars who study biblical history believe “that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jewish prophet who was expecting an imminent arrival of the kingdom of God on Earth.”

According to Fredriksen, it’s not legitimate to assume that because carrying arms in Rome was illegal, that it was also illegal in Jerusalem. She says law against carrying weapons in Jerusalem wasn’t as strictly enforced. When thousands of Jews bombarded the city during Passover, Fredriksen says it would have been impossible to police them.

“I can’t even imagine what a mess it was,” Fredriksen says.

In addition to that, Fredriksen says that the Greek word used in the Gospels that Martin talks about as a sword is closer in meaning to a knife. “Only professionals,” such as soldiers, “carried swords,” she says.

Taussig calls the New Testament research by Dale Martin an “extraordinary contribution.” He adds that no one can possibly know for certain if his analysis is right.

“… [It’s] almost impossible for us to know many of the things professor Martin proposes—whether they are historically valid or not.”

Dale Martin’s research is published in the The Journal for the Study of the New Testament.

[Image via Mary Pages]

Share this article: Jesus Was Crucified Because His Disciples Were Armed? New Testament Analysis Published
More from Inquisitr