researching the Easter story through Roman eyes. Could the Romans have seen Jesus as a usurper ?

[ApriloNeil2026]

I'm currently researching the historical context of the Easter story and first-century Judea under Roman rule as part of looking at Holy Week, the crucifixion and resurrection I've been exploring how the Roman authorities might have perceived Jesus at the time and could the Romans have seen Jesus as a potential usurper

And it was this scenario which carried down the centuries to justify anti semitism.
Rather than blame the Romans when it was Pontius Pilate who was the only one able to issue the death sentence it was blamed on the Jewish population. Thus the infamous phrase of Christ Killers.

While I applaud your interest in the history of Christianity, the majority of Christianity is Judaism.

Christianity is evangelical in nature and when combining that with the Roman chameleon appriach to religion, it adopted local pagan religious practices and even gods/goddess (adopted by Pagan Romans) but then reinventer as saints when Christianity became the official rekigion lf the empire in order to convert locals.

The Romans would not have seen him as a usurper per se. Being a son of a God was nothing new.

Not that long. The earliest gospel was written some 30 years after his death.

He didn't issue the death sentence.

He handed Jesus over and washed his hands publicly of the entire matter.

The fact that people ran with the crucifixion and turned it into anti Semitism is neither here nor there, and actually completely anti- Christian - all through the OT and in the gospels it is clear that the son of God was to be sent and then sacrificed for our sins, with the resurrection to follow, faith in which is the cornerstone of Christianity. Without the death and resurrection of Jesus, Christianity is meaningless.

It was going to happen one way or another.

Your misogyny - not your topic - gave you away.

Why are you interested in Jesus OP?

I suspect tbe Romans saw Jesus as a public order issue.

Yes, this is a great read.

Geza Vermes thought that Jesus never meant to start a new religion - he was mainly focused on reforming Judaism. That's why he annoyed the Jewish hierarchy.

It was really that PR genius and energetic traveller and charismatic speaker/writer, St Paul, who founded and promoted Christianity. Without St Paul I don't think we'd ever have heard of Jesus.

Also, remember that most of what most people think of as Christianity is in fact a construct of the Catholic Church at the Conference of Nicea in ....the 4th Century??? If you read the gospels there is very little to support most of the doctrine of the established Church.

I'm an atheist but absolutely fascinated by religion and how belief and dogma is constructed,

Cheers Bruce :-) (Excellent tune) my degree/area of specialism.

i also recommend the Geza Vermes. Paul - an early spin doctor. All the effectiveness of Malcom Tucker with slightly less fucks.

Weird how Lewis, a writer of fiction, apparently never considered that the gospels may not be verbatim records of what Jesus actually said and did.

Anyone with half a brain can understand that the gospels give a gist, not a verbatim account (as with the rest of the bible).

There are a great many Christians who see the gospels as absolutely accurate accounts of Jesus' words and deeds.

It’s not like they had video cameras or tape recorders back then.
Someone scribing on wax tablets was the best you could get.
Most of our records of speeches- orations in public, in the assembly/parliament/senate, by generals before battles, were all noted down and then written up later from those notes. Some don’t even show up until 20-30yrs later when the person sits down to write their memoirs based on their notes and copies of the letters and correspondance. Why else do we have a “Secretary” of blank for each arm of the government? Originally that was their job to write down the decisions and then send out the orders, issue the proclamations and keep the records.

An account can be accurate without a verbatim record of what was said or done.

An account without a verbatim record is not only less likely to be accurate than one with, it's also harder to verify as accurate.

There goes 99.99% of human history since the invention of writing.
Accounts can be verified by comparing the written accounts of multiple eyewitnesses, and archaeological evidence.

Which eye-witness accounts are in the gospels? And what archaeological evidence supports them?

I always think it is interesting to reframe this in terms of heresy rather than terrorism. So in the later middle ages/early modern period the Church would try people for heresy and then if they didn't recant they would be handed to the secular authorities to be executed on the grounds that religious dissent was contrary to the public wellbeing.

None, and none.

I think ‘eye witness accounts’ of supernatural events can automatically be discarded as not accurate.

I thought Pilate was a sort of small regional leader, whose hands were tied in ordering the execution as it was called for by the majority of the crowds? And that while the Romans put Jesus to death, it was in a shrugging shoulders kind of way as they carried out a ‘duty’ to appease the public.

Yeah, that’s how it was written by Matthew who wanted future Christians to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus rather than the Romans who actually crucified him.

I’m Catholic and I don’t blame Jews at all. They did call for his crucifixion though. But it’s immaterial as if they hadn’t, Christianity wouldn’t exist today.

In the Bible they literally have Jews say 'His death be upon us and on our children'.

Did you not know that the key gospels were written around 20-30 years after Jesus death by his disciples who knew him?
Who usually writes their memoirs?
Young men or old men?
That we have actual archaeologically discovered copies of these key gospels that could have been written by contemporaries of Jesus?
That we also have historical records written by the followers of the disciples who would have been told what the disciples saw?
That even before we discovered the old enough to have been written by someone who lived when Jesus did, that the slight differences in the same parables between these key gospels had been analysed extensively by experts on eye witness testimony in more modern times and judged to be the usual amount of deviations different point of view rather than later insertions?
( As well as the later much edited and differently/mis translated editions? )