A Roman governor ordered the crucifixion of Jesus – so why did many Christians blame the Jews for centuries?

This is a straightforward part of the Easter story: Roman governor Pontius Pilate had Jesus of Nazareth killed by his soldiers. He imposed a sentence that Roman judges often inflicted on social subversives – crucifixion.

The Gospel of the New Testament says so. The Nicene Creed, one of Christianity’s main statements of faith, states that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate.” The testimony of Paul, the first person whose preaching in the name of Jesus Christ is preserved in the New Testament, refers to the crucifixion.

But over the past 2,000 years, it has been common for some Christians to hold Pilate almost innocent and the Jews responsible for Jesus’ death—a belief that has shaped the global history of anti-Semitism.

In medieval times, Easter was often a dangerous time for Jewish communities, who were targeted by Christians as “Christ-killers”. This notion was integral to the hatred that fueled mass violence in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the Holocaust and Nazi genocide in Russia.

Why did Christian teachings practically let Pilate off the hook? Why do many Christians blame the Jews?

The Gospel Story

In the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, Pilate believes Jesus is innocent of any crime. In some of them he even announces it publicly.

But the high priests of the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem saw Jesus as a charismatic and popular Jewish preacher who challenged their authority. They arrest Jesus before Pilate during Passover week.

Pilate plans for Jesus’ release, but the riotous crowd shouts for his death. Pilate places the cavemen in the cave and decides to crucify Jesus, whom Christians believe rose from the dead three days later.

Any reader of the Gospels knows the sequence, although it varies somewhat in each of them. The early gospels, composed at least a generation after Jesus’ death, blame the chief priests and the crowd present for persuading Pilate to crucify Jesus. The Gospel of John, written a few decades after the other three, portrayed Jews as responsible in general, and much of early Christian literature.

One account, written in the middle of the second century or later and not included in the New Testament, also claims that Pilate did not order the crucifixion of Jesus. Instead, it blamed Herod Antipas, the Jewish ruler of Galilee – the region where Jesus grew up. Other texts from the first few centuries AD say that Pilate became a Christian.

Roman history

Scholars have long debated the historical facts of Jesus’ trial. In my 2025 book, “Killing the Messiah,” I do too.

The Gospel testimonies capture the basics of criminal cases before Roman judges, which were held in public. Judges posed questions to prosecutors and defendants, and had considerable power to decide whether a person was innocent or guilty and to sentence.

Writers living in the Roman Empire portrayed judges as capricious, irresponsible, or influenced by the fearful mob. The Gospels reflect this attitude by showing Pilate’s fear of condemning an innocent man.

But from a historian’s point of view, there is an important problem with the account of the Gospels. Roman judges could face impeachment, confiscation of property, exile, or even death for apparently innocent people. In other words, it seems unlikely that Pilate would have declared Jesus innocent, but then yielded to pressure and condemned him anyway.

Other ancient writers describe Pilate as someone who insulted the Jews of Judea. According to the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo and historian Josephus, Pilate had his soldiers carry objects honoring the Roman emperors into Jerusalem, which the Jewish inhabitants considered profane. When the crowd protested, he sometimes retreated. But his soldiers attacked a mob agitated by Pilate’s use of temple money to build hydroelectric power. They also massacred a rebellion of Samaritans – people who claimed descent from the Israelites.

Pilate did not blindly put the enemy crowd in the cave, or do what the chief priests wanted. Roman prefects like him had to coordinate with the Jewish clergy to govern Jerusalem, whom he considered destructive of those who incited social unrest against them. Jesus would fit that category, but neither Philo nor Josephus provide examples of Pilate killing people after acquitting them.

A growing divide

So why did Pilate crucify Jesus? As many scholars have argued, the simple answer is that he believed Jesus committed some kind of treason—not that the crowd pressured Pilate to do so.

However, when the Gospels were composed a generation after the crucifixion, they portray Pilate as convinced of Jesus’ innocence. Over time, other works of ancient Christian literature shifted the accountability from Pilate to the Jews.

The experience of Jesus’ early followers helps explain this change. They, like Jesus himself, were Jews, and they believed him to be the heaven-sent Messiah. But during the first and second centuries, they separated themselves more and more from other Jews until they began to see themselves as members of a non-Jewish movement: Christianity.

In the eyes of the Roman authorities, Christians were a nuisance and sometimes faced prosecution and execution. In addition, Rome brought persecution and punitive measures against the Jews after the revolt—which prompted the followers of Jesus to distance themselves. Their literature became increasingly hostile to the Jews.

Historians and biblical scholars continue to debate why Pilate condemned Jesus. Was it to suggest that he was the Messiah, or in the words of Pilate, “King of the Jews”? Did Jesus incite the crowd to riot in the temple during the Passover – or were the authorities concerned, even unknowingly? Were Jesus and his followers involved in armed rebellion?

But regardless of the answer, as I argue in my book, the responsibility for the crucifixion rests with Pilate—not the chief priests and the Jewish crowd in Jerusalem.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and credible analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Nathaniel Andrade, Binghamton University, State University of New York

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Nathanael Andrade has received fellowship funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation/Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.