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A number of historians, however, have proposed detailed theories that minimize Jewish involvement -- including that of the Jewish religious leadership. Ellis Rivkin of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, contends that real religious courts were separate from the Sanhedrin, the council of Jewish functionaries that dealt with Jesus after his arrest. He depicts the Sanhedrin as a political body that collaborated with the Roman occupation forces and lacked any religious legitimacy. "Neither ((Jesus')) religious teachings nor his beliefs could have been on trial -- only their political consequences," says Rivkin. In his book, though, Brown sifts the ancient documents, Jewish and pagan as well as Christian, to argue that the Sanhedrin was the single recognized Jewish panel that treated both religious and political matters, albeit under the Roman thumb and therefore seen as corrupt by Jews in later years.
Other Jewish writers doubt the Sanhedrin trial occurred at all. For example, the nighttime hearing and the rushed verdict described in the New Testament violate religious law. But Brown says there is no reason to suppose that Jews of A.D. 30 would have strictly observed procedures not codified until two centuries later in the Mishnah, the rabbinical collation of oral law interpreting the Bible. As for those who think the Romans would not have contemplated an execution on the basis of Jewish religious disputes, Brown notes that 30 years later Jewish leaders sentenced Jesus, the son of Ananias, to death for prophesying that God would destroy the Temple. The Romans, however, found the defendant insane and never executed him.
Other modern revisions of Christ's death portray the Nazarene as a martyred revolutionary a la Che Guevara, but Brown says the details do not fit that scenario, and besides, Jewish insurrections only arose a generation later.
Who, then, decided that Jesus must die, and what were the reasons? In Brown's reading, Jesus' judges were a loosely defined group of Jewish aristocrats led by Caiaphas, the high priest who survived 18 years in the post. The Sanhedrin members were reacting to perceived threats to their faith -- and trying to avoid trouble with their constituents and the Romans. "There was surely an admixture of insincerity, self-protective cunning, honest religious devotion, conscientious self-searching, and fanaticism," Brown concludes. Among the less-than-noble motives: Jesus had uttered prophecies against the Temple, which by one estimate provided the livelihood of 20% of Jerusalem's population.
Brown joins those who believe Jesus' anti-Temple pronouncements were a factor in the death sentence. Brown deems blasphemy the crucial charge, not mocking God but involving Jesus' claim of a status that belongs to the Creator alone. Brown does not think Jesus or his followers used the title "Son of God" in Jesus' lifetime. But he considers it plausible that Jesus claimed the power to forgive sins, spoke of bringing about the kingdom of God and implied that God would judge people on how they responded to Jesus himself. All that would have provided ample reason for condemnation.