"Jesus in Roman occupied Jerusalem, 2000 years ago." "But since that time, the killing of Jesus has come to be seen as an execution that was little short of murder." "Historical evidence suggests that there are 3 main suspects" "Caiaphas, the High Priest of the great temple of Jerusalem." "Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea." "and most surprisingly, Jesus himself, was deeply implicated in his own death." "So who was responsible for the death of Jesus?" "The trial and crucifixion of Jesus was dramatic, swift and brutal." "To examine the evidence we need to re-visit the fateful week... before the murder of Jesus" "Jerusalem 30AD" "Thousands are pouring into the city to celebrate the festival of Passover." "Jesus, a rebel from Galilee is making a big impact." "He enters the city on a donkey, fulfilling ancient prophecies about the arrival of the Messiah." "The next day, inside the great Temple," "Jesus attacks the money changers for defiling the holy place." "The High Priests of the Temple call a secret meeting." "They see Jesus as a threat to their power and authority." "He must be stopped." "The following day the Romans are alerted." "To them, Jesus could be the cause of an uprising against Imperial Rome" "That night, Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by Temple Guards." "He is dragged for trial before Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Temple, and then, before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor." "ln less than 24 hours, Jesus is sentenced to death by crucifixion." "There are three major suspects and there's strong evidence against all of them." "Suspect number one is Caiaphas," "High Priest of the Temple of Jerusalem." "His fingerprints are everywhere -and he had good reasons to want Jesus dead." "Caiaphas was the most powerful High Priest in the history of Judea." "He was a man of enormous influence right across the life of Jerusalem." "He was high priest for eighteen years when the average survival time in office was just four." "He also had supreme political skills and a shrewd ability to co-operate successfully with the Romans, the ultimate rulers of Judea." "For Helen Bond, Caiaphas is an enigmatic figure." "She is researching his life and has studied the power structure of the High Priests in the Jerusalem Temple, and their relations with the Romans." "Caiaphas is a wealthy Jerusalem aristocrat." "He comes from a good priestly family and is well connected." "He has an enormous amount of prestige in Jerusalem because of his position." "He's the High Priest in the Jerusalem Temple." "This puts him at the very top of Judean society." "Although Judea was controlled by the Romans, civil and religious law was in the hands of the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of Jews." "It had 71 members, mostly Chief Priests, and was presided over by the High Priest, Caiaphas." "The way the system worked was that the Romans appointed a Governor, the Governor appointed the High Priest and in this case" "Caiaphas and Pilate seem to have had a very cosy relationship." "The High Priest, Caiaphas and the other high priests depended completely on the Roman approval and to maintain Roman approval they had to maintain order in the society." "Position and power are precisely what Caiaphas, and all the Chief Priests, stood to lose, if the people began to follow Jesus." "That could lead to unrest, maybe even revolution in Judea." "And they stood to lose something else much more concrete." "Archaeology is now showing that even though they were priests of the Temple," "Caiaphas and his associates, lived a life of luxury." "James Strange spends much of his professional life studying the evidence we have today for events described in the New Testament." "He believes there are good archaeological signs that" "Caiaphas and the Chief Priests of Jerusalem lived in some style, and in the very best part of town." "The houses that have been excavated that helped us the most have been found in the Old City of Jerusalem, in the Jewish Quarter." "They were found beneath modern ruined houses, which were undergoing renovation." "The quality of workmanship in these ancient houses was of the very finest quality." "The people who lived here had money." "The interiors were richly decorated with mosaic floors, painted ceilings and elegant furnishings." "All of this conspires to suggest something about their lifestyle." "They have ample room, they live in large rooms, much larger than we expect to find in ancient houses." "As the archaeologists dug beneath the floors of these lavish houses, they made an even more important discovery." "They unearthed a ritual bath." "It was important for all Jews to use a ritual bath in order to purify themselves before any act of worship." "But these houses had so many ritual baths, they could only have belonged to the High Priests." "This discovery was a clue to something else that Caiaphas stood to lose a lucrative income." "Under Jewish law, most people arriving in Jerusalem for Passover were deemed to be unclean." "That meant that if you had in the recent past come into contact with something which created impurity like a corpse or if you had had intercourse with a menstruating woman," "it was expected of you to purify yourself." "Before they could enter the Temple, everyone had to be ritually clean." "lmmersion in the water of a ritual bath would ensure purification." "The priests had ritual baths strategically placed outside the Temple for public use." "Everyone, even the poorest, had to pay for these rituals, and they were not cheap." "Ronny Reich has found no fewer than a hundred and fifty ritual baths around the Temple." "This was a sort of mania, to add more and more obligations" "for this you have to be pure and for that you have to be pure and each of these regulations demanded so many more thousands of ritual bathings for the entire public." "And for this they had to provide the means for this, and that's the reason why we have so many of these installations." "The baths must have generated considerable income for the priests." "But Jesus was teaching that these elaborate -and expensive purity rituals were unnecessary." "The whole elaborate Temple apparatus was designed to bring revenues in for simple matters like purification, forgiveness of sins, for incidental sins." "It's clear that is a major bone of contention that Jesus has with the Temple and the High Priests." "He's declaring that the Kingdom of God is available without all those elaborate purification rituals." "He is opening the Kingdom of God to beggars and sinners and people who can't afford to pay those rituals and sacrifices so that people can receive the blessings of God without paying for the temple system." "But Jesus wasn't only attacking the priests' control over the economy." "He was raising the stakes across the board, in the eyes of Jews everywhere." "He was directly challenging the authority of Caiaphas." "Caiaphas had maintained quite a strong control over the religious life of Jews, and not only Jews in Jerusalem and not only Jews in Judea but in fact the worldwide Jewish community in this period." "Jesus was by no means the first Jewish rebel to take on Caiaphas." "But this time Caiaphas had good reason to worry." "Jesus had chosen the most volatile week of the year to make his challenge:" "Passover -the largest annual festival in the Jewish calendar." "Pilgrims came to Jerusalem from all over the world, some from as far away as Babylon and Italy." "ln front of such huge crowds, Caiaphas could not afford to be humiliated." "Although, there are no records of the population in Jerusalem during Passover, a revealing yardstick is the number of lambs sacrificed." "The first century historian Josephus, says the High Priests at one Passover in Jerusalem counted 255,600 lambs killed and eaten for the festival." "He calculates one lamb feeds ten people." "So the crowds in Jerusalem that week could have been as great as two and a half million." "Any attack now on the authority of Caiaphas would be devastating." "The Chief Priests and Caiaphas would have been very worried by Jesus." "Any kind of preacher coming to Jerusalem at the crowded time of Passover was a potential threat." "They would, I think, have been worried on one hand by his authority, the fact he's getting quite a following amongst the people, the fact that the people are listening to Jesus rather than they themselves." "But I think perhaps much more importantly they'd have been very worried about what Jesus could do to the Temple." "What if Jesus started some kind of revolt or riot in the Temple?" "It is likely Jesus was already known to Caiaphas and the High Priests." "Not much escaped their notice in holy city." "At Passover, they would be tracking his every move." "It was an explosive setting for what was to come." "ln the Temple Jesus made his first move." "He accused the moneychangers and sacrificial dove sellers of extortion and of turning the Temple into a den of thieves." "But this action was also a powerful symbol." "Jesus was saying that God would destroy this Temple and all its corruption." "The High Priests would have been extremely alarmed to see this demonstration and this trouble happening in the Temple courtyard at Passover time." "The Temple, of course, is the place where the High Priests held sway." "They were the sacrosanct High Priests that carried out the sacrifices on behalf of the whole people and in their mind this action of Jesus simply would have been a blasphemy." "It is an act of arrogance." "This guy thinks he is somebody who can just walk into the Temple and do things like this." "It is an act of insult." "It is an act that shows grave dissatisfaction with the way things are." "It is done in a very public time" "hundreds of people might have been witnesses to it." "I think this is a very troubling act to Caiaphas and his council and it signalled to them that Jesus was dangerous." "Perhaps the best way to put the dangerousness is to say this." "If he would do that, we don't know what he will do next." "The man may be uncontrollable." "But what do you do with a man who is uncontrollable, who is charismatic, who has a following?" "You stop him." "Stopping Jesus is exactly what Caiaphas sets out to do." "He called a secret meeting of the Chief Priests at his house in the Old City." "Matthew's Gospel says Caiaphas urged them to take action." "Jesus must be killed." "They argued about how and when." "If they killed Jesus, now, at Passover there could well be massive riots in the city." "Whatever their discussions, we know that Caiaphas decided to strike." "It is the middle of the night." "The streets of Jerusalem are deserted." "The crowds are all at home, celebrating Passover." "He can do it secretly and swiftly." "After their own supper, Jesus is praying, while his disciples rest, in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives." "He is interrupted up by the arrival of a detachment of Temple Guards sent to arrest him." "Caiaphas could argue, in his defence, that arresting Jesus was perfectly legal." "He had simply brought in a known rebel who was endangering the public peace." "Hardly the actions of a murder suspect." "Caiaphas then put Jesus on trial." "But experts believe at this point Caiaphas leaves the law behind." "ln legal terms the so-called trial is a sham." "The whole Jewish trial of Jesus as it's presented in the Gospels is a complete travesty ofjustice." "We know something about Jewish trials of the time, from later Jewish writings known as the Mishnah and they give us a fairly comprehensive idea of how trials ought to be run." "And nearly everything in Jesus' trial is illegal." "It takes place at night, which was illegal." "It takes place, not in the normal council chamber, but in the High Priest's house." "It takes place on a feast day which was also not allowed." "The only sources we have for what took place at the trial of Jesus are the four Gospels." "They do vary, but they reinforce the suspicion that what took place that night was not entirely above board." "Caiaphas will serve as both the chiefjudge and the prosecuting attorney." "This is the general role taken by the person who convenes a court." "And the judges are there to give a kind of cover so we can say, 'well, it was a proper trial'" "So he had this rather sneaky night time trial with whatever close allies he wanted to call." "Caiaphas believed he had a case against Jesus because he had threatened to destroy the Temple, an offence against God and treason against the state." "Jesus would stand accused of blasphemy and sedition." "The trouble was he needed witnesses." "The Bible says that Caiaphas produced witnesses who claimed they had heard Jesus saying he would destroy the Temple." "Under Jewish law, at least two male witnesses had to agree, and very nearly word for word." "But the witnesses contradicted each other, they contradicted themselves." "ln some confusion, they were dismissed." "The charge of sedition, had failed." "Caiaphas now had a problem." "His problem was simple." ""l want him killed." "The witnesses didn't work out" "We had him!" "We had him." "He threatened to destroy the Temple -that's what he actually did."" ""That and turning over the tables, that's what he did."" ""That makes him such a dangerous man." "That's why we've got to get rid of him."" ""Whatever he says, I'm going to say he deserves death."" "And convening a trial and going through the pretence just gives a legal cover." ""l held a trial," he can later say, "l never execute someone arbitrarily."" "The witnesses didn't work." "So Caiaphas had to change tack." "If he could provoke Jesus to say something blasphemous he would have him for breaking Jewish law" "He asked Jesus, point blank" ""Are you the Son of God, the Son of the Blessed?"" ""Are you The Messiah?" Here the Gospels vary a little, and only in Mark's account does Jesus answer that he is." "Caiaphas declared that Jesus has spoken blasphemy." "The other members of his court agreed." "The penalty for this was death." "I think it didn't matter what Jesus answered precisely." "Caiaphas, when he decided to arrest him, had decided to execute him." "The case against Caiaphas seems unanswerable: he arrests Jesus, tries him in a kangaroo court and convicts him on a religious charge." "There is just one small problem." "Judea is under the iron rule of the Romans." "Caiaphas is not permitted to execute a death sentence." "So Caiaphas had the motive but not the power." "ln the end, no matter how much he wanted Jesus dead he couldn't deliver." "The case against Caiaphas is a strong one but to find out who really killed Jesus we'll have to look elsewhere." "Judea, in the time of Jesus, is a Jewish province governed by the Roman Empire." "All power, including that of life and death, is vested in one man, the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate." "Pilate has 6,000 crack troops at his command." "Up the road, in Syria, a further 30,000 soldiers are on call to back him up." "Rome had actually only been ruling Judea directly for the last 25 years by the time of Jesus." "And so the control was still fairly tenuous and uncertain." "So Pilate's main job is to make sure that law and order prevails in Judea." "If there's an obvious suspect anywhere in this investigation it's Pontius Pilate." "Pilate was the man who sent Jesus to be crucified." "He has got to be the prime suspect." "ln the Bible, Pilate is made out to be innocent in the death of Jesus" "but this may not be the whole story." "ln fact, all the evidence from sources outside the Bible paints a picture of a very different man." "According to the historian Philo, writing at the time," "Pilate was calculating, cruel and often brutal." "He also had an intense dislike of Jews." "So much so, that he based his headquarters here in the city of Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast and not in the Jewish capital, Jerusalem." "Caesarea was 60 miles from Jerusalem, a good two and a half days' march." "Pontius Pilate seems to have been arrogant, brash and particularly insensitive in his treatment of the Jews." "He probably had a typical Roman's disdain for any other culture, probably thinking that they weren't anywhere near as civilised as the Romans themselves." "But Pilate could not avoid his annual visit to Jerusalem for Passover." "As Roman Governor of Judea, it was part of his official duty to attend the most important festival in the Jewish calendar." "To make his trip more bearable Pilate took his wife with him." "Even so, there would've been a lot on his mind." "Pilate would have been particularly concerned about the preservation of law and order at the Passover." "This is a great national feast that commemorated the time when the Israelites came out of Egypt into the Holy Land, brought there by God, shaking off foreign oppression." "And so, of course, it was natural that at the time of the Passover, people started to think about Roman overlords, they started to think about nationality." "They thought about foreign oppressors and it's no accident whatsoever that nearly all of the riots that we hear about in the first century took place at Passover." "So, if there's going to be a Jewish revolt it's almost certain to happen here in Jerusalem, quite probably in the Temple." "And if anything threatened to disturb the peace, Pilate would have stamped it out straight away." "Pilate had an extensive network of spies and informers right across the city." "He would have known about Jesus and the following that he was gaining" "and about some kind of incident in the Temple." "And now, the trial that Caiaphas had held only the night before" "with its sentence of death." "It is now just after sunrise on the morning after the trial." "Caiaphas had sent Jesus to appear before Pilate because only the Roman Governor could carry out a death sentence." "Pilate was well known for having executed prisoners even without trial." "But little would have prepared him for the strange case of Jesus of Nazareth." "The charge that Caiaphas had brought against Jesus was blasphemy, a Jewish crime, nothing to do with Roman law but overnight the charge had disappeared." "There would've been no reason for Caiaphas to mention blasphemy one-way or the other." "He didn't have to say anything about that at all, because he had a perfectly good accusation to bring against Jesus, that Pilate would listen to in a minute -namely Jesus was guilty of sedition." "Jesus thought, or his followers thought, or people said that he was the King of the Jews." "That would make him guilty of a very high crime against Rome, and that would get him killed very quickly." "This is alarming for Pilate, the case now has legal meaning under Roman law." "It is a charge of sedition and treason, punishable by death." "Pilate must take action, and at the very least, give Jesus a hearing." "Roman trials were often held in public." "A crowd began to gather in the fevered atmosphere of Passover Jerusalem as news spread that Jesus of Nazareth was on trial for his life." "Pilate now asked Jesus if he was calling himself King of the Jews." "Jesus made little or no reply." "Pilate could find no evidence against Jesus, and said, 'this man is innocent'." "At this point Pilate could have dismissed the case, but he had to take into account an unexpected factor." "The Crowd" "His verdict of innocence angered them." "They began to shout for Jesus to be crucified." "It's possible that the crowd was a mob, whipped up by the Chief Priests to put pressure on Pilate." "Pilate now faced a dilemma." "Release Jesus and there may well be serious riots." "But why should he execute an innocent man?" "Pilate is in a bit of a cleft stick because all we know from him from other sources as well as the Gospels, like the historian Josephus, who writes about him, make it clear that" "Pilate really didn't care about offending people" "And actually when he looked at Jesus and read the reports that he had from his officials it was quite clear Jesus wasn't leading a military revolution." "So Pilate then says "l don't find anything wrong with him, I don't think he's guilty of these charges."" "Pilate then decides on what he thinks is a masterstroke." "There is a Passover amnesty, which allows the Roman Governor to release a prisoner." "He offers the crowd a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, who is in prison for murder." "At this point, Pilate is plunged into an even greater dilemma." "ln Matthew's Gospel, Pilate's wife comes to him, deeply upset." "She begs her husband not to harm Jesus." "She tells him of a dream in which Jesus was innocent." "But Pilate is interrupted by the crowd, baying for him to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus." "Unable to make a clear decision, Pilate now tries to have it both ways." "He passes an extraordinary sentence." "Declaring Jesus to be innocent," "Pilate condemns him to death by crucifixion." "This action alone is enough to incriminate Pilate." "Pilate then symbolically washes his hands before the crowd, telling them he is innocent of this man's blood." "Jesus is taken away to be whipped." "But for all his attempts to wash his hands of the affair, the very fact that Jesus was crucified puts Pilate firmly under suspicion." "ln his defence, Pilate could argue that it was his duty as Roman Governor to execute rebels who threatened the state." "So was Pontius Pilate the man who killed Jesus?" "He had the power but it was Caiaphas who had the motive." "Pilate gave the execution order, but the crowd were shouting for it, demanding crucifixion." "So the case against Pilate remains unproven." "But there was one more suspect." "He was at the heart of the action every step of the way, and many experts believe that he, more than anyone else, was truly responsible for the death of Jesus." "To examine the evidence, we go back a little, to the start of Passover week." "Like hundreds of other pilgrims, Jesus travelled to Jerusalem." "His entry into the city is now legend" "riding into Jerusalem on a donkey." "On the face of it, a very simple event." "But there is a more going on here than meets the eye." "This action by Jesus is deeply provocative." "Since the days of Moses, the Hebrew scriptures have foretold the arrival of a great Messiah, a powerful leader, appointed by God, who would bring a Perfect Golden Age, the Defeat of All Evil and a New Kingdom of God on Earth" "One of the prophets, Zechariah, foretold that the Messiah would enter the City of Jerusalem riding on a donkey." "Exactly what Jesus did." "It seems as though for Jesus all sorts of bits of Israel's story are coming together and that he's in the middle of it." "The particular prophecy that he seems to be deliberately acting out is about Israel's true king, the anointed one, the Messiah, coming at last and he will be God's agent to redeem Israel." "So Jesus seems to be saying this is it, this Passover is the moment when I am going to be revealed, if you like, as the true Messiah." "So it's very much about his perception of who he was in the plan of God at that moment." "The final suspect is Jesus himself." "There is a considerable body of evidence to suggest he knew that every action he took was deliberately planned and the he knew what the consequences would be." "Controversial though it was, his arrival in Jerusalem would not have been enough to get Jesus killed." "But he didn't stop there." "He raised the stakes." "For years money changers and the sellers of animals and birds for sacrifice had plied their trade in the Temple courtyards." "Passover is their busiest and most lucrative time of the year." "People are also paying their annual Temple tax, which Jews from all over the world paid to the Temple in Jerusalem." "But the rate of exchange was appallingly bad." "Declaring that the Temple was a house of prayer and not a den of thieves," "Jesus took his most provocative action in this whole extraordinary week" "This was an attack on the commercial activity of the moneychangers, but it was, above all, a symbolic attack on the Temple itself." "I think we can be sure that Jesus knew the risks he was taking, that he knew the potential consequences." "He knew what it meant to proclaim the Temple's destruction and to claim that a new kingdom was forming, the Kingdom of God." "He knew that the risk was arrest and trial and conviction and death." "The case for seeing Jesus as wholly complicit in his own fate becomes more and more compelling as these dramatic days unfold." "After his battle with the moneychangers in the Temple," "Jesus could easily have left Jerusalem." "He could have avoided any possible trouble." "Instead he chose to stay in the city and celebrate Passover with his disciples." "There are clear signs at The Last Supper that Jesus was aware that his future may now be sealed." "As he and the disciples sat together, Jesus called the bread they were eating his broken body, and referred to the red wine they drank as his spilled blood." "Jesus seemed to be predicting his own death." "And he seemed to be doing everything possible to bring that end closer." "His very next action bears out that idea, all too clearly." "Jesus identifies the person who will betray him" "Judas Iscariot, one of his own, chosen disciples." "ln one of the Gospels Jesus says to Judas "Do what you have to do, but do it quickly."" "To put himself directly in the path of danger, and so consistently, might suggest that Jesus was undergoing some kind of crisis." "But we have to remember that he believed profoundly that he was on a mission from God." "We know from several points in the Gospel that Jesus' own family said he's out of his mind." "We know that some of the people who listened to his teaching said" "He's absolutely crazy, why bother listening to him?" "And then when you find yourself on trial for your life, because of this vision that you've got, this vocation that you've got, then again the question must come -maybe I've made a terrible mistake." "And I am quite sure that Jesus must have faced that question again and again and again during his life and that each time he faced it, he came back with the same answer." "No, it may look crazy but this is what I have to do." "There is one final incident this night that confirmed Jesus was fully aware of what he was doing." "After The Last Supper, he and the disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane, just outside the city walls." "The Gospels say that here, for the first time," "Jesus began to have doubts about his destiny." "They describe the event." "as the agony of Jesus" "He asked God if he could be spared the awful fate that awaited him." "It's at this point that Jesus' complicity in his own death is fully revealed." "According to Luke's Gospel, Jesus sweats blood and drops of his blood fall on the path before him." "Scholars have always assumed that this was a detail made up by the Gospel writer -a dramatic literary device to express Jesus' fear and anxiety." "But forensic pathology suggests that this event may have actually happened." "Giving us our best evidence yet that Jesus knew what lay before him." "Physicians refer to the fact that each of the sweat glands that are all over our body is supplied by small capillaries, small blood vessels." "Under stress capillaries can break and blood can issue forth into the sweat itself and be a mixture of sweat and blood." "The medical name for that is haematohydrosis -blood sweat." "If you read Luke, the Gospels and you find out that" "Jesus sweated blood I'm not surprised." "I mean the mind body relationship has been known for a long time that when you're under enormous stress it can come out in some form and his form was a very, very rare condition but stimulated by stress" "And confronted in the garden ready to be taken off for trial this is a time of maximum stress and in one form or another it's going to come out and it came out in a very rare form of sweating blood." "The idea of Jesus being complicit in his own death may seem controversial, but all the facts stack up." "On many occasions Jesus had the opportunity to leave Jerusalem." "But every time he refused to take the easy way out." "At no time, during this fateful week, did Jesus make any attempt to escape." "He stood his ground." "Judas betrayed him with a kiss and the awful endgame began." "Everything he had done since that first day at the gates of Jerusalem, every step of the way, seemed to be the fulfilment of a destiny." "The case against Jesus is strong" "But no matter how much he put himself in danger he did not take his own life, that was done by others." "Let's review the evidence." "The first suspect, Caiaphas, wanted Jesus dead." "He considered Jesus a threat to his religious power and his privileged lifestyle." "He held a sham trial and convicted Jesus of blasphemy." "Who is the guilty party, is naturally Caiaphas." "And I see that that's the right man to name." "He is the guy who decided." "So here's the man that I think is actually the guy who did it." "Pilate may have played an unwitting role in this c" "He saw Jesus as no threat." "He declared him innocent." "But Pilate had the ultimate power." "It was he who ordered the execution of Jesus." "Of course the one who convicted him and sentenced him to death was Pilate, the Roman Governor -no question about that," "Pilate has to take the responsibility for that." "The final suspect, Jesus." "He knew exactly what he was doing and why" "He deliberately provoked Caiaphas with his actions." "He made no attempt to escape and he refused to defend himself at his trial" "Jesus was successful in achieving his goal -his destiny." "I think ultimately it was Jesus himself who was responsible for his own crucifixion, because passionately believed that it was the will of God that he should die on the cross." "So who then is responsible for the death of Jesus?" "Well, it's clear from the evidence of the three suspects." "Clear, but far from simple." "They all are." "ln a sense it's all three, but it's a different sense for each one." "Pilate is definitely a guilty man." "He's got blood on his hands and he knows it." "Caiaphas is definitely a guilty man." "He's a wily old politician sending an innocent man to his death." "Jesus, I wouldn't say Jesus was guilty in that sense." "Jesus is being faithful to his vocation, even though it leads to his death." "Pontius Pilate killed Jesus, but Pilate had help." "He had the help of Caiaphas and the Temple priesthood, who accused Jesus." "Caiaphas surely has to answer for that." "And Pilate had the help of Jesus, who took a great risk in proclaiming his message and suffered as a consequence." "The Romans were masters of crucifixion." "The public execution of Jesus was intended as a lesson for all Jerusalem." "According to the Gospels, Jesus' mother was brought to see her son die." "The disciples had scattered, probably in fear of their lives." "They might be next." "After six hours on the cross Jesus was pronounced dead." "One chapter in the life of Jesus had come to a close," "But the story was far from over." "And how does history record the fate of the three suspects?" "Pilate was recalled to Rome to be tried for his brutal treatment of Jews, but the Emperor Tiberius died, and Pilate was never brought to trial." "He is thought to have committed suicide in 37 AD -not long after the crucifixion" "Caiaphas was removed from office soon after the death of Jesus, and lived quietly on his farm near Galilee." "He is buried at Talpiot, in Jerusalem." "Jesus will always remain" "a major figure in world history and in religious faith."