Death in the afternoon

Quote:

What really happened on the historical Good Friday? To most people, the story of the Passion seems unproblematic; 2,000 years of church tradition have produced a unified popular image with villainous Jewish priests, a hostile Jewish crowd, cowardly apostles and a well-intentioned but feeble Pontius Pilate. Their cooperation brought about the crucifixion of the Son of God. This is believed to be gospel truth. But is it? The New Testament account is neither unified, nor coherent.

"Historical Good Friday" is a problematic claim really; for example, what is known from contemporary sources about the main characters wouldn´t fill many pages. So we can hardly make claims to know what they would or wouldn´t have done. And there´s no necessity to believe that what the Gospels say about the way public in Jerusalem behaved towards Jesus before his arrest would be more accurate than the scene where the people choose Barabbas to be saved. If the picture of Jesus in the Gospels is relatively accurate and the Gospels portray his final days somewhat correctly, there´s really no reason to believe that there couldn´t have been in Jerusalem both significant support for him and also significant support for his execution.

Anyway, the Gospels don´t depict a historical person objectively. They portray Jesus as people who believed in him 40-70 years after his death saw him, his life and what they believed to have happened to him. There´s no reason to suggest that there was any kind of clear picture among his followers what exactly had happened during that night; much what were read from the Gospels about the actions of Jewish and Roman leaders must be in it´s nature more gossip and guesses than inside information.