Rome Killed Jesus

BBC

The story begins when the Galilean rebel Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, deliberately fulfilling a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible about the coming of the Messiah. [..] The next day Jesus raids the Temple, the heart of the Jewish religion, and attacks money-changers for defiling a holy place. The leaders of the Jewish establishment realise that he threatens their power, and so do the Romans, who fear that Jesus has the charisma to lead a guerrilla uprising against Imperial Rome.

Caiaphas was a supreme political operator and one of the most influential men in Jerusalem [..]. Jesus threatened Caiaphas’s authority [..]. Caiaphas’ power base was the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of Jews which controlled civil and religious law [..] Sanhedrin only ruled because the Romans allowed them to and the way to keep the Romans happy was to maintain order in society. Caiaphas himself was a Roman appointment, so he needed to keep cosy with the governor, Pilate, if he wanted to stay in power and preserve his luxurious way of life.