(Why) Was Jesus the Galilean Crucified Alone? Solving a False Conundrum

Abstract

One of the objections raised against the hypothesis that Jesus was involved in anti-Roman seditious activity runs as follows: if Jesus was put to death as an insurrectionist, why was he arrested and crucified alone, whilst his followers were left unharmed? Although this is regarded as a real conundrum by the guild, the present article proposes that the question has been incorrectly formulated, because it uncritically assumes that Jesus was indeed crucified alone. The article argues that both sound reasoning and significant evidence point to the fact that some followers of Jesus—or at least people related to him through a shared ideology and/or activities—were sought after and crucified along with him. In turn, this allows us to understand in a novel way the reasons for the collective crucifixion at Golgotha.