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 You're about to discover something that three religions have tried to hide for over 300 years. Something that cost a man his family, his community, his reputation, and ultimately his own life. Something so dangerous that Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, groups that hated each other and waged bloody wars against one another, came together for the first and only time in history with a common goal to destroy the ideas of a single philosopher. His name was Baruk Spininoza. And the question he dared to

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 ask was this. Who really killed Jesus Christ? It seems like a simple question. You probably learned the answer when you were a child. Perhaps in catechism, maybe watching a movie about the passion, perhaps listening to your grandmother tell the story during Holy Week. The Jews killed Jesus. The chosen people rejected the Messiah, shouted for him to be crucified, chose to free Barabus instead of the son of God. And for this they carry a guilt that spans generations. This answer has been repeated for 20 centuries in every

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 church, every chapel, every good Friday sermon around the world. It was painted in Renaissance frescos, etched in stained glass of Gothic cathedrals, staged in medieval plays, taught in schools and universities. Billions of human beings were born, lived and died believing this story as an absolute and unquestionable truth. And this story had consequences. In the first crusade, entire armies massacred Jewish communities under the cry of vengeance for the blood of Christ. In the Spanish Inquisition, thousands were tortured and

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 burned alive for being descendants of the supposed murderers of God. In the pograms of Russia and Eastern Europe, entire villages were wiped off the map, while attackers invoked this same ancient accusation. And in the Holocaust, this 2,000-year narrative found its most monstrous expression, providing the ideological fuel for the largest systematic genocide in human history. Millions of people died because of this story. Entire generations were persecuted, expelled, exterminated. Children were torn from their mother's

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 arms. Families were separated forever. Communities that had existed for centuries were swept off the map in a matter of days. All because of an answer to a question. But what if that answer is wrong? Spininoza was born in 1632. The son of a family of Portuguese Jews who had fled the Inquisition and settled in the Netherlands, one of the few places in Europe where Jews could live with relative safety. He was raised in the Jewish tradition, studied the Talmud with the best rabbis in his community,

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 and everyone expected him to become a great religious leader. His intelligence was evident from an early age. His analytical ability impressed his teachers, and his future seemed bright. But Spininoza had a problem. He couldn't stop asking questions. Not simple questions, the kind that rabbis could answer by quoting scriptures or traditions. Uncomfortable questions. Questions that exposed contradictions in the sacred texts. Questions that challenged assumptions that no one had questioned for centuries. Questions that

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 made his teachers frown and changed the subject. And the most dangerous question of all was precisely about the death of Jesus. You need to understand something fundamental. Before we continue, Jesus Christ never wrote a single word. The man whom billions consider God incarnate, the founder of the largest religion on the planet, the most influential figure in human history, left no document, no letters, no records, no handwritten instructions. Absolutely everything we know about him, every word we attribute to him, every

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 action we say he performed came from other people who wrote decades after his death in a language different from the one he spoke for audiences who never knew him. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, the texts that form the basis of everything Christianity teaches about Jesus, were written between 40 and 70 years after the crucifixion. None of the authors were eyewitnesses to the events they narrate. They all wrote in Greek, not Aramaic. the language Jesus actually used and they all had specific

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 agendas, specific problems they were trying to solve, specific audiences they were trying to convince. Spininoza realized this and he realized something even more disturbing. When you carefully compare the four gospels, when you analyze how each one tells the story of Jesus arrest, trial, and execution, you find glaring contradictions. Not small discrepancies that could be explained by different perspectives or memory lapses, but fundamental contradictions about who did what, who said what, and most

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 importantly, who was responsible for Jesus's death. And these contradictions follow a pattern. As the gospels were written from the oldest to the most recent, the blame for Jesus' death is systematically transferred. In the Gospel of Mark, the oldest, the Romans are clearly the executioners. And Pilate shows no hesitation in ordering the crucifixion. But as we move to Matthew, Luke, and finally John, Pilate becomes increasingly reluctant, almost sympathetic, while the Jews take on more and more responsibility culminating in

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 that terrible scene where the crowd shouts that Jesus' blood should fall upon them and their children forever. Why this change? who benefited from this transfer of blame, who had an interest in absolving Rome and condemning Israel. Spininoza asked these questions and followed the evidence to its logical conclusions. What he found was a web of political interests, institutional survival needs, and deliberate manipulation of the historical narrative. The early Christians were trying to survive within the Roman

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 Empire. Attacking Rome was suicide. But attacking the Jews, a group already marginalized and often persecuted, was safe. More than safe, it was useful because it helped differentiate the new religion from its Jewish roots and made it more palatable to Gentile converts. The story of Jesus's death was not recorded. It was constructed brick by brick, verse by verse, gospel by gospel. And the construction followed an unyielding logic of power and survival. When Spininoza began to share these conclusions, the world collapsed around

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 him. At the age of 23, his own Jewish community excommunicated him with the most severe curse ever recorded in its history. The words of the Hermim still send chills down the spine of those who read them today. Cursed be he by day, and cursed be he by night, cursed when he lies down, and cursed when he rises up, cursed when he goes out, and cursed when he comes in. May the Lord never forgive him. made divine wroth and fury burn against this man forever. No one in his community could speak to him. No one

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 could approach him within four cubits. No one could read a single line of his writings. His own brothers renounced him. He became a ghost, a dead man among the living, erased from all official memory of his people. But the Jews were not the only ones to persecute him. The Catholic Church placed all his works on the index liberum prohibitorum. The list of books whose reading was prohibited under penalty of excommunication and in many cases death. The Protestants who hated the Catholics and were hated by

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 them agreed on this point. Spininoza was too dangerous to be tolerated. Philosophers across Europe trembled at the mention of his name, fearing association with him. He spent the rest of his life polishing lenses for glasses to earn a living. the greatest philosophical genius of his generation. Living in rented rooms, working with his hands, inhaling daily the glass dust that slowly destroyed his lungs. He died at the age of 44, tubercular and impoverished, but still writing, still thinking, still seeking the truth that

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 had cost him everything. 300 years have passed since then, and today finally we can look at his ideas without the fear that paralyzed his contemporaries. We can examine his analyses, follow his reasoning, evaluate his evidence. We can ask the question he asked and see where it leads us. Who really killed Jesus Christ? In the coming hours, we will reconstruct Spinoza's investigation step by step. We will go back to Jerusalem in the year 33 of the common era and meet the true political players of that

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 explosive moment. We will examine Pontius Pilate, not the hesitant and almost sympathetic figure of the gospels, but the brutal governor that Roman historians describe, a man whom Fileo of Alexandria called inflexible, cruel, and relentless, a man who massacred Jews without hesitation. We will analyze the supposed trial of Jesus by the Sanhedrin and compare what the Gospels describe with what we know about Jewish law at the time. We will discover why this trial as narrated would be absolutely impossible according to the

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 very rules that the Jews followed. We will trace the evolution of the narrative through the four gospels and see verse by verse how the blame was transferred from Rome to Israel and we will understand why. We will discover who benefited from this transfer, what interests were at stake, what survival needs shaped the story that has come down to us. We will see how a narrative constructed to solve political problems of the first century transformed into Fore line of speech. The Evangelian Shan Fore!

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 Foreign! Foreign! Fore narrative. for Foreigne complex. for about Shabbat or religious festivals, and Passover was the most important of all the festivals. Third, a verdict of guilt could not be pronounced on the same day as the trial. It was necessary to wait at least one day for the judges to reconsider, a safeguard against hasty decisions in cases of life or death. Fourth, the trial had to take place in the hall of hunstones within the temple precinct, not in anyone's private house. The trial described in the gospels

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 violates all these rules. It takes place at night. It occurs on the eve of Passover. The verdict is pronounced immediately. The location is the house of the high priest, not the hall of hune stones. What does this mean? Spininoza saw two possibilities. Either the Sanhedrin, composed of the most rigorous guardians of Jewish law, decided to absolutely violate all of its own sacred rules to condemn Jesus, something that would be unthinkable for men who dedicated their lives to the meticulous observance of the law. Or the trial

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 simply did not happen as the gospels describe. The second option was much more likely, and it raised an even more disturbing question. If the authors of the gospels invented or distorted the trial by the Sanhedrin, what else did they invent or distort? Spininoza continued his analysis, examining every detail of the passion narratives. And the more he examined, the clearer the pattern became. The Gospels were not simply recording what happened. They were constructing a narrative with a specific purpose, to shift the blame for

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 Jesus's death from the Romans to the Jews. This pattern became even more evident when you examine the figure of Pontius Pilate. The Pilate of the Gospels is an almost sympathetic figure, a man who recognizes Jesus's innocence, who tries to save him multiple times, who only condemns him because he is pressured by the Jewish crowd. In Matthew, he literally washes his hands to symbolize that he has no responsibility for the blood that is about to be shed. In John, he philosophically asks, "What is truth?"

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 as if he were a sophisticated thinker troubled by having to execute a just man. But this portrayal bears absolutely no resemblance to what we know about the historical pilot. Pho of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who was contemporary with Pilate, described him as a man of inflexible nature and relentlessly cruel. He listed his crimes. Bribery, insults, theft, outrages, executions without trial, endless and unbearable cruelty. Josephus, the Jewish Roman historian, recounts several episodes in which Pilate massacred Jews without

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 hesitation, provoked riots with his insensitivity to local religious sensibilities, and ruled with an iron fist. This was a man who on one occasion sent soldiers to infiltrate a crowd of Jewish protesters and at a signal ordered them to draw hidden swords from under their clothes and massacre everyone. A man who used temple funds to build an aqueduct and when the Jews protested sent soldiers to beat them to death. A man who was eventually removed from his position by Rome not for being too lenient but for being too brutal

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 even by Roman standards. Did this man, according to the Gospels, become disturbed by the idea of executing Jesus? Did this man, who routinely crucified Jews, hesitate at the prospect of yet another crucifixion? Did this man, known for his cruelty and arrogance, allow himself to be intimidated by a shouting mob of Jews? Spinosza did not believe that, and neither should you. The Pilate of the Gospels is a fiction. a fiction created with a very specific purpose to absolve Rome of responsibility for Jesus' death

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 and transfer that responsibility to the Jews. And when you understand that purpose, the entire passion narrative begins to make sense in a completely different way. The question Spininoza asked next was the most important of all. Why? Why would the authors of the Gospels be interested in creating this fiction? Why absolve Rome and condemn their own people? What was the logic behind this deliberate distortion of history? The answer lies in the context in which the gospels were written. None of the gospels were written during

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 Jesus' lifetime or immediately after his death. The oldest, that of Mark, was likely composed around the year 70, about 40 years after the crucifixion. Matthew and Luke came later, perhaps in the 80s or '90s. John is even later, possibly from the early 2nd century. And the year 70 is a crucial date that changes everything. In ' 66 of the common era, the Jews of Palestine revolted against Rome. It was a massive, desperate rebellion fueled by decades of oppression and humiliation. For a few

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 years, the rebels managed to resist. But in 70, the Roman armies led by General Titus besieged Jerusalem and destroyed it. The temple, the center of all Jewish religious life, was raised to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of people died. The survivors were enslaved or dispersed. The Jewish nation as a political entity ceased to exist. It was the greatest trauma in Jewish history until the Holocaust. And it was precisely at this moment or shortly after it that the Gospels began to be written. The early Christians who were

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 still largely Jews or had strong connections to Judaism faced an existential problem. They lived within the Roman Empire. Rome had just crushed a Jewish rebellion with apocalyptic brutality. and the founder of their faith had been executed by Rome as a political criminal, a rebel, a pretender to kingship who challenged imperial authority. Imagine what it meant to be a Christian in that context. You worshiped a man whom Rome had crucified. You belong to a movement that had Jewish roots and the Jews were now the defeated

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 enemies of the empire. viewed with suspicion and hostility. Your very survival depended on distancing yourself as much as possible from the image of anti- Roman rebels. And that is exactly what the authors of the Gospels did. They recounted the story of Jesus's death in a way that completely absolved Rome. Pilate did not want to kill Jesus. Pilate recognized his innocence. Pilate tried to save him. He was forced by the Jewish mob to condemn him against his will. The real culprits were not the

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 Romans, but the Jews, not the empire, but the Sanhedrin, not Pilate, but the high priests and the crowd shouting for blood. This narrative served a dual purpose. First, it protected Christians from the accusation of being followers of an anti-Roman rebel. Jesus was not executed for challenging Rome, the gospel said, but for internal religious issues among the Jews. Rome had nothing against him. It was manipulated by the real culprits. Second, this narrative differentiated Christians from Jews at a

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 time when being associated with Jews was extremely dangerous. We are not like them was the implicit message. They killed the Messiah we worship. We are victims of them, not allies of them. Spininoza realized that this dynamic explained not only the distortion of the passion narrative, but also the evolution of that narrative across the four gospels. In Mark the Oldest, the transfer of blame is already present, but in a more subtle way. Pilate hesitates, but does not show much sympathy for Jesus. The Jews are

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 hostile, but there is no elaborate scene of washing hands or the crowd accepting blood guilt. In Matthew, written later, the absolution of Rome and the condemnation of the Jews are much more explicit. It is here that Pilate's wife has a dream about Jesus' innocence. It is here that Pilate washes his hands publicly. And it is here that the Jewish crowd utters the terrible words that would be used to justify persecutions for two millennia. His blood be on us and on our children. This phrase does

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 not appear in any other gospel. It has no parallel in any other source. And it served as a death sentence for millions of people throughout history. In Luke, the trend continues. Pilate declares three times that Jesus is innocent. Herod Antipus, the Jewish ruler of Galilee, also examines him and finds no fault in him. Only the Jewish leaders insist on the crucifixion. And in John the latest, the hostility against the Jews reaches its peak. Repeatedly the text refers to the Jews as a monolithic block of enemies of Jesus. Not the high

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 priests, not the Sanhedrin, not a specific group, but the Jews as a whole. And Pilate is portrayed almost as an ally of Jesus, engaging in philosophical dialogue with him, defending him repeatedly, yielding only under threat of being denounced to the emperor. This progression is not accidental. It reflects the growing need of Christians to distance themselves from Jews as Christianity spread throughout the Roman world and sought legitimacy in the eyes of imperial power. Spininoza meticulously documented this

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 progression. He placed the texts side by side. He showed how the same story was told in increasingly anti-Jewish ways over the decades, and he demonstrated that this evolution followed a political logic, not a historical one. The Gospels were not preserving the truth about Jesus's death. They were building a useful narrative for the survival and expansion of Christianity within the Roman Empire. And this narrative required a villain. This villain was the Jews. And here lies the cruel irony that

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 Spininoza did not fail to notice. Jesus was Jewish. His disciples were Jewish. The first Christians were Jewish. Paul himself, who did more than anyone else to spread Christianity throughout the Gentile world, was a proud Pharisee of his Jewish heritage. The authors of the Gospels were blaming their own people for a crime that their own people did not commit. And you, who have been following this story so far, are probably asking yourself a question. A question that may have arisen in your mind a few minutes ago or that may be

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 forming now. A question about what you are feeling as you hear all of this. Because if what Spininoza discovered is true, if the narrative that has sustained 2,000 years of history is fundamentally distorted, then where does that leave us? What do we do with this information? I would like to know what you are thinking at this moment. In the comments, tell me before starting this video, what did you believe about who killed Jesus? And now after hearing Spininoza's analysis, has your view changed in any way? Are you convinced,

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 skeptical, disturbed, curious? I read all the comments and this kind of conversation, this exchange of ideas about issues that really matter is exactly what makes this work meaningful to me. If you have made it this far, it is because you are someone who seeks the truth even when it is uncomfortable. Someone who does not accept ready-made answers. someone who has the courage to question what they have been taught since childhood. This kind of person is rare and it is precisely for people like you that this channel exists. If you

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 haven't subscribed yet, consider doing so now. Not for my sake, but because what lies ahead is going to get even more intense. We haven't even reached the most disturbing part of Spininoza's analysis yet. We haven't even talked about who he concluded was truly responsible for Jesus' death. That revelation is coming and you won't want to miss it. Now, let's continue. Because Spinosa's investigation was just beginning. Having established that the Gospels deliberately distorted the

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 narrative to shift the blame from Rome to the Jews, Spininoza asked the next logical question. If the Jews did not kill Jesus, who did? The answer seemed obvious. Rome killed Jesus. Pilate ordered the crucifixion. Roman soldiers carried out the sentence. The cross was a Roman method of execution used specifically for political criminals, rebels, and slaves. No Jewish authority had the power to crucify anyone. But Spininoza was not satisfied with obvious answers. He wanted to understand not only who executed Jesus, but who

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 condemned him and why. And this required examining more closely the power structure in first century Judea. Judea was a Roman province, but it was not governed directly by Rome in all respects. The Romans preferred to rule through local collaborating elites whenever possible. It was more efficient and cheaper than maintaining a full imperial administration as long as taxes were paid and order was maintained. Rome granted some autonomy to local powers. In Judea, this collaborating elite was the priestly aristocracy, the Sadducees.

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 They controlled the temple, the most important institution of Jewish life. The high priest was the highest religious authority, but he was also in practice an agent of Roman power. His appointment depended on the governor. His tenure depended on keeping Rome satisfied. His wealth and privileges depended on the continuity of the existing system. The Sadducees had everything to lose from any disturbance of the order. Messianic movements terrified them, not because they challenged their religious beliefs, but

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 because they challenged their political position. A messiah who promised to liberate Israel meant war with Rome, and war with Rome meant destruction. They had seen what Rome did to rebels. They had seen mass crucifixions. They had seen cities laid waste. They knew that any revolt would be crushed with exemplary brutality and that they as the collaborating ruling class would be the first to pay the price. So when a Galilean preacher arrived in Jerusalem during Passover week, gathering crowds, being hailed as king, speaking of the

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 kingdom of God that was to come, they were terrified. Not because Jesus was a threat to their religious beliefs. The Sadducees probably did not take the messianic claims of yet another charismatic preacher very seriously. They had seen others like him before. The threat was political. If Jesus stirred up unrest, if the crowd got out of control, if Rome decided to intervene with force, the outcome would be catastrophic and the Sadducees would be blamed for allowing the situation to reach that point. It is in this context

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 that we must understand the decision to hand Jesus over to the Romans. It was not a religious trial for blasphemy as the gospels suggest. It was a political decision to eliminate a potential source of trouble before those troubles materialized. The Gospel of John preserves a phrase that Spininoza found particularly revealing. Caiaphas, the high priest, supposedly said to the council, "It is better that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." This is the logic of the

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 collaborator. Sacrificing an individual to protect stability, handing over a potential troublemaker to imperial power to avoid a much greater repression. It is pure political calculation, not religious zeal, and that is exactly what happened. Spininoza argued, "The leaders of the priestly aristocracy identified Jesus as a potential threat to the order, arrested him, and handed him over to Pilate to be executed. Pilate, who did not care at all about Jewish religious disputes, but who cared very

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 much about maintaining order during the dangerous Passover week, did what he always did with agitators. He ordered him to be crucified. There was no elaborate trial by the Sanhedrin. There was no crowd shouting for blood. There was no hesitant pilot washing his hands. There was an administrative decision to eliminate a potential problem made jointly by the Roman authority and its local collaborators. Jesus died as hundreds of other preachers, prophets, and Jewish agitators of that time died on a Roman cross under Roman orders for

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 Roman political reasons. The guilt to the extent that we can speak of guilt is shared shared between the Roman governor who ordered the execution and the priestly aristocracy that facilitated it, shared between imperial power and its local collaborators, but certainly not a guilt that can be attributed to the Jewish people as a whole. It is not a guilt that crosses generations. It is not a guilt that justifies persecutions, pgrams, and holocausts. That was Spinoza's conclusion. A conclusion based

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 on careful analysis of the texts, historical context, and simple logic. And this conclusion was unacceptable to everyone. To understand why Spininoza's conclusion was so dangerous, we need to understand what was at stake. Not just theologically, but politically. The narrative that the Jews killed Jesus was not just a story. It was a tool of power that had been used for centuries to justify domination, exclusion, and violence. The Catholic Church, which for over a thousand years was the most

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 powerful institution in Europe, had built a significant part of its authority on this narrative. The Jews were the people who rejected the Messiah. Their dispersion throughout the world. Their condition as a persecuted minority was seen as divine punishment for their crime. The miserable condition of the Jews was in the church's view a living proof of the truth of Christianity. St. Augustine, one of the most influential theologians in history, elaborated on this idea in his doctrine of the witness people. The Jews, he

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 said, should be kept alive, but in a state of humiliation and servitude as living witnesses to Christ's victory over those who rejected him. Their degraded existence was useful to the church, a permanent demonstration of the consequences of rejecting the Christian truth. This doctrine shaped European politics towards the Jews for centuries. They could exist, but they could not thrive. They could live, but not as equals. They were tolerated, but only to the extent that their tolerance reinforced the Christian narrative of

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 their guilt and punishment. Spinoza's analysis threatened to destroy all of this construction. If the Jews did not kill Jesus, then there was no crime to be punished. If the narrative of the Gospels was a political distortion, then the theological justification for persecution disappeared. If the story needed to be retold, then centuries of doctrine had to be revisited. The church could not allow this, not because the leaders of the church were necessarily evil people or conscious of perpetuating

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 an injustice, but because the entire power structure, the whole theological architecture, the entire edifice of 2,000 years was based on a version of history that Spininoza was demonstrating to be false. It is difficult for an institution to admit that it has been wrong for so long about something so fundamental. It is even more difficult when that admission threatens to topple the pillars on which the institution sustains itself. So the church chose the easier path to silence Spininoza. His books were banned. His name was defamed.

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 Anyone who dared to agree with him risked the same condemnation. But the church was not the only institution threatened. The Protestants who had broken with Rome in the previous century maintained the same narrative about the death of Jesus. Luther, the founder of Protestantism, was fiercely anti-Jewish. His late writings against the Jews are so virilent that the Nazis would cite them centuries later. The Protestants had no interest in questioning a story that justified their own hostility. And

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 surprisingly, Spininoza's own Jewish community did not want to hear what he had to say. This may seem strange at first glance. The Jews were the victims of the narrative that Spininoza was deconstructing. Why wouldn't they embrace someone who demonstrated their innocence? The answer lies in the complex situation of Jews in 17th century Europe. Jewish communities survived through a careful strategy of low profile. Do not provoke. Do not draw attention. Do nothing that could be used as a pretext for persecution. Spinosa

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 was doing exactly the opposite. He was poking at sensitive wounds, questioning sacred texts, challenging the narrative that Christians considered fundamental to their faith. Jewish authorities feared that his provocations would bring retaliation against the entire community. There was also an internal issue. Spininoza's analysis did not spare Jewish texts. He applied the same critical methodology to the Hebrew Bible, questioning authorship, pointing out contradictions, rejecting the divine origin of the scriptures. For a

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 community that defined its identity by fidelity to the Torah, this was as disturbing as his conclusions about the gospels were for Christians. So the rabbis excommunicated him with the most severe excommunication possible with words of curse that even today, more than three centuries later, have not been formally revoked. Spinoza found himself alone, rejected by both Jews and Christians alike, without family, without community, without protection. But he did not stop thinking. He did not stop writing. He did not stop seeking

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 the truth. In the years following his excommunication, he developed his thought in even more radical ways. He concluded that the very idea of a personal god who intervenes in history, who chooses peoples and dictates laws, was a human construction. The only god that existed for Spininoza was nature itself, the infinite substance of which everything is a manifestation. This view which he called deosanatura, god or nature, eliminated the very basis upon which religions built their claims to authority. There was no chosen people

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 because there was no god who chose. There were no sacred scriptures because there was no divinity that dictated them. There were no miracles because there was no supernatural entity that performed them. Jesus in this view was not the son of God. He was a man extraordinarily wise and ethical but a man. His death was not a cosmic sacrifice to redeem humanity. It was a political assassination. The elimination of an inconvenient dissident by imperial power and its local collaborators. And the story of his death as told in the

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 gospels was not the word of God. It was propaganda created by men with specific interests shaped and reshaped over decades to serve the political needs of a religion in formation. This conclusion was devastating not only for the specific narrative of who killed Jesus but for the entire structure of religious authority. If the gospels could be analyzed as historical documents subject to the same distortions and manipulations as any other historical document, then where was the word of God? Where was the

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 absolute truth that churches claimed to possess? Nowhere, Spininoza would answer. There was no revealed truth. There was only human reason, groping for understanding in an indifferent universe. It was a worldview that left many people unmed. A universe without a personal God, without divine providence, without life after death, without eternal rewards or punishments, without meaning given from outside. a universe where human beings were alone, responsible for creating their own meaning. Spininoza did not see this as a

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 reason for despair. On the contrary, he saw it as liberation. Liberation from fear, superstition, religious manipulation. Liberation to think clearly, act with ethics based on reason, and find beatatitude in the understanding of nature. But many of his contemporaries saw only the abyss, a world without God, without transcendent authority, without absolute foundation for morality. It was too terrifying to contemplate, better to silence the messenger. And so Spininoza lived his last years in obscurity, polishing

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 lenses, discreetly corresponding with a few thinkers who had the courage to engage with him, developing his ideas in manuscripts that would be published only after his death. When he died in 1677 at the age of 44, his friends hurried to publish his writings. The ethics, his masterpiece, appeared a few months after his death. Along with it came other texts, including the theological political treaties where he developed his critical analysis of the scriptures and his demonstration of how the gospels

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 had distorted the story of Jesus' death. The reaction was immediate and fierce. The book was banned throughout Europe. Possessing a copy was dangerous. Reading it was scandalous. Agreeing with it was unthinkable. But the truth has a way of persisting even when suppressed. Spinoza's ideas circulated clandestinely. They were discussed in whispers. They were read in secret. And slowly over decades and centuries they gained strength. In the 18th century, enlightenment philosophers rediscovered

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 Spininoza. Many considered him the founder of modern biblical criticism. His rational analysis of sacred texts paved the way for generations of scholars who would examine the scriptures as historical documents. In the 19th century, historians began to apply critical methods to the life of Jesus. The search for the historical Jesus sought to separate the real man from the layers of myth and theology that had been superimposed on him. And these investigations repeatedly confirmed Spininoza's intuitions. The

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 gospels were late, biased, contradictory documents that reflected the needs of the communities that produced them more than the events they purported to narrate. In the 20th century, especially after the Holocaust, the question of who killed Jesus gained renewed urgency. The accusation of deocide had fueled the anti-semitism that culminated in the extermination camps. It was impossible to ignore the connection between the narrative of the gospels and the persecution it had justified. In 1965, nearly three centuries after Spininoza's

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 death, the Catholic Church finally began to reconsider its position. The second Vatican Council produced a document called Nostra Itat that for the first time rejected the collective accusation against the Jews for the death of Jesus. What was perpetrated in the passion of Christ cannot be imputed indiscriminately to all the Jews then living, nor to the Jews of today, the document declared a partial, almost embarrassed correction of 2,000 years of defamation. But even this partial correction came with limitations. The

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 church did not admit that the gospels had distorted history. It did not acknowledge that the passion narrative was a political construction. It did not take responsibility for the consequences of having promoted this narrative for centuries. Spininoza had gone much further three centuries earlier, and his diagnosis remains more radical, more honest, more complete than any institutional admission that came afterward. Now let us examine more closely how Spininoza read the gospels not as sacred texts but as historical

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 documents produced by specific authors in specific contexts with specific purposes. This reading revolutionary in its time is now widely accepted by academic scholars of the New Testament. But in the 17th century it was pure blasphemy. The Gospel of Mark is the oldest probably written around the year 70 during or shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Its author did not personally know Jesus. Later tradition identified him as an associate of Peter, but there is no independent evidence for this. What we

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 know is that he wrote in Greek for an audience that did not know Jewish customs well, as he takes the trouble to explain practices that would be obvious to any Jew. Mark is also the briefest and in many ways the rawest of the gospels. His passion narrative establishes the basic scheme that the others would follow. The last supper, the prayer in Gethsemane, Judas's betrayal, the arrest, some kind of procedure before the Jewish authorities, the trial before Pilate, the crucifixion, the death. But there are

00:39:54

 elements in Mark that the later gospels would soften or modify. The Jesus of Mark is at times surprisingly human and limited. He cannot perform miracles in his hometown because of the disbelief of the inhabitants. He asks who touched him in a crowd as if he did not know. He dies on the cross crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" A cry of despair that centuries of theology would try to explain in ways that diminished its disturbing impact. Pilate in Mark is relatively brief. He asks

00:40:24

 Jesus if he is the king of the Jews. Jesus responds ambiguously, "Pilate," which the gospels were written. The choice of Barabas over Jesus can be seen as a reflection of the tensions between the Jewish people and the Roman authorities. By choosing a revolutionary figure, the crowd is portrayed as rejecting the peaceful message of Jesus in favor of a violent uprising against oppression. This narrative serves to highlight the perceived failings of the Jewish people, framing them as complicit

00:40:53

 in their own suffering by choosing rebellion over redemption. Moreover, the portrayal of Barabas as a criminal also raises questions about the nature of justice and mercy in the Gospels. The crowd's choice can be interpreted as a rejection of divine mercy embodied in Jesus who preached forgiveness and love. Instead, they opt for a figure who represents violence and insurrection. This dichotomy between Jesus and Barabus becomes a powerful theological statement about the nature of sin and redemption,

00:41:24

 suggesting that humanity often chooses the path of destruction over the path of salvation. Espinosa's analysis of the character of Barabus reveals the complexities of the passion narrative. It raises important questions about the historical accuracy of the gospels and the motivations behind their authors. The choice to include Barabbas in the story may not have been merely a historical account, but rather a theological construct designed to convey deeper truths about human nature and divine justice. In conclusion, the story

00:41:57

 of Barabas serves as a microcosm of the broader themes present in the passion narratives. It encapsulates the tension between the Jewish people and Roman authority, the nature of justice and mercy, and the theological implications of human choice. As we examine the gospels, it is crucial to consider the historical context in which they were written and the potential biases of their authors. The narrative of Barabas, like many elements of the passion story, invites us to reflect on the complexities of faith, history, and the

00:42:28

 human condition that the gospels were written. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, following the brutal crushing of the Jewish revolt, the early Christians were trying to distance themselves from any association with Jewish nationalism and anti-Roman resistance. The story of Baraba serves this purpose perfectly. The Jews chose the rebel. They preferred violent revolution to the spiritual message of Jesus. And look where that led them. To destruction, to dispersion, to ruin. The implicit message is clear. Jesus' way

00:43:01

 was the right way. The path of armed resistance, the path that the Jews chose by freeing Barabus led to catastrophe. The Christians, followers of the Prince of Peace, made the right choice. It is a politically convenient narrative, too much to be historical. Spininoza saw through it. He saw that the story of Barabus, like so many other elements of the Passion narrative, served specific purposes for the Christian communities of the first century. It was not a neutral record of what happened. It was

00:43:30

 propaganda sophisticated and effective that shaped the perception of billions of people for two millennia. Another figure that deserves careful analysis is Judas Escariat, the traitorous disciple. His story is central to the passion narrative, but it is fraught with problems that Spininoza identified. Why did Judas betray Jesus? The gospels give different and inconsistent answers. In Mark and Matthew, Judas goes to the chief priests and offers to hand Jesus over in exchange for money. The motivation seems to be simple greed. But

00:44:05

 30 pieces of silver, the price mentioned in Matthew, was a modest sum, a slave's price. It seems strange that a member of Jesus's inner circle would risk everything for such a small amount. Luke adds a supernatural explanation. Satan entered Judas. It is a way to explain the inexplicable, attributing the betrayal to demonic influence. But it is not really an explanation. It is an evasion. John offers the most negative characterization of Judas. He was a thief, says John, responsible for the

00:44:36

 group's common purse and used to steal from what was put into it. Judas was evil from the beginning, predestined to betrayal, a demon disguised among the disciples. These different versions reflect the difficulty the gospel authors had in explaining why one of the 12 chosen by Jesus would betray him. Each author resolves the problem differently. None fully satisfactory. But there are more fundamental problems with the story of Judas. Why was betrayal necessary to arrest Jesus? He taught publicly in the temple every day.

00:45:07

 Any temple guard could identify him. Anyone in Jerusalem who had heard him preach could point him out to the authorities. Why would the chief priests need an insider informant? The gospel suggests that the authorities wanted to arrest Jesus discreetly away from the crowds to avoid a riot. Judas provided the information about where Jesus would be at a moment of vulnerability. But this raises another question. How did the chief priests know that Jesus was dangerous enough to justify a secret arrest, but did not know where to find

00:45:38

 him? And then there is Judas's death. Matthew says he hanged himself consumed by remorse. The Acts of the Apostles written by the same author as Luke says he fell headlong in a field he bought with the betrayal money and his intestines spilled out. These are completely different contradictory deaths impossible to reconcile. Spinoza looked at all these inconsistencies and saw what they represented. The figure of Judas being constructed over time. Each author adding details, developing characterization, inventing motivations

00:46:11

 and endings, all serving the purpose of explaining how someone so close to Jesus could have betrayed him. And there is an even more disturbing aspect of the story of Judas that Spininoza did not fail to notice. The name Judas was the Greek form of Judah, which was also the name of the Jewish people. Judas Escariat, the traitor, carries in his own name the identity of the people whom the gospels blame for Jesus' death. Coincidence perhaps, but suspiciously convenient for a narrative that is systematically

00:46:41

 shifting the blame onto the Jews. We now need to examine more closely Jesus himself as a political figure. Because Spininoza insisted that it was impossible to understand his death without understanding the political context of his life. The depoliticization of Jesus, his transformation into a spiritual master concerned only with the heavenly kingdom was a gradual process that occurred over the centuries and obscured the real reasons why he was considered a threat. Jesus was born and lived under Roman

00:47:12

 occupation. He grew up in Galilee, a region known for its rebellious population and messianic and revolutionary movements. His ministry took place at a time of extreme tension between Jews and Romans when esqueological expectations were high and many were hoping for an imminent divine intervention to liberate Israel. The words Jesus used, the symbols he employed, the actions he performed, all had political resonances impossible to ignore in the context of his time. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, his

00:47:44

 listeners did not think of an inner spiritual state or a heavenly reward after death. These interpretations came later developed by theologians in very different contexts. For the Jews of first century Palestine, the kingdom of God meant the effective reign of God over Israel, the expulsion of the invading pagans, the restoration of the Davidic dynasty, the fulfillment of prophetic promises of liberation and national glory. When Jesus proclaimed himself Messiah or allowed others to proclaim him, he was claiming a title

00:48:14

 with explosive political connotations. The Messiah in the Jewish expectation of the time was the anointed king who would restore Israel. He was a political and military leader, not just spiritual. He was the promised liberator who would defeat Israel's enemies and usher in an era of justice and peace. When Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, he was deliberately enacting a prophecy from Zechariah that described the arrival of the messianic king. It was a public declaration of royal pretention.

00:48:44

 In any other context, it would have been considered an attempted coup. And when Jesus caused a disturbance in the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers, he was attacking the nerve center not only of religious life, but also of the economic and political life of Judea. The temple was where taxes were collected, where the priestly aristocracy exercised its power, where Rome maintained constant surveillance over the population. Spininoza argued that it was impossible to separate these

00:49:13

 actions from their political meaning. Jesus may have had a profound spiritual message. He may have taught sublime ethics. He may have been a master of wisdom comparable to the greatest philosophers. But he was also, whether he wanted to be or not, a political figure operating in a political context. And it was for political reasons that he died. The charge for which Jesus was crucified according to all the gospels was that he was king of the Jews. That was the inscription placed above his cross. It was not a religious charge. It

00:49:44

 was a political charge. It was the charge of sedition, of claiming the throne, of challenging the authority of Rome. Crucifixion was the Roman punishment for political crimes, especially for rebellion and insurrection. Roman citizens could not be crucified, no matter how serious their crime. It was a punishment reserved for slaves, foreigners, and rebels. It was a slow, agonizing public death meant to serve as a warning to anyone thinking of challenging imperial power. Jesus died as a rebel. That is

00:50:15

 the only conclusion consistent with the evidence. He did not die for blasphemy, a religious charge that would not have interested the Romans in the slightest. He died for sedition, for royal pretention, for being seen as a threat to the imperial order. The transformation of his death into a theological drama, a cosmic sacrifice to redeem humanity came later. It was developed by Paul and the gospel authors, each in their own way over decades. But the underlying historical event was political, the execution of a

00:50:48

 Jewish agitator by Roman power. And when you understand this, the transfer of blame in the Gospels makes even more sense. The early Christians were worshiping a man whom Rome had executed as a rebel. They desperately needed to distance themselves from that implication. The solution was to reinterpret Jesus' death as a voluntary sacrifice, not an execution, and to shift the responsibility onto the Jews, absolving Rome. It was a survival strategy, a strategy that worked brilliantly, allowing Christianity to

00:51:18

 spread throughout the Roman Empire without being crushed as a subversive movement. But it was a strategy built on a fundamental distortion of history. Spinoza saw this with agonizing clarity. He saw how a story had been rewritten, how the truth had been sacrificed at the altar of political convenience, how millions of innocent people had been persecuted and killed because of a fabricated narrative. and he could not remain silent. The question that arose for Spininoza and that arises for anyone confronting this analysis is what to do

00:51:50

 with religion once you see through its constructions. If the gospels are political documents, if the passion narrative is propaganda, if the story of who killed Jesus was deliberately distorted, what remains of Christianity? Espinosa was not a gratuitous destroyer. He had no interest in demolishing people's faith simply for the pleasure of demolishing. He believed that religion when correctly understood could serve a valid purpose in human life. It could teach ethics, promote community, provide meaning and comfort. But the

00:52:23

 religion that was based on false historical claims that demanded blind acceptance of contradictory narratives that persecuted those who dared to question. This religion was an obstacle to human flourishing, not an aid. Espinosa's path was reason. He believed that human beings could discover ethical truths through philosophical reflection without the need for divine revelation. He believed that a virtuous life could be grounded in the understanding of nature and our place within it without celestial rewards or threats of eternal

00:52:56

 punishment. He believed that beatatitude, supreme happiness, came from knowledge, not from faith. It was a worldview profoundly different from that which prevailed in his time. A worldview that would be considered atheism by his contemporaries. Although Espinosa insisted that he was not an atheist, that his god was the very infinite nature, the unique substance of which everything is a manifestation. This worldview was for many terrifying. A universe without a personal God, without providence, without an afterlife, seemed

00:53:29

 a universe without meaning, without hope, without a foundation for morality. But for Espinosa, it was liberation. Liberation from the fear of death and hell, liberation from superstition and religious manipulation, liberation to think clearly and act ethically based on reason. And the analysis of who killed Jesus was part of that liberation. By demonstrating that the narrative of the gospels was a political construction, Espinosa was removing one of the cornerstones of religious authority. He was showing that the sacred texts were

00:54:01

 human texts subject to the same distortions and manipulations as any other historical document. If the gospels could be wrong about who killed Jesus, what else could they be right about beyond all doubt? If the passion narrative was political propaganda, what other biblical narratives could also be? If the most sacred story of Christianity was for the most part fiction, where was the basis for faith? These were devastating questions. Questions that most people did not want to face. Questions that religious institutions

00:54:33

 had every interest in suppressing. But Espinosa asked them, and he paid the price. And now, three centuries later, his questions remain. waiting for answers. One of Espinosa's most enduring contributions was to establish the foundations of modern biblical criticism. Before him, sacred texts were treated as the literal word of God, immune to questioning, interpreted only within the limits set by religious authorities. Espinosa proposed something radically different to treat the Bible like any other historical document

00:55:07

 subject to critical analysis examined for authorship, date of composition, context of production, political purposes, and ideological trends. This approach, which is now standard in religious studies departments at universities around the world, was revolutionary in the 17th century. It was considered blasphemy, heresy, a direct attack on the foundations of faith and social order. But Espinosa did not back down. In his theological political treatise published anonymously in 1670 and immediately banned, he

00:55:39

 developed his methodology in detail. The first step was to establish the original text as far as possible. The biblical manuscripts that existed in Espinosa's time were already copies of copies of copies made over centuries by scribes who made mistakes, made corrections, and sometimes added material. We did not have and still do not have the originals of any biblical book. We only have later copies which differ from each other in thousands of points large and small. Espinosa pointed this out as a

00:56:10

 fundamental problem for any claim of biblical inherency. If God dictated the scriptures, why did he allow them to be corrupted during transmission? If every word was sacred, why did different manuscripts contain different words? The second step was to examine the language of the texts. Espininoza was a competent scholar of Hebrew, the language of the Hebrew Bible, and had knowledge of Greek, the language of the New Testament. He noted that different biblical books use different vocabulary, different styles, different grammatical

00:56:42

 forms. This suggested different authors, not a single divine author. More importantly, he noted that the language of certain texts reflected much later times than those they supposedly described. Words that did not exist in ancient Hebrew, references to events or institutions that did not exist in the time of the patriarchs, anacronisms that revealed late composition. The third step was to analyze the content of the texts, looking for internal contradictions. Espinosa compiled extensive lists of biblical passages

00:57:15

 that contradicted each other, two creation accounts in Genesis that do not match, genealogies that do not align, numbers that do not add up, events narrated in incompatible ways in different books. These contradictions were impossible to reconcile if the Bible was the infallible word of an omnisient God. They only made sense if the texts were human productions compiled from diverse sources by editors who did not always manage to harmonize the material they had at hand. The fourth step was to examine the

00:57:46

 historical context of production. Who wrote each text? When, for what audience, with what purpose? Espinosa argued that many traditional attributions of authorship were impossible. Moses could not have written the pentetuk, which describes his own death and events that occurred after it. Joshua could not have written the book of Joshua, which mentions monuments that exist to this day. A phrase that only makes sense if the author was writing long after the events described. Many of the prophets did not write the books

00:58:17

 that bear their names. This analysis was equally applicable to the New Testament. The gospels were not written by the disciples whose names they carry. They were written anonymously decades after the events they narrate. And the names were later attributed by the tradition of the church. Paul's letters are authentic in some cases, but several of them are later forgeries written by others in Paul's name to give authority to their own opinions. The fifth step, and perhaps the most important, was to

00:58:45

 examine the political and ideological purposes of the texts. Espininoza insisted that the biblical authors were not passive recipients of divine revelation. They were human beings with agendas, biases, interests. They wrote to persuade, to justify, to condemn. Their texts reflected the power struggles of their communities, the anxieties of their time, the conflicts with rival groups. The analysis of who killed Jesus was a perfect example of this approach. The gospels were not neutral accounts of historical events.

00:59:20

 They were documents produced by Christian communities in conflict with Judaism and trying to survive within the Roman Empire. Their narratives reflected these [clears throat] political needs, distorting history to serve specific purposes. This methodology, which Espininoza developed in the 17th century, would be refined and expanded by generations of scholars in the following centuries. In the 19th century, German biblical criticism produced detailed analyses of the sources of biblical texts, identifying

00:59:50

 different layers of composition and editing. In the 20th century, archaeology, linguistics, and social history provided new tools to examine the texts in their original context. And repeatedly, what these studies found confirmed Espinosa's intuitions. The Bible was a human document produced over centuries by many authors, edited and re-edited, reflecting the beliefs, biases, and political needs of different communities at different times. This does not mean that the Bible lacks value. One can recognize the biblical

01:00:23

 texts as human documents and still appreciate their literary depth, their ethical wisdom, their historical influence. But one can no longer treat them as the literal word of God, immune to error, the final authority on all matters of faith and morality. This was the revolution that Espinosa initiated. A revolution in thought that fundamentally transformed the way the western world understands religion, authority, and truth. And it all began with a simple question. Who really killed Jesus Christ? The answer to this

01:00:54

 question forced Espinosa to examine the Gospels as historical documents. This examination revealed systematic distortions. These distortions led to questions about the nature of biblical authority in general. And these questions, once asked, could no longer be ignored. The thread that Espinosa pulled unraveled the entire fabric. 2,000 years of certainties revealed themselves to be human constructions. subject to analysis, criticism, and revision. It is no wonder they wanted to silence him. We now arrive at a crucial

01:01:28

 point in the analysis, the consequences. Not the consequences for Espinosa personally, which we have already examined, but the consequences of the narrative he deconstructed. Because the story of who killed Jesus did not remain confined to the texts of the Gospels. It spread, multiplied, and transformed into a historical force that shaped the fate of millions of people. Christian anti-Judaism did not begin with the Gospels, but was enormously amplified by them. The idea that the Jews were collectively responsible for the death

01:02:01

 of Christ, that they carried a blood guilt that spanned generations became a central pillar of Christian theology for centuries. The church fathers in the early centuries of Christianity developed this idea into entire treatises dedicated to condemning the Jews. John Christom, one of the most venerated saints of the Orthodox Church, wrote a series of sermons against the Jews so virulent that modern scholars classify them as some of the most anti-semitic texts ever written before the modern era. He called synagogues

01:02:34

 brothel and dens of thieves, the Jews murderers and destroyers unworthy of any human sympathy. Augustine, as we mentioned, developed the doctrine of the witness people, which justified keeping the Jews alive, but in a state of perpetual degradation as a living proof of the consequences of rejecting Christ. These ideas did not remain abstract. They were translated into politics, into law, into violence. In the Middle Ages, Jews were segregated into ghettos, prohibited from practicing most professions, forced to wear distinctive

01:03:06

 clothing, subject to special taxes. They were frequently accused of fantastic crimes such as poisoning wells, profaining consecrated hosts, murdering Christian children to use their blood in rituals. These accusations, known as blood libels, provoked pgrams in which entire Jewish communities were massacred. During the Crusades, Christian armies marching to liberate the Holy Land often began their sacred mission by massacring Jews in their own cities. Thousands were killed in the Rine Valley during the First Crusade

01:03:39

 under the cry of vengeance for the blood of Christ. The Spanish Inquisition forced Jews to choose between conversion, exile, or death. Even those who converted the conversos were suspected of practicing Judaism in secret and could be denounced, tortured, and burned at the stake. Spain and Portugal expelled their entire Jewish populations at the end of the 15th century, ending a presence of over a thousand years. And in each of these episodes, in every pug, in every expulsion, in every massacre, the

01:04:09

 justification was the same. The Jews killed Christ. They were being punished for their crime. Their suffering was deserved, even divinely ordained. Spininoza knew this history intimately. His own family had fled the Portuguese Inquisition. He grew up in a community of refugees, surrounded by people who carried the traumas of persecution, who had lost relatives to torture and the stake. The narrative of who killed Jesus was not an abstract theological concept for him. It was the justification for

01:04:39

 the suffering of his people. And when he discovered that this narrative was a distortion, a political construction that did not correspond to history, the intensity of his reaction becomes understandable. He was not merely doing abstract philosophy. He was exposing the lie that had caused centuries of bloodshed. The final irony, the cruel irony that Spininoza certainly perceived was that his own Jewish community, victim of this narrative, rejected him when he tried to expose it. The Jews of Amsterdam did not want trouble. They did

01:05:10

 not want to give Christians more reasons for persecution. They wanted to keep their heads down, survive, and discreetly prosper in the relative Dutch tolerance. Spininoza was a threat to this survival strategy. His provocations could bring retaliation. His critical analysis of the Bible offended not only Christians, but also Jewish orthodoxy. He was a danger and was treated as such. The story of Spinoza's excommunication is in a sense a microcosm of the larger history he was analyzing. Just as the

01:05:41

 early Christians sacrificed the Jews to appease Rome, the Jews of Amsterdam sacrificed Spinoza to appease the Dutch Christian authorities. The logic of power, the necessity of survival, the willingness to sacrifice inconvenient individuals for the perceived good of the community. It was the same pattern repeating itself. Spinoza understood this logic. He bore no resentment against the rabbis who had excommunicated him. They were doing what they thought necessary to protect their community. They were wrong in Spinoza's

01:06:12

 view, but understandably wrong. What he could not forgive, what he could not accept was the perpetuation of lies, the distortion of history to serve power interests, the manipulation of the masses through fabricated narratives, the persecution of the innocent based on false accusations. This he fought until the end of his life, and this is his legacy to us. The question of who killed Jesus remains relevant not only as a historical question but as a lesson on how narratives are constructed, how they

01:06:44

 are used to justify violence, how they can be deconstructed through critical analysis. We live in an era of conflicting narratives. Every political group, every ideological movement, every nation has its stories about who the villains are and who the victims are, about who is guilty and who is innocent. These narratives shape how we see the world, how we treat others, what violences we are willing to justify or ignore. Spinoza's lesson is that we must question these narratives. We must ask who created them, for what purpose, in

01:07:16

 service of which interests. We must examine the evidence, identify the contradictions, seek out the distortions. We must resist the temptation to accept convenient stories simply because they confirm our prejudices or justify our interests. This does not mean that there are no truths, that everything is relative, that any narrative is worth as much as any other. It means that truth requires work. It requires critical analysis. It requires a willingness to question what we have been taught, to examine what

01:07:47

 seems obvious, to consider perspectives that discomfort us. Spininoza dedicated his life to this work. He paid a huge price for it. But he left a legacy that continues to inspire all who value truth above comfort, reason above tradition, justice above convenience. The question of who killed Jesus was his starting point. But its implications go far beyond that specific question. They challenge us to examine all the narratives that shape our understanding of the world. to question all authorities that claim exclusive

01:08:19

 possession of the truth to tirelessly seek the reality behind the constructions. This is Spininoza's call and three centuries later it still echoes. We now need to examine an aspect that Spininoza considered fundamental. The figure of Paul of Tarsus and his role in constructing the Christian narrative about the death of Jesus. Paul is in many ways the true founder of Christianity as we know it. Jesus preached to Jews in Palestine. Paul took the message to the Gentile world, transforming a Jewish messianic movement

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 into a universal religion that would eventually conquer the Roman Empire. And Paul never personally knew Jesus. Think about that for a moment. The man who did the most to shape Christianity, whose letters make up most of the New Testament, who established the central doctrines about the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection, never heard Jesus preach, never witnessed his miracles, never walked alongside him in Galilee. Everything Paul knew about Jesus came from visions and accounts from others. And the Jesus he preached

01:09:21

 was fundamentally different from the Galilean preacher of the synoptic gospels. For Paul, the earthly life of Jesus was almost irrelevant. His ethical teachings, his parables, his healing miracles hardly appear in Paul's letters. What mattered to Paul was the death and resurrection. Jesus had died for the sins of humanity and risen, conquering death. This was the central message, the gospel that Paul preached. Spinosza noted that this emphasis on sacrificial death created an interesting theological problem. If Jesus' death was

01:09:52

 necessary for the salvation of humanity, if it was part of the divine plan from eternity, then those who killed him were in a sense fulfilling God's will. Judas, the high priests, Pilate, all were instruments of salvation, playing the role assigned to them in the cosmic drama. But at the same time, these same characters were condemned as villains. Judas was the archetypal traitor, his name synonymous with perod. The Jews carried the blood guilt for generations. How to reconcile these two ideas? How

01:10:25

 can someone be condemned for doing exactly what God wanted to be done? This contradiction was never satisfactorily resolved by Christian theology. Spininoza saw it as further evidence that we were faced with human constructions trying to make sense of historical events, not coherent divine revelation. Paul was also responsible for initiating the separation between the movement of Jesus and Judaism. In his letters, he repeatedly argues that the Mosaic law is no longer binding for the followers of Christ, that

01:10:55

 circumcision is not necessary, that Jewish dietary restrictions can be ignored. These positions put him in direct conflict with the leaders of the Christian community in Jerusalem, including James, the brother of Jesus. This conflict is visible in Paul's own letters. In Galatians, he describes a confrontation with Peter in Antioch over the issue of eating with Gentiles. The tensions between Pauline Christianity and the Jewish Christianity of Jerusalem were intense and were never fully resolved during the lives of the

01:11:26

 protagonists. What resolved the conflict was history. In 70, Jerusalem was destroyed. The Jewish Christian community was dispersed. Pauline Christianity based on gentile communities spread throughout the Roman Empire survived and thrived. Paul's version won not because it was more true but because it was better adapted to the historical circumstances and it was this version that shaped the gospels. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were all written after the destruction of Jerusalem in communities influenced by Pauline

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 theology. The transfer of blame from the Romans to the Jews reflected not only political survival needs within the empire, but also the theological rupture with Judaism that Paul had initiated. Spinoza saw Paul as an ambiguous figure. On one hand, he admired his intelligence, his energy, his ability to articulate complex ideas. On the other hand, he saw in him the architect of distortions that would cause centuries of suffering. Paul did not invent the story that the Jews killed Jesus, but he created the theological framework within

01:12:33

 which that story would gain its most toxic meaning. The idea that Jesus' death was a sacrifice for sins, that the Jews had rejected their own Messiah, that a new covenant had replaced the old one, that Christ's followers were the new Israel. All these poorline ideas provided the structure within which the accusation of deocide would become a death sentence for millions. It is impossible to know what Paul would think if he could see the consequences of his ideas, the pgrams, the inquisitions, the

01:13:02

 ghettos, the extermination camps. He would probably be horrified. He himself was Jewish, proud of his heritage, and never imagined that his theology would be used to justify the annihilation of his people. But ideas have consequences that escape the intentions of their authors. and Paul's ideas combined with the gospel's narrative about who killed Jesus produced one of the most enduring and lethal traditions of hatred in human history. Spininoza wanted to interrupt this tradition. He wanted to show that

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 the narrative was a construction not history that ideas could be analyzed, criticized, revised, that there was no inevitability in the perpetuation of hatred. He did not succeed in his time. The tradition was too strong, the invested interests too great, the fear of change too paralyzing. But he planted seeds that would eventually germinate. Today, after the Holocaust, after the final horror that the accusation of deocide helped to make possible, Christian churches have slowly begun to reconsider their positions. Vatican 2

01:14:06

 rejected collective guilt. Theologians from various denominations are working to develop a christologology that does not depend on the demonization of the Jews. It is a belated progress, insufficient, marred by reluctance to fully admit the church's role in the catastrophe. But it is progress. And Spininoza, in a way, was its precursor. He saw the truth three centuries before most were willing to face it. He paid the price for that vision. And now, finally, the world is beginning to catch up with him. The question of who killed

01:14:37

 Jesus continues to be debated by historians and theologians. We will probably never have absolute certainty about [clears throat] the details of what happened in those days in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. But what we can be sure of is this. The answer is not the Jews. The answer has never been the Jews. And the narrative that said otherwise caused incalculable suffering that cannot be undone, only recognized and mourned. That was Spinoza's discovery. That was his contribution and that is the truth

01:15:08

 he left us as a legacy. Spininoza did not limit himself to deconstructing the narrative of Jesus's death. He went further questioning the very nature of the texts that told this story. And one of his most disturbing conclusions concerned miracles. The Gospels are filled with supernatural events. Jesus turns water into wine, multiplies loaves and fishes, walks on water, heals the blind and lepers, raises the dead. These miracles are presented as proofs of his divinity, evidence that he was indeed

01:15:39

 the son of God. Spinosa completely rejected this logic. For him, nature operated according to fixed and immutable laws. There were no exceptions. There were no suspensions of the natural order to accommodate divine interventions. what we call miracles were either poorly understood natural events or exaggerations or deliberate inventions. This position was devastating for religious authority. If the miracles did not happen, then the proofs of Jesus divinity disappeared. If the gospels invented or exaggerated

01:16:11

 supernatural events, what confidence could we have in the rest of what they reported? Spinosza argued that the miracles in the Gospels followed a recognizable pattern. Each subsequent gospel tended to amplify the miracles of the previous one. Mark, the oldest, had fewer and less spectacular miracles. John, the latest, had the most elaborate and impressive ones. This suggested a process of legendary development, not historical record. Furthermore, stories of miracles were common in the ancient world. Other preachers, other

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 philosophers, other religious leaders also had miracles attributed to them. Appalonius of Tyana, a rough contemporary of Jesus, had a biography full of healings, resurrections, and supernatural events remarkably similar to those in the Gospels. Roman emperors were credited with miracles. Jewish prophets performed wonders. In a world where everyone claimed miracles, miracles proved nothing special. Spininoza proposed a different reading of the biblical texts. Instead of treating them as factual records, we

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 should read them as moral literature. The stories, true or not, in a literal sense, could contain valuable ethical teachings. The meaning was in the message, not in the historicity. Jesus teaching love for one's neighbor, compassion for the poor, forgiveness for enemies. This had value regardless of whether he actually walked on water or multiplied loaves. Ethics could be separated from metaphysics. Wisdom could be preserved even when miracles were discarded. This approach allowed Spinoza to maintain respect for the figure of

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 Jesus while rejecting the supernatural claims of Christianity. Jesus was for him a great moral teacher, perhaps the greatest who ever lived, but a man, not God incarnate, not a literal son of a deity, an extraordinary human being who had understood profound ethical truths and communicated them with unparalleled power. This vision of Jesus would be developed by later thinkers. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States, created his own version of the Gospels by removing all miracles

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 and leaving only the ethical teachings. The historical Jesus sought by generations of scholars was essentially Spininoza's Jesus, the man behind the myth. And when you remove the miracles, the question of who killed Jesus becomes even more clearly political. We are no longer talking about a cosmic drama where the son of god is sacrificed to redeem humanity. We are talking about a concrete historical event. The execution of a dissident by an empire. A story that repeats throughout human history in

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 different places and times. Jesus died as Socrates, Giodano Bruno and so many others who dared to challenge the powers of their time died. His death was a human tragedy, not a divine sacrifice. and the guilty were the powers that felt threatened by his words, not an entire people condemned for all eternity. Spininoza's analysis raised a question that few had the courage to confront directly. If the gospel's narrative was a political construction, what did that mean for the resurrection? The

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 resurrection is the foundation of Christianity. Paul explicitly said, "If Christ has not been raised, our faith is in vain." Without the resurrection, Jesus would be just another preacher executed by the Romans. His message doomed to forgetfulness like so many others. But Spininoza, who rejected miracles as impossible violations of natural laws, could not accept a literal resurrection. Dead bodies do not come back to life. This was true in the first century, as it is true today. So what

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 happened? Spininoza was cautious in approaching this topic, knowing it was the most explosive of all, but his methodology pointed to inevitable conclusions. The accounts of the resurrection in the Gospels are the most contradictory of the entire passion narrative. Who went to the tomb? One woman or several? Who did they find there? A young man, an angel, two angels? What were they told? Where did they go afterward? The Gospels diverge on practically every detail. More significantly, the Gospel of Mark, the

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 oldest, originally ended with the empty tomb and the women fleeing terrified, telling nothing to anyone. The appearances of the resurrected Jesus that appear at the end of Mark in our modern Bibles are later additions absent from the oldest manuscripts. This suggests that the tradition of appearances developed gradually, being added to the narrative over time. First, there was only the assertion that the tomb was empty. Then came stories of appearances increasingly elaborate in the later gospels. Spininoza did not

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 offer a definitive explanation for what happened. Perhaps the body was removed by followers or by others. Perhaps the disciples had visionary experiences that they interpreted as encounters with the resurrected Jesus. Perhaps the whole story gradually grew from much smaller kernels. What he rejected was the supernatural explanation. And without that explanation, the resurrection ceased to be proof of Jesus divinity and became just another element of the narrative construction that transformed a Galilean preacher into the son of God.

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 This did not diminish for Spinosa the historical importance of what happened. The belief in the resurrection, true or not in a literal sense, transformed the world. It created a religion that would conquer empires. It shaped entire civilizations. It inspired art, philosophy, ethics. The consequences were real, even if the original event was not what believers thought. Faith moves mountains, even when based on misconceptions. Spininoza lived his last years in relative tranquility, if one can call the life of an exiled,

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 excommunicated man, defamed by all the religious authorities of his time, tranquil. He supported himself by polishing optical lenses, a meticulous job that required patience and precision. Ironic perhaps that a man dedicated to clarifying humanity's intellectual vision earned his living helping others see the physical world better. His health had always been fragile, and the glass dust he inhaled daily while working with the lenses aggravated pulmonary problems that had accompanied him since he was young.

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 tuberculosis probably. Although the exact diagnosis is impossible from three centuries away, he continued writing until almost the end. His masterpiece, The Ethics, was completed years before his death, but he knew that publishing it while alive would be suicide. The theological political treatise had already caused enough scandal when published anonymously. The ethics with its denial of a personal god, its rejection of the immortality of the individual's soul, its vision of a determined universe where free will was

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 an illusion would be even more unacceptable. So he waited. He worked on other projects. He corresponded with discrete admirers who risked their reputations to exchange ideas with the cursed philosopher and he prepared instructions for his manuscripts to be published after his death. He died in February 1677 at the age of 44. His friends followed his instructions. A few months later, the ethics and other writings were published with only his initials, no full name, as if even after death he needed some protection. The

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 reaction was as expected. The books were immediately banned. Possessing them was dangerous. Reading them was scandalous. Spinoza's name became synonymous with atheism and immorality. A scarecrow used to frighten anyone who dared to question orthodoxy, but ideas cannot be buried as easily as men. Spininoza's books circulated clandestinely. They were read in secret by courageous thinkers throughout Europe. They influenced, even when not directly cited, the development of Western thought. In the 18th century,

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 enlightenment philosophers rediscovered Spininoza. Many considered him a precursor, a pioneer of reason in an age of superstition. His biblical criticism paved the way for generations of scholars. His reason-based ethics influenced Kant and others. His metaphysics fascinated Hegel and German idealists. In the 19th century, thinkers as diverse as Gerta, Hainer, George Elliot, and Nze expressed admiration for Spininoza. Einstein, when asked if he believed in God, replied that he believed in Spininoza's God, the ordered

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 nature of the universe, not in a God who concerned himself with the fate of individuals. The cursed philosopher had become one of the most revered in the western tradition. What Spininoza left us besides his specific analysis of who killed Jesus was a method, a way of approaching questions that seemed too sacred to question, an insistence on reason as the only reliable guide to truth. This method is more necessary today than ever. We live in an age of misinformation, of narratives competing for our attention, of extraordinary

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 claims made without proportional evidence. Conspiracy theories flourish on social media. Political leaders lie shamelessly and are believed by millions. The very notion of objective truth is under attack. Spininoza faced similar challenges in his time. The authorities of his era also claimed exclusive possession of the truth. They also persecuted those who disagreed. They also used fabricated narratives to justify power and violence. What he offered as a response was simple in principle, difficult in practice.

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 Examine the evidence. Question the sources. Identify the interests behind the claims. Do not accept authority as a substitute for arguments. Do not confuse tradition with truth. Do not let fear silence your reason. The analysis of who killed Jesus was an example of this approach in action. Spinoza took the most sacred narrative of his civilization and subjected it to critical scrutiny. Not because he wanted to destroy people's faith, but because he believed that truth was more important than comfort. That living in

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 illusion, no matter how comforting, was unworthy of rational beings. This conviction cost him everything, family, community, reputation, security. He lived as a pariah, died in poverty, and was defamed for centuries. But he was right. The narrative he deconstructed was a fabrication. The Jews did not kill Jesus. The story was distorted to serve political interests. And this distortion caused immeasurable suffering to millions of innocent people. Today, this is recognized by most serious scholars,

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 Christian or not. The Catholic Church, albeit incompletely, admitted that the collective accusation was unjust. The truth that Spininoza saw alone three centuries ago became academic consensus. This is the power of reason. It is slow. It is often defeated in the short term by power, by tradition, by fear. But in the long run, it prevails. Truth has a way of emerging no matter how much it is suppressed. Spinosza believed in this. He bet his life on it. And history vindicated him. We have reached the end

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 of our journey with Spininoza. But the questions he raised remain alive. Who killed Jesus Christ? The historical answer to the extent that we can reconstruct it is this. Jesus was executed by order of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate probably with the collaboration of members of the Jewish priestly aristocracy who saw him as a threat to the established order. It was a political execution not a religious one. Jesus died as a rebel not as a blasphemer. And the responsibility lay with specific individuals in positions

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 of power not with an entire people. The narrative that shifted the blame to the Jews was a later construction developed over decades by the authors of the gospels to serve the political needs of Christian communities trying to survive in the Roman Empire. This narrative did not correspond to historical facts but was accepted as truth by billions of people for two millennia. The consequences were catastrophic. Persecutions, massacres, pgrams, ghettos, inquisitions, and finally the Holocaust. millions dead because a lie was repeated so many times that it became accepted truth. Spininoza saw through this lie with the limited tools of his time without access to the archaeological and historical methods that would be developed later. He essentially reached the same conclusions that modern scholars would arrive at with far more resources. The power of reason applied with rigor and courage was sufficient to unravel the distortion. And what he teaches us goes beyond this specific question. He teaches us to question narratives that serve power interests, to critically examine claims that seem too obvious to be questioned, to resist the temptation to accept easy answers that confirm our prejudices or justify our hostilities. 

He teaches us that truth matters, that living in illusion has consequences, that false narratives cause real suffering, that we have a responsibility as rational beings to seek the truth even when it is inconvenient. And he teaches us that individuals matter. That one person armed only with their reason and courage can challenge millennia of consensus. That the price may be high. That victory may not come in life. But that truth eventually prevails. Baroo Spininoza died over 300 years ago. He died poor, sick, rejected, but his ideas live on. His analysis of who killed Jesus fundamentally changed how we understand history. His method of biblical criticism revolutionized the study of scriptures. His philosophy influenced thinkers from all traditions. He won not in life but in history. And his victory is a victory for all who value truth above tradition, reason above authority, justice above convenience. This is Spinoza's legacy, and now it is yours, too. The question of who killed Jesus has been answered. But the larger questions it raises about truth, power, narrative, and responsibility remain open. Each generation must face them again. Each individual must decide whether they will have the courage to seek the truth no matter the cost. Spinosa made his choice. What will yours be?