For centuries, Christians and Jews have wrestled with the legacy of the Gospels, which traditionally have assigned to the Jews the responsibility for the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus.

Now noted scholar Ellis Rivkin questions this interpretation with an original and fully documented premise.

Using Josephus' writings, Dr. Rivkin reconstructs the context of life in Jesus' day and projects a portrait of a hypothetical "charismatic of charismatics" who might have lived in those times-a man of eloquence, miracles, and magnetism. Because of the threat such a figure would have posed to the Roman authorities, his execution-an inevitable fate would have been sealed by a thoroughly political process.

When Dr. Rivkin's charismatic of charismatics is compared with the historic Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, the resemblance is dramatic. This similarity bears convincing testimony that the responsibility for Jesus' death is not a question of who, but what, and that it lies not with the Jews, but with the imperial system of Rome.

What Crucified Jesus? provides an important bridge of reconciliation between Jews and Christians. It offers Jews a new, more sympathetic look at the life and teachings of Jesus and gives Christians fresh evidence of the Synoptic Gospels authenticity in their reporting of the earth-shaking events two thousand