In any standard issue of the Bible there is reference to the “Jews” conspiring against Jesus. Anyone with even a smattering of language theory would understand that the term the “Jews” when used in this context and in this manner actually means “senior figures in the Jewish political establishment”. After all Jesus and his followers were mostly, if not all, Jewish. True, almost everyone who opposed him was Jewish but so was almost everyone who was indifferent to him. All these events happened in the homeland of the Jewish people.
When I was an undergraduate I learned of the life and mission of Socrates and his unjust execution by the people of Athens. As students we were invited to question ourselves as to whether we would have supported Socrates or sided with the herd at the time of his trial. Reading about the events 2400 years later is quite different to actually living the events. Exactly what the moral high ground actually was might not have been quite so obvious.
In the Judea of 2000 years ago there had been several uprisings against Roman occupation shortly before Jesus of Nazareth arrived on the scene. These revolts had been crushed with atrocities of massive proportions. The Jewish power structure was, at the very least, faced with an extreme dilemma. Even if the Nazarene’s movement was genuinely apolitical, a possibility, it might be manipulated by reckless subversive elements hell bent on confrontation. This might result in catastrophe. Jerusalem was, in fact, razed to the ground in 70AD and the Temple destroyed as a result of similar unrest. And the Roman occupation forces might perceive the religious movement as being subversive even if this was entirely untrue.
In the world of real politics there is rarely a simple right or wrong. If the Jewish establishment had failed to act upon the threat that Jesus, perhaps inadvertently, posed to the common good there was a real possibility of a terrible atrocity being visited upon the people as a result of their failure. And, as a Unitarian, I very much doubt that the “fact” that Jesus was “the Only Son of God” would have been obvious, radiating from his every pore, as is the case in the Hollywood depictions of these events.
Crucify him? Given the unsavory nature of the world of politics there was probably no other option.

Brendan Burke MA (Phil) Cork Unitarian Church September 2006.