Believe it or not, the crown of thorns was Pilate trying in vain to make the Jews be nice.

The textbook series is Himmel och Jord, "en finlandssvensk läromedelsserie" for elementary school grades 1-6 (ages 7-13ish), published by Fontana.

Today I watched the lesson "Jesus hos Pilatus", whose objective is that the students understand that Pilate sentenced Jesus "and the reasons why he did so." I was startled (and nauseated and shaking with rage) to hear that:

• Pilate was a fair man who thought the Jews were being unfair to Jesus. He wanted to release him, but he didn't "dare" because he was afraid the Jews would use their influence in Rome against him. [Yes, because the oppressed religious minority no doubt had a lot of influence with the emperor.]



• Pilate actually had Jesus tortured because he hoped that the Jews would feel sorry for him and come to regret their decision so that he wouldn't have to be executed.



• When that didn't work, Pilate was like, what can I do? So as a last resort he decided to offer the Jews a choice between Jesus and a robber so he picked an infamous and cruel robber, thinking surely they would rather pardon Jesus, but the Jews were so angry about Jesus claiming to be the son of God that they yelled "Pardon Barnabas! Nail Jesus up!"



• It was the Jews who set armed guards on Jesus's tomb because they didn't want him to escape! [hollsh: Did a Jew shove him back in too? Really WTF...]

One of the pages in the teacher's book said "To Discuss" and one of the items underneath was why so many of the Jews were so happy to see Jesus arrive in Jerusalem that they donated their cloaks as a makeshift red carpet for his ass, but then became an angry mob demanding his death. The answer according to the textbook is that they felt betrayed because Jesus had not (in the intervening time which the lessons so far have represented as being like 3 days) led an uprising and freed the Jews from the Romans as expected.

Well, at first I was thinking I would wait until I could be alone in the room to snap some photos but then I got so upset during the course of the above lesson that I couldn't wait. I started by pacing around and trying to surreptitiously bite my lip, but finally I had to sidle up to the teacher's desk and pretend to glance casually over the book as she was still teaching, and take a few silent photos. I got the whole page of "Jesus hos Pilatus", but I was, er, a bit distracted, and the photo's so blurry that I wasn't able to transcribe it.

Meanwhile, I have a few questions for the Evangelical Lutheran Church's religious education department:

• You realize that the Roman empire no longer exists, right? If you say bad things about them, nothing bad will happen to you.



• Have you ever heard of something called 'historical context'? What about 'Bible scholars'? 'Anti-semitism'?