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Antipas might well have preferred Jesus dead, but he had to balance that desire against popular resentment related to his execution of the popular John the Baptist. For that reason or some other, Antipas did not move to suppress the Kingdom of God movement led by Jesus.
To understand the crime which likely led to the arrest of Jesus, it is first necessary to understand the role of the Temple in first-century Jewish life. The Temple in Jerusalem served dual purposes. It was both the revered center of religious life--a place for prayers and sacrifices--and a central bank, a place for taxes and tithes.
Nothing provoked greater anger among observant Jews than acts perceived to be defilements of the Temple, as other dramatic incidents in the two decades following the death of Jesus make clear. In 41 C.E. for example, Emperor Caligula ordered Petronius, the new Syrian governor, to install statues in the Temple depicting himself as Zeus incarnate. Thousands of unarmed Jews responded by lying prostrate and offering themselves to Roman soldiers for a mass slaughter. Other Jews threatened an agricultural strike. Petronius backed down and Caligula's timely assassination ended the matter. Less than ten years later, a soldier watching over Jews celebrating the Passover at the Temple (according to historian Josephus, writing in about 90 C.E.) "raised his robe, stooped in an indecent attitude, so as to turn his backside to the Jews, and made a noise in keeping with his posture." This disrespectful gesture led to a riot and stampede that killed vast numbers of people: "Troops pouring into the porticoes, the Jews were seized with irresistible panic and turned to fly from the Temple and make their escape into town. But such violence as was used as they pressed around the exits that they were trodden under foot and crushed to death by one another; upwards of 30,000 perished, and the feast was turned into mourning for the whole nation and for every household into lamentation" (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities).
Roman leaders paid close attention to Temple activity. Any threat to Roman power over the Temple--even a symbolic threat--was dealt with harshly, as seen by the response to an incident around 5 B.C.E. When a group of about forty young men climbed to the roof of the Temple and began chopping down a golden eagle, seen by them as a symbol of Roman control, the men were (according, again, to Josephus) arrested "with considerable force." Those observed on the Temple roof were burnt alive and the others merely executed.
It seems clear that the primary cause of the trial and execution of Jesus was his role in an incident at the Temple in Jerusalem. The incident occurred in April, 30 C.E. (or possibly in 33 C.E.) during Festival time, the period including the Day of Passover leading into the week of the Unleavened Bread. The Festival brought huge numbers of Jews into the city to celebrate the Exodus, the leaving of Egyptian oppression and the arrival in the Promised Land. Romans had to understand the special risks presented by such a commemoration: large concentrations of Jews celebrating their former freedom in a time of new oppression--this time by Rome, not Egypt.
Jesus probably came to Jerusalem about a week before the Passover, most likely for the purpose of carrying his message of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God into the heart of Israel--though possibly, like so many thousands of other Jews, simply to celebrate the highest of religious days.
Gospel accounts describe the participation of Jesus in a protest directed at some of the commercial practices associated with the Temple. The practices offended many Jews. According to Matthew, Jesus had complained, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers" (Matthew 21:13). Mark and John tell of Jesus overturning the tables of money-changers, those persons who converted coins bearing images of the emperor into Tyrian silver coins, the only form of coin acceptable for donations. The Gospels also describe Jesus driving the pigeon-sellers (the birds were used as sacrifices by worshipers) from the Temple. It is hard to imagine that such a dramatic action would not have brought an immediate response from armed Temple guards, so it is likely that the gospels exaggerated Jesus' actions. Whatever the precise nature of his actions, they were almost certainly accompanied by words--perhaps including a prediction that the Temple would fall unless reforms were instituted to bring the Temple back to its central religious mission.
