I was wondering, Mara Bar-Serapion in his letter to his son from prison said this quote:
"What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise King? It was just after that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: The Athenians died of hunger. The Samians were overwhelmed by the sea. The Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good. He lived on in the teachings of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good. He lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise King die for good. He lived on in the teaching which He had given."
I wonder, when he said the words "when the Jews executed their wise king" was he referring to Jesus or another person? Is Mara even a good source for this kind of topic?
The scholarly consensus is that it does refer to Jesus. Of course, there are some scholars such as Craig Evans who see the reference as ambiguous because it does not refer to Jesus by name. However, most other scholars, including Bruce Chilton and Robert Van Voorst, state that the reference has too many parallels with the Biblical account and other historical accounts of Jesus' death to be anyone else.
In my opinion, as the Bar-Serapion reference refers to a "Wise King" who was killed by his own people, the Jews, and refers to the Jewish Diaspora, which happened by degrees between the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and the death of Simon Bar-Kochba (the last of the Jewish rebels) around AD 135, it most likely does refer to Jesus, as there were no others I am aware of who have been referred to in other sources as a wise king who was killed by the Jews prior to the Diaspora.
Sources:
Jesus and His Contemporaries: Comparative Studies by Craig A. Evans 2001
Van Voorst, Robert E (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Eerdmans Publishing
Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research edited by Bruce Chilton, Craig A. Evans 1998
Edit: forgot the sources