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Bible Dictionaries
Trial of Jesus
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or TRIAL OF JESUS.—The narratives of what may be termed, for the sake of convenience, the twofold trial of Jesus yield a record of the proceedings which is fairly intelligible and substantially authentic, but which is bound up with a triple set of problems. Some of these are topographical or archaeological; some are legal, connected with the jurisprudence of the trial; while others are historical, arising from the literary criticism of the Evangelic traditions. The fragmentariness of these traditions* [Note: The relevant passages are Mark 14:53 to Mark 15:20, Matthew 26:57 to Matthew 27:31, Luke 22:54 to Luke 23:25, John 18:12 to John 19:16.] and the lack of any outside testimony occasionally prevent criticism from throwing a steady ray of light upon the exact course of affairs, and this is particularly the case with regard to the first two classes of the trial-problems.
1. The topographical problem.—This includes the question of Pilate’s Praetorium (see vol. i. p. 859, and Praetorium), the precise meaning of Gabbatha (John 19:13, cf. Gabbatha and Pavement), the problem whether Annas and Caiaphas had separate residences or stayed together in an official house, and the site of the meeting-place of the Sanhedrin (in the house of Caiaphas or elsewhere). These details are discussed elsewhere in this Dictionary, and it is unnecessary to examine them afresh, particularly as the decisive evidence, such as it is, has to be drawn as a rule from considerations which lie outside the words of the Gospels. The same remark applies, though in a less degree, to
2. The legal problem.—The question whether Jesus was legally condemned to death starts an interesting problem in historical jurisprudence, but it was not present to the minds of the Evangelists or of the original reporters of the Passion; and this, combined with the condensed, fragmentary, and even discrepant character of their traditions, renders it extremely difficult to answer the question with any confidence in the affirmative or the negative. If the Talmudic law was in force in Palestine during the lifetime of Jesus, there would be no course open but to agree with some savants of last century that the Sanhedrin acted illegally.† [Note: Thus the ablest of recent jurists who have discussed the problem, Mr. A. Taylor Innes, sums up his inquiry in the words: ‘A process,’ begun, continued, and apparently finished in the course of one night, commencing with witnesses against the accused who were sought for by the Judges, but whose evidence was not sustained even by them; continuing by interrogations which Hebrew law does not sanction; and ending with a demand for confession which its doctors expressly forbid; all followed, twenty-four hours too soon, by a sentence which described a claim to be the fulfiller of the hopes of Israel as blasphemy—such a process had neither the form nor the fairness of a judicial trial.’ This needs to be qualified, but substantially it seems accurate.] But the Talmud represents a much later phase of Jewish jurisprudence, and it is probable that, viewed in the light of contemporary practice, the Council were careful on the whole to observe the letter, though not the spirit, of justice, and to practise most of the forms of legality.‡ [Note: Contrast, on this point, the juristic colouring of the Acta Pilati (cf. von Dobschütz, ZNTW, 1902, 89–114, and Mommsen, ib. 198 f.).] Thus it is, far from certain that they met formally at night, though it seems as if they passed their resolution before daybreak; and the main counts against them are the neglect to warn the witnesses solemnly before giving evidence, the judicial use of the prisoner’s confession, and the undue haste with which the proceedings were rushed through. They were kept within judicial limits only so far as it was necessary to save appearances.
The proceedings before Pilate are less obscure. It was necessary for the Jewish authorities to obtain the governor’s sanction for the execution of the death sentence, and this involved a fresh trial of the accused. Pilate seems to have acquitted Jesus of the majestas or high treason which the Council first brought forward against Him, but there is some doubt as to whether the acquittal was formally pronounced in accordance with law. In the Markan tradition, followed by Matthew, Pilate never pronounces Jesus to be innocent, although it is plain that he did not believe Him to be guilty. His reason for allowing Him to be crucified is a desire to curry favour with the people. When he discovers that they prefer Barabbas to Jesus, and that the latter is not after all a popular infatuated leader, he has little or no scruples about handing Him over to the tender mercies of His compatriots. His blood be on their heads!
The Lukan tradition, followed substantially in the Fourth Gospel, raises the problem of jurisprudence definitely by affirming that Pilate thrice pronounced Jesus innocent (Luke 23:4; Luke 23:14; Luke 23:22). If so, the first acquittal makes the reference of Jesus to Herod illegal. But, as we shall see, it is probable that this formal verdict is at least antedated, and that Jesus was not finally acquitted, if He was acquitted at all, until He had been sent bark from Herod. Thereafter the proceedings are destitute of justice; Pilate is concerned not with his legal duty, but with the interests of his personal safety and popularity, which were endangered by his conscientious desire to release the prisoner.
Only a critical analysis and comparison of these early Christian traditions can yield evidence for estimating aright the problems of the jurisprudence of the trials; and even the results of such an inquiry are not final, especially in the case of the Jewish trial. It is with a preliminary caution of this kind that we enter on the third and most important stage of our discussion.
3. The historical problem.—The confusing and even conflicting features in the narratives of the trial of Jesus, which followed His arrest (cf. Arrest and Betrayal), are due to the fact that no uniform or complete account of it was ever circulated among the early Christians. The Gospels betray different currents of tradition, and these currents do not always flow in the same channel. Here and there, in different circles, different phases or reminiscences of the trial were preserved; but not even in the Markan narrative, with its Petrine basis, does an exhaustive, accurate record of the proceedings lie embedded. The later Gospels treat the account in their own way, omitting, adapting, and adding, to suit their own religious interests; and one of the tasks of criticism is to determine how far these may preserve some authentic traits, for it is as erroneous to presuppose that all later additions to the Markan outline are unhistorical as to assume that the details of the four canonical stories can be harmonized into a protocol of the actual proceedings.
In compiling the later Acts of the Martyrs, Christians were better off. For one thing, these subsequent trials were usually deliberate; occasionally they were expected for some time, so that the Church was not taken by surprise, and in any case attention was piously paid to the last words and experiences of the saint. By the 4th cent. the shorthand reports of the trials became also accessible to the martyrologist; he was thereby enabled to write dialogues which had the merit of expressing not only what the accused and the accusers should have said, but sometimes what they did say.* [Note: F. C. Conybeare, The Apology and Acts of Apollonius, pp. 6–7.] The trial of Jesus found His adherents quite unprovided for any such record of what happened. ‘The sudden Roman faces and the noise,’ the circumstances of horror and surprise which attended the arrest of their Master, the haste of the proceedings, and the shock of fear which overtook them, were enough to prevent the disciples from realizing what was going on. All was over before they could steady their minds to anything except the general fact of the Master’s arrest and execution. Afterwards, they were able to piece together, from their own observation and from the information of councillors like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea, or of sympathizers in the crowd, or of some of the women, several of the words and experiences of their Lord before the Council and the procurator. The exigencies of controversy with the Jews and the natural desire to remember as vividly and completely as possible the details of the scene, would foster this movement towards a recollection of the trial. The extant records show how comparatively scanty was the harvest of memory. But their very scantiness proves that the instinct for embroidering the facts with unhistorical fancies did not operate to any serious extent within the primitive Christian traditions, while their tone of moderation tells in favour of the essential historicity of the method in which they record actions of the Jews and Romans which must have outraged and shocked the later Christian conscience. There is neither reprobation of the accusers and judges, nor any effusive sympathy shown with the Sufferer. The Evangelic narratives do not burn emotional incense before the figure of Jesus. Nor are they tinged with serious and direct censure. Thus St. Luke, e.g., is content to record the painful story without pointing a moral or adorning the tale; he does not stop or step aside to blacken Judas or Herod, as Thucydides has exposed Cleon and Hyperbolus, or as many subsequent writers in Christianity have treated the Jewish and Roman actors in the Passion-story. Against the sentimental, unhistorical rhetoric of the latter class, John Stuart Mill’s protest may stand. In the second chapter of his essay On Liberty, he remarks: ‘The man who left on the memory of those who witnessed his life and conversation, such an impression of his moral grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries have done homage to him as the Almighty in person, was ignominiously put to death, as what? as a blasphemer. Men did not merely mistake their benefactor; they mistook him for the exact contrary of what he was, and treated him as that prodigy of impiety, which they themselves are now held to be, for their treatment of him.’ These men, he proceeds to argue, ‘were, to all appearance, not bad men—not worse than men commonly are, but rather the contrary; men who possessed in a full, or somewhat more than a full measure, the religious, moral, and patriotic feelings of their time and people; the very kind of men who, in all times, our own included, have every chance of passing through life blameless and respected. The high priest who rent his garments when the words were pronounced which, according to all the ideas of his country, constituted the blackest guilt, was in all probability quite as sincere in his horror and indignation as the generality of respectable and pious men now are in the religious and moral sentiments they profess.’ This estimate is, of course, too roseate to stand the scrutiny of historical research. Even a Jewish authority like Jost admits the illegality of the verdict against Jesus. Mill forgets, too, that some of the blackest crimes of history have been connived at, if not started, by men of quite respectable character. Sincerity is no essential proof of innocence, even if it could be shown that Caiaphas and the other priests were open-minded people who acted in good faith when they misunderstood their prisoner. But the spirit which Mill properly desiderates in an estimate of such men is wonderfully preserved in the Gospels. Their records have no trace of the outraged partisan, any more than of a pious desire to cast some adventitious halo round Jesus; and when one considers how numerous were the temptations to make capital against the Jews out of this Passion-story, or to decorate it with trivial and extravagant circumstances (as is the case in most of the relevant Apocryphal Gospels), one can better appreciate the sober and wonderfully restrained character of the Evangelic traditions.
To receive the due religious impression of the Evangelic narratives, it is generally enough to read each by itself. But while devout feeling is seldom perturbed by any discrepancies, such differences do exist both in conception and in detail, and the juxtaposition of the four Gospels in the canon obliges faith to look at the variety of the records and make some attempt at a historical estimate of their relative contents. The main business is to appreciate their religious interests. Yet, whilst these are both obvious and independent of critical research, a comparative inquiry into the different traditions is imperative. ‘Investigations of this kind, which attempt to weigh the merits of conflicting or parallel accounts, have always a somewhat cold-blooded and judicial spirit in them, a spirit which cannot but be out of harmony with that in which we can study the Passion of our Lord to our soul’s profit. Yet these historical questions must be faced, if our estimate of the gospel is to be lifted out of the region of mere inherited sentiment.’* [Note: Professor Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission (p. 139).] Fortunately, verbal accuracy is not equivalent to inner veracity. The occasional divergences of the records do not affect seriously either the religious truth or the historical value of the traditions as a whole.
The primary fact which emerges from such a study is that when Jesus was brought before the Jewish authorities,* [Note: Paul sometimes makes the whole nation (1 Thessalonians 2:14-15), sometimes the rulers especially (cf. Acts 13:27-28), responsible for the crime, and once he ascribes it to demonic impulse (1 Corinthians 2:8). St. Peter, in Acts 3:13 ff., also biames the Jerusalemites, rather than Pilate, whom from the first the Evangelic tradition rightly regarded as less culpable. But even within the circle of the canonical Gospels it is possible to trace the beginnings of that tendency to compare Pilate favourably with the Jews, which afterwards went to quite extravagant lengths.] He was judged worthy of death, and thereupon remitted to Pilate. But was He really tried? and if so, before what authorities? and of what specific charge was He found guilty? These questions cannot be answered off-hand. Still less can any one Gospel be assumed to be the standard by which the others are to be measured. An examination of all four is necessary, if the problems are even to be stated, much less solved.
(a) Jesus before the Jewish authorities (Mark 14:53-65 = Matthew 26:57-68 = Luke 22:54-71).—The arrest of Jesus, all the Gospels agree, was at once followed by His removal to the palace of the high priest in custody of the guard. What occurred between this and the crucifixion on the following day is usually described as the trial of Jesus, but a glance at the order of affairs will soon show that it is extremely doubtful if Jesus really was ever tried, in the strict sense of the term. Pilate made an attempt to try Him, yet we cannot be sure if it was carried out adequately. He gave his general impressions of the prisoner, asked a few questions of Him and His accusers, and strove to avoid a decision. A rough and honest informality marked the opening stages, at least, of the intercourse between the Roman governor and the Galilaean prisoner. Latterly, Pilate failed to recognize any rights on the part of Jesus. When he gave Him up to be crucified, it was against his better judgment, and in ratification of a previous sentence pronounced by the Jewish Council. Even here, as we shall see, it is questionable if all the legal forms were observed.† [Note: Chwolson, in the appendix to his Das letzte Passamahl Christi, argues that the illegal haste of the proceedings was due to the fact that the Sadducees, who were adherents of the Roman government, were in power at the time. Their antipathy to one whose teaching threatened their class privileges in the Temple and the political status quo of the nation, led them to breaches of the law which would have been less probable in the case of the Pharisees. Derenbourg in his Essai sur L’Histoire et la Géographie de la Palestine (1867), p. 201, had already urged this view. He explained the precipitate conduct of the proceedings as impossible for Pharisees, and due to the well-known severity of the Boethusians. Rabbi Ziegler (in Der Kampf zwischen Judentum und Christentum, 1907, p. 34 f.) fixes the blame upon the Herodians.]
According to one tradition, the Jewish trial took place at once in the house of Caiaphas, where the Sanhedrin had gathered, despite the lateness of the hour. Not a moment was lost. The arrest was followed by the examination. Then, after being found guilty of blasphemy, Jesus was kept waiting till morning, and exposed meanwhile to the coarse mockery and rough play of the company (probably, for the most part, the servants of the high priest and the rest of the underlings). At daybreak an adjourned meeting was held, at which He was formally bound (the sentence perhaps being ratified) and handed over to Pilate’s jurisdiction.
The Lukan tradition defers the examination till the morning. After His arrest, Jesus was detained in custody in the house of the high priest, and, in the absence of the judicial authorities, suffered violence at the hands of His captors. Then, at daybreak, the Sanhedrin was hastily convened. An abbreviated account of its proceedings is given, in which all reference to false witnesses and the charge about the Temple is omitted, but the end is the same. Jesus is found guilty, and taken away to Pilate.
The latter tradition is more true to the regular practice of the Sanhedrin, which met by day; for only then were its decisions valid (cf. Sanhedrin). But this does not necessarily prove that it is more original, for St. Luke may have been smoothing out what appeared to him an irregularity in the previous tradition. Upon the other hand, the difficulties involved by the Markan view are serious. Once Jesus was in their hands, the authorities had nothing to gain by rushing through the trial before morning. It would be in their own interests to preserve most of the forms of legal process; and it is difficult to think of the Council, or even a quorum of twenty-three members, being already summoned hurriedly to await the nocturnal arrest of Jesus, when nothing decisive could be done for hours.
The probability is, therefore, that while, no doubt, Caiaphas, Annas, and some others were on the spot, the Council was not formally convened until the early morning, about 6 a.m., and that Jesus spent the night in custody. Even the Markan tradition includes a morning examination (Mark 15:1 = Matthew 27:1, a full and formal meeting of the court), which, after the nocturnal one, would be no more than a closing deliberation or a hasty ratification of the sentence already passed. The colourless and brief mention of this second examination shows that the Petrine tradition had no exact knowledge of its proceedings. In reality, it had no room for it, and its preservation is due simply to the fact that the morning trial, which St. Luke has described, was too firmly established in the primitive record to be entirely ignored even when it was deprived of its proper point. As to the reasons which led the Markan tradition to dilate on a nocturnal trial, the clue is probably to be found in the fact that there really was such a hasty preliminary cross-questioning of Jesus; only, it was not before Caiaphas, but before Annas (see Annas), the influential ex-high priest, who had been at the bottom of the whole movement to arrest Jesus. The prisoner was taken illegally and informally before him, questioned about His disciples and His teaching,* [Note: Jesus ignores the query with regard to the disciples (which involved an insinuation of sedition and conspiracy), and asserts that His teaching was open and above-board, no esoteric doctrine. The well-known parallel is the remark of Socrates in the Apologia (xxi.): ‘If any one says he ever learnt or heard from me in private what all other people did not hear, be sure he is not speaking the truth.’ Twice only, here and in Mark 14:48, does He expostulate with the priestly authorities for their unfair treatment of Him. Evidently He saw that they were determined to have their way, and no further protest fell from His lips (see vol. i. 756–757). The blow of John 18:22 is illustrated by that of Acts 23:2. it is arbitrary to take the latter as the prototype of the former.] and then removed to the house of Caiaphas, where the proceedings eventually took place which are recorded by Mark and Matthew.
The fact that this preliminary examination or ἀγάκρισις before Annas is recorded only in the Fourth Gospel (John 18:12-14; John 18:19-24) has excited, not unnaturally, strong suspicion of its authenticity, and efforts, more or less plausible (cf. Keim, vi. 36 f.), have been made to show that the author has wrongly inferred from Luke 3:2, Acts 4:6; Acts 5:17, the high authority of Annas; and that the latter is brought in for the sake of novelty or variety. These efforts are quite unconvincing. Historical criticism cannot be put off nowadays with the assumption that the Markan tradition is so exhaustive and infallible as to prove a standard for judging the later Gospels. Certain data in the tradition even of the Fourth Gospel (e.g. the date of the Crucifixion, cf. vol. i. 413 f., 882 f., with Kattenbusch in Die Christliche Welt, 1895, pp. 317 f., 331 f.) are winning more and more credence from critics of all schools, and the insuperable difficulty about eliminating the Annas trial is the impossibility of detecting any adequate motive for its invention and introduction. The various theories which explain its growth from a misconception of the Synoptists will not hold water. The details of it are also uncoloured by any specific Johannine interest.† [Note: The historical basis of the report is recognized not merely by Ewald, Renan, and Hausrath, but by so thoroughgoing a critic as A. Réville (Jésus de Nazareth, ii. 378 f.). The likelihood is that it forms, as Oscar Holtzmann admits of John 18:28 (Life of Jesus, Eng. tr. p. 480), ‘a fragment of the good tradition preserved in the Johannine Gospel.’ The idea of Christ’s publicity (John 18:20) is, of course, a genuinely Johannine trait (cf. John 7:14 f.), but this does not explain why the author should have invented the Annas trial for it.] It is not shot through, as is the later trial before Pilate, by Johannine conceptions. The Fourth Gospel, it is true, ignores the details of the trial before Caiaphas; but this difficulty is not more serious than that of the Synoptic silence upon the Annas trial, for the latter might well appear too insignificant or private to be retained beside the Caiaphas trial, or even to be accurately distinguished from it. As the ex-high priest had no power to pronounce sentence, the tendency of tradition would naturally be towards the decisive proceedings before Caiaphas.
The traditional order of the text in John 18, however, does not appear to represent the original. Some distortion has taken place, as the Sinaitic Syriac version shows, and efforts have been made to restore the true sequence (see Moffatt, The Historical New Test. pp. 528 f., 693 f.), perhaps the most plausible proposal being that of Professor G. G. Findlay, who would read John 18:19-24 between John 18:14 and John 18:15. Some such rearrangement is necessary, at any rate, in order to give a coherent sense to the passage, the denial of Peter taking place, as in the Synoptic account, at the house of Caiaphas (John 18:15-18; John 18:25-27). On Wellhausen’s recent attempt to excise all the allusions to Caiaphas, see the present writer’s paper in the Expositor (July 1907, pp. 55–69).
It does not necessarily follow from Luke 3:2 that St. Luke assumed the high priest of 22:54 f. was Annas. But if he did, he (or his source at this point) tacitly corrects the Markan tradition. On the other hand, St. Luke ignores Caiaphas entirely. When the Council meet, they act unanimously and simultaneously (22:66 f.); there is no need of any mouthpiece or spokesman.
These efforts of the high priest and the Council to secure evidence against Jesus proved at first a failure. Many witnesses came forward, but nothing tangible or crucial could be made out of their statements.* [Note: The term ἴσαι (Mark 14:56, cf. Mark 14:59) refers to harmony of statement. Had the Evangelist meant ‘adequate,’ ‘equal to the occasion,’ he would have used ἱκαναί or some equivalent.] At last some people appeared with a garbled version of one saying which seemed relevant and final. As given by the three writers who record it, it runs thus:
| Mark 14:58. | Matthew 26:61. | John 2:19. |
| I will destroy (καταλὑσω) | I am able to destroy | Destroy (λύσατε) |
| this temple made with hands, | the temple of God, | this temple, |
| and after three days I will build another not made with hands. | and after three days to build it. | and in three days I will raise it. |
The saying bears on its face the stamp of authenticity,† [Note: Compare the discussion of Strauss (Life of Jesus, Eng. tr. by George Eliot, § 114), who upholds its historicity against the suspicions of Bretschneider.] but it is impossible to ascertain its original place or significance. The Synoptic omission of its utterance by Jesus is all the more striking, since it would fit in excellently with the Synoptic account of the cleansing of the Temple, which preceded and determined the arrest of Jesus. The Fourth Evangelist, who misplaces this incident, actually cites it in this very connexion (John 2:19), but characteristically he gives it a double meaning. Jesus, he declares, was speaking of His resurrection, the temple being the body—according to the familiar symbolism of the age. The Jews, however, took Him literally. In all probability the saying was ‘one of those mystic pregnant words which imply more than they explicitly state, or than any one thought of when they were first uttered’ (cf. Bruce, Kingdom of God, pp. 306–310). The original meaning may have been that Jesus, who claimed to be greater than the Temple (Matthew 12:6), would raise His community, even though the Jewish system of worship was shattered. His cause was not bound up with the Temple. If He came to associate His own death with the ruin of the sanctuary, it was inevitable that the conception of His personal resurrection should further colour the saying. But in any case the later Christian reflexion would read it in the light of the resurrection, whether with or without any historical justification. The Fourth Evangelist, who makes Jesus not only fully conscious of His Messianic dignity and approaching death from the first, but outspoken on the subject, has naturally no difficulty in placing the statement at the threshold of His ministry, and it has been argued that this length of time between the saying and its quotation at the trial is historically necessary in order to explain ‘that hesitation and contradiction about the evidence of the “false witnesses,” and the extreme difficulty in procuring it, which both St. Matthew’s and St. Mark’s accounts of the trial of Christ distinctly attest’ (R. H. Hutton, Theological Essays, p. 228). The contention is unconvincing. Such a saying, if uttered even a day or two before to an excited crowd, would readily be caught up and twisted according to the sympathies or the antipathies of people. Words such as those of Mark 13:2 would inevitably colour it, and the passion of these utterances indicates that the mind of Jesus must have been concerned with the Temple and its future in relation to His message more deeply than our extant records happen to disclose. In any case, popular animus needed but a few days to distort an enigmatic saying of this kind. Many versions of it would be afloat on the bubbling tide of gossip in the Jerusalem streets, and some of these were uttered by hostile lips to hostile ears before the Council.
St. Mark bluntly calls this information a piece of false evidence, false because it misrepresented the real meaning of Jesus by attributing to Him a revolutionary design of which He was innocent. It failed, owing to the disagreement of the witnesses. For some reason, which the Evangelist leaves unexplained, their testimonies did not tally; no coherent and decisive proof could be picked out of their conflicting reports. St. Matthew, on the other hand, will not go this length. Not merely is he silent upon the disagreement of the witnesses (contrast Mark 14:58-59), but he refuses to call them false witnesses outright, although this may be implied in Matthew 26:59-60. To the Evangelist any witness against Jesus probably counted as false witness. He lays stress upon the original desire of the authorities to find false witness, implying that they would stick at nothing to secure the conviction of Jesus, and that they eventually managed to secure evidence which, being in itself blasphemous, and being legally corroborated by two witnesses (Matthew 26:60-61), enabled them to proceed with their design. St. Mark, who admits that the authorities were bent on compassing the death of Jesus, does not accuse them of deliberately searching for false witness from the first, though he points out that even the evidence they secured was inadequate from a legal standpoint (cf. vol. i. 575–576).
Both agree, however, that Jesus, on being challenged by the high priest, refused to answer the charge. He kept a dignified silence,* [Note: Bushnell’s Nature and the Supernatural (ch. x.).] probably for the reason given in the words put by Luke into His mouth (Luke 22:67-68). It was idle to argue with those who had already made up their minds to find Him guilty. His stern, calm silence was a judgment of His so-called judges. Their malevolent prejudice deprived them of the right to demand information about His mission. The high priest, who spoke in their name, was eager, not to elicit the truth, but to make the prisoner incriminate Himself as a meẓith or sacrilegious foe of Judaism, by giving some explanation of the alleged saying. The silence of Jesus baffled and irritated him. It threw him out in his calculations. There were probably some in the Council who were not particularly favourable to the designs of Annas and Caiaphas; the failure to attack Jesus for cleansing the Temple may indicate, perhaps, that several members† [Note: They reasoned, or might have reasoned, that the cleansing of the Temple would be a very unlikely act on the part of a reformer who designed its destruction. But in any case, that action was not seriously and instantly challenged by the authorities (Mark 11:27), and its sequel proves that no exception was taken to it by the religious people of the city or even by the Romans.] rather approved of the act; and it was a matter of moment to bring the whole Council into line against Jesus, to rouse every interest, sacerdotal (cf. vol. i. pp. 297–298) and official, in order that a unanimous verdict might be carried to Pilate. Furthermore, there was the people to consider. Jesus had sympathizers whose number was unascertained. If He was to be got rid of, it must be on some broad, serious charge which might command a wave of overwhelming popular enthusiasm and indignation. Sacerdotal diplomacy is generally a past master in the art of playing upon such prejudices and organizing popular feeling in aid of its own ends, and the next move of the high priest showed no inconsiderable skill. He chose his new ground admirably. But it is not clear why he shifted his position so suddenly. Was he aware of the Messianic claims of Jesus and astute enough to use them, as a last resource, for the purpose of forcing some incriminating answer? Or was the ground really shifted? Might it be inferred from the primitive Evangelic tradition, as reproduced by Mk. and Mt. alike, that the saying about the Temple (Mark 14:58 = Matthew 26:61) was held to imply a sort of Messianic claim* [Note: The reconstruction of the Temple in the new age was one work of the Messiah, according to some circles of pre-Christian Judaism (cf. Enoch 90:28 etc.; Bousset, Religion des Judentums, 226 f.).] upon the part of Jesus? In that event, the high priest’s next question would be simply a further move on the line already taken. The former hypothesis is, upon the whole, the more likely of the two. But in any case the point is plain. Foiled by the silence of Jesus in his attempt to make capital out of the witnesses’ report, Caiaphas proceeds to put the straight and final question, ‘Art thou the Christ?’ (Mark 14:61 = Matthew 26:63, cf. Luke 22:66; Mk.’s addition, ‘the Son of the Blessed,’ is probably more original than Mt.’s generalized ‘the Son of God’).† [Note: The avoidance of God’s name, in accordance with Jewish usage, is, as O. Holtzmann points out (Life of Jesus, pp. 164, 475), ‘a strong point in favour of the soundness of our tradition.’] It was a categorical and crucial query. Matters were now brought to an issue which Jesus could not and would not evade.
His answer is variously reported: ‘I am (ἐγώ εἰμι): and you will see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven’ (Mark 14:62); ‘It is as thou sayest (σὺ εἶπας). Yet I tell you, in future you will see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven’ (Matthew 26:44); ‘You will not believe if I tell you, nor will you answer if I question you. But from henceforth the Son of Man shall be seated on the right hand of the Power of God’ (Luke 22:67-69). Primarily, the saying is a reminiscence and application of the Messianic passage in Daniel 7:13, though the Speaker has also the opening of Psalms 110 in His mind—a psalm which in those days was more than once upon His lips (cf. Mark 12:36). So much is clear. But the details of the answer are not always quite intelligible. Thus St. Luke‡ [Note: ‘The Power’ of Mk. and Mt. is more original than Lk.’s explanatory phrase.] divides the question into two, and, in reply to the query, ‘Art thou the Son of God?’ makes Jesus reply: ὑμεῖς λέγετε, ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι (Luke 22:70). On the other hand, the Markan answer is perfectly explicit (cf. Menzies, The Earliest Gospel, p. 267). Jesus replies, ‘I am.’ St. Matthew, again, gives an evasive or ambiguous turn to the words by the phrase σὺ εἶπας, which here, as in Matthew 26:25, is commonly understood to mean a qualified affirmative. The person addressed replies in the sense of the questioner. ‘You say so. I will not contradict you.’ ‘I answer you out of your own lips.’ Recently, however, Chwolson, followed by Merx, N. Schmidt (The Prophet of Nazareth, p. 287), and others, has challenged the interpretation of the phrase as a Rabbinic form of affirmation; instead of being equivalent to the Latin dixisti, it is held to be really a denial. This is most unlikely, to judge from the context; and even linguistically, as Dalman has shown (Words of Jesus, p. 309 f.), it is unnecessary.* [Note: H. Holtzmann, Das messianische Bewusstsein Jesu (1907), pp. 29–31, as against Wrede’s idea (Das Messiasgeheimnis, 74 f.) that the phrase ‘Son of God’ must be taken in a metaphysical, not in a theocratic sense.]
But, minor discrepancies apart, the answer reveals three cardinal traits of Jesus: His courage in confessing the Messianic vocation, when death was the inevitable consequence; His serene confidence in the success of His cause upon earth; and His admission that only the future could unfold the real meaning of His Person.† [Note: Bengel, on Matthew 26:64, has one of his fine comments: ‘In adversissimis quibusque rebus summos fines exitusque intueri, maxime juvat filios dei.’] The last point is to be noted specially. The high priest’s question was so contrived as to make any answer fatal, whether negative or affirmative. In the one case, Jesus would lose all His influence and authority; in the other, He would be liable to judgment as a pretender. But Jesus realized that even a bare affirmative would be misleading, since His Messianic vocation was widely different from what the ordinary expectation imagined. Hence the fuller statement, wrung from the tension and passionate faith of His soul. The words seized on by the Council were those referring to His claim to sit at the right hand of the Power, but it must not be inferred‡ [Note: As by Wellhausen, who omits Mark 14:61-62 in order to support this reading of the incident. But Mark 14:63 does not follow the silence of Jesus very aptly; the blasphemy is more naturally connected with the straightforward utterance of Jesus than with the divergent reports of the witnesses, and Lk.’s ἀπὸ τοῦ στόματος σὐτοῦ is probably a correct gloss.] from this that the charge of constructive blasphemy for which Jesus was condemned was dissociated from His Messianic claims. The contention that such claims were not blasphemous in themselves all depends on the character of the person who made them. The Council considered themselves, rightly or wrongly, absolved from entering into any minute examination of the conduct and aims of Jesus.§ [Note: Mark 2:7.] On that their minds were already made up, as His arrest shows. The attitude of Jesus to the Law and the Temple and the cherished religious traditions of Judaism left no doubt in their minds that He was a dangerous person, in whom it would be superfluous to look for any Messianic criteria. His presumption in claiming Messianic honour was in itself blasphemy of a capital order, as it involved a supersession of the Mosaic Law, and His words now corroborated the impression already made by His actions that He was a discredited pretender to Divine rank, and a false and disloyal prophet. In short, the verdict of the historian, as Holtzmann puts it, must be: ‘Jesus confessed Himself to be Messiah, was condemned as a false Messiah, and executed as a pretender.’|| [Note: | Das Messianische Bewusstsein Jesu (1907), pp. 35–36, where the various views of recent critics on this point are adequately summarized. For the punishment of a false prophet, see Deuteronomy 13:1-5; Deuteronomy 18:20-22.]
Caiaphas had now gained his point. He had induced Jesus to convict. Himself out of His own mouth, and with a pious gesture of horror (cf. 2 Kings 22:11, 1 Maccabees 11:71, Isaiah 37:1 etc.) he professes himself at once shocked by the blasphemy of the Galilaean, and satisfied with the result of his interrogation. He appeals theatrically to the Council if this is not enough evidence, and they obsequiously agree.
The condensed and cursory nature of the report makes it impossible for us to be sure whether this verdict was as premature and illegal as it appears to be, and whether the irregularities were held to be justified by the emergency which had transpired. The Evangelic tradition was naturally more concerned with the result than with the precise processes of the trial. In any case, however, it is unmistakable that the priests had now got what they wanted. They had secured from Jesus a confession which was nominally equivalent to a blasphemous claim (on this see vol. i. pp. 209–210), derogatory to the Divine Being. But we are in the dark as to how far the ordinary forms of jurisprudence were observed, whether the witnesses were cautioned before giving evidence, whether the case for the defence was first of all opened, and so forth. The outstanding point is that Jesus was condemned primarily for blasphemy. To convict Him of claiming to be Messiah, and charge Him with that, would not have appealed to the Sadducees. More was needed, and this was supplied by the fact of Jesus, a Galilaean peasant, with revolutionary views upon the cultus, daring to claim for Himself Messianic honours, and thus threatening to supersede the sacrosanct legal system of Judaism.
(b) Jesus before Pilate (Mark 15:1-20 = Matthew 27:1-31 = Luke 23:1-25 = John 18:28 to John 19:16).—If the proceedings before the Jewish Council strained even the letter of justice, those before the Roman authorities show little or no attempt whatsoever to try the prisoner judicially. Jesus does not appear to have been legally tried before Pilate. The Roman governor, after the first turn in the case, seems to have been principally anxious to discover the most politic course of action, as well as to thwart the authorities. His sense of justice was overborne by considerations of personal advantage and civil prudence. But he was not driven to this end without reluctance, and the record of the proceedings, which took place in the open-air in front of his palace or tribunal, is of considerable psychological interest.
The first phase of the trial before Pilate is the procurator’s dismissal of the grave charge of majestas brought against Jesus by His accusers,* [Note: Their ritualistic scruple about entering the Praetorium is noted by the Fourth Evangelist (John 18:28) with deliberate meaning. In the light of the Christian interpretation, it acquired a sinister significance. ‘Polluting their souls with blood, they dare not pollute their bodies by breach of outer etiquette.… Men must have some scrap of conscience left to hide them from themselves. Inward defilement, unprincipled action, are atoned for by outer decorum’ (Reith, Gospel of John, ii. 135).] who naturally fixed upon the political rather than the religious side of the Messianic claim as the more likely to carry weight with the governor.
According to one tradition,† [Note: The Fourth Evangelist (John 18:33), like St. Matthew (Matthew 27:11), here follows the condensed Markan tradition (Mark 15:2), leaving it unexplained how Pilate had come to hear of the accusation of royalty, but implying that Jesus had not heard the priests laying this information before the governor.] Pilate takes the initiative by asking Jesus if He is really the king of the Jews. The question breathes pity and contempt and wonder. This forlorn Galilaean peasant (σύ emphatic) a claimant of royalty! The quiet reply is, σὺ λέγεις (cf. vol. i. 931b). To the subsequent outburst of accusation from the Jewish leaders, Jesus vouchsafes no reply; nor will He even deign to interpret His silence to the astonished procurator. Plainly, this is a very abridged version of the actual facts, and we turn for fuller details to Luke. According to his account, the Jewish authorities push forward with their accusation before Pilate has time to speak, and the charge is threefold: He is accused of being a seditious agitator, of forbidding the payment of tribute to the Roman emperor, and of claiming to be ‘Christ, a king.’ A political charge is thus cleverly foisted into the religious complaint, and the procurator, who would have nothing to do with a vague accusation, naturally fixes on the third point, asking Jesus (as in the other tradition) if He is really the king of the Jews. Luke’s account certainly gives a better sense here than the other, for it explains how Pilate came to put his question; whereas, in the evidence of Mark 15:2 = Matthew 27:11, there is nothing to account for the governor seizing this point at all. That the charge of the Jews was astute but unjust needs no proof (cf. vol. i. p. 246a). The Gospels show how scrupulously Jesus kept clear of abetting the fanatical hatred of Rome felt by many of His fellow-countrymen, and probably it was this refusal to side with them which secretly instigated their plan of attack. At any rate, as Renan observes, ‘Conservative religious bodies do not generally shrink from calumny.’ To refute the charge was superfluous in the eyes of Jesus. His silence did all that was necessary; it repudiated the accusation.
The silence of Jesus before Pilate was due to moral reasons. Dr. Salmon, in his posthumous work, The Human Element in the Gospels (1907, p. 512), prefers, indeed, to attribute it to physical fatigue. ‘The only way that occurs to one of accounting for His silence is that, after the strain of the work of the previous day, of the sleepless night, and the brutal insults of His tormentors, His physical frame was incapable of conducting a discussion. And we could sufficiently account for Pilate’s unwillingness to condemn, if he perceived that the man against whom so much accusation was brought was quite unable to say a word in His own defence. In this choice between Jesus and Barabbas, might he not feel that the more dangerous enemy to Caesar was the man in vigorous health who had already taken part in an insurrection in which many lives had been lost, and not the so-called prophet, who seemed unable to speak, much less to act. And if he had no trust in the loyalty of the Jewish advisers, might he not have even suspected that they were willing to sacrifice one whom they regarded as useless, in order to save the life of one who would be really dangerous?’ Whatever may be thought of the psychological suggestions in the latter part of this paragraph, the opening sentence does not seem adequate to the facts. Even when wearied (4:6 f.), Jesus would not allow fatigue to prevent Him from speaking, if utterance were necessary. If He was silent, it was because He was unwilling, not because He felt unable. Besides, the impression left by the record of the last two days of the life of Jesus is that His physical strength must have been considerable. Upon the whole, then, it is needless to attribute His silence before Pilate to any other reason than a belief that protestations of innocence were useless, coupled, as that belief was, with a calm consciousness of truth which left no room for even a vestige of anxiety about the ultimate success of His cause.
The impression made by Jesus upon Pilate started a series of attempts upon the part of the procurator to extricate himself and his prisoner from the situation created by the rancour of the Jewish authorities. Three separate movements were made by him in this direction. The first was to change the venue of the trial; for Herod as a Galilaean might be expected to judge this Galilaean peasant more fairly than the Jerusalem authorities. After this device had failed, Pilate tried to get behind the priests, and appeal to the better feelings of the people when unbiassed by sacerdotal and ecclesiastical intrigues; surely a Messiah would be popular, he argued, recollecting the hot patriotism of the nation. But, to his disgust and dismay, Barabbas was preferred to Jesus. Finally, as a last resource, he tried to work on their pity, now that their patriotism was out of the question; he presented Jesus to them, with the bloody marks or scourging upon Him, as an object to excite compassion (John 19:1 f.). This again proved of no avail, and with its collapse Pilate saw the disappearance of the last chance of rescuing the prisoner. Such is, in rough outline, the scheme of events which we can recover from a careful scrutiny of the extant records.
St. Luke, indeed, makes Pilate at once pronounce Jesus innocent (Luke 23:4). But this is far too abrupt. The probability is that (Mark 15:3-5 = Matthew 27:12-14) the priests and elders continued to heap fresh accusations upon Him, and that His silence under the strain of calumny roused Pilate’s astonishment. The procurator was evidently puzzled to know what to do with this prisoner. For though silence may have been equivalent, in Roman law, to a confession of guilt, he was unwilling to pronounce sentence in this case without some further evidence, and the invectives of the Jewish authorities did not point to any conclusive or reliable ground for arriving at a judgment. The very silence of Jesus, as Keim properly observes, impressed the procurator more than the eager, noisy vehemence of His opponents. ‘He did not infer guilt or obstinacy from the silence, as the official and imperious consciousness even of a mild Pliny the Younger was apt so quickly to do: an evidence this of Pilate’s intelligence, and still more of the impression produced by the Lord even when He uttered no words.’ In the midst of this perplexity the word ‘Galilee,’ flung up on the torrent of invective, caught his ear. He seemed to see a chance of relieving himself, and perhaps of helping Jesus. For if Jesus had been guilty of crime within the borders of Galilee, plainly Herod Antipas was the man to deal with Him; he might be more impartial, too, than the local priests and scribes. Besides, it was a politic attention to Antipas. So the procurator gladly dismissed his prisoner to the Galilaen tetrarch, only too relieved to be quit, as he hoped, of this inconvenient responsibility. But this change of venue was futile. It was not exactly illegal, for, as has been observed, the words of Luke 23:4 are probably introduced too early; the other Gospels know nothing of such an acquittal at this point. But it did not help Pilate. The crafty Herod was shy of touching any charge of majestas. As Mr. Taylor Innes puts it, ‘the Idumean fox dreaded the lion’s paw, while very willing to exchange courtesies with the lion’s deputy.’
The transference of Jesus to Herod (cf. vol. i. 722) is one of St. Luke’s special contributions to the story of the Passion (Luke 23:6-16, cf. Acts 4:27). Whether taken from oral tradition (cf. Justin Martyr, Dial. 103) or from the Jewish Christian source (note the technical Jewish χριστὸν βασιλέα = king Messiah, Luke 23:2) which some critics trace below his narrative, it goes back to the memories of the Christians who belonged to the Herodian entourage (cf. Luke 8:3, Luke 9:4), and ought never to have been suspected by a sane criticism. No satisfactory motive for its invention can be adduced.* [Note: The ordinary theory that Herod is made the representative of Judaism, to exculpate paganism (Pilate), contradicts Luke 23:15.] St. Luke (Luke 13:1) was perfectly aware that, when it suited his purpose, Pilate had no hesitation in killing Galilaeans. The author rightly hints at other motives for his action now. The presence of the high priests and scribes at the interview (Luke 13:10) is, at first sight, certainly a difficulty; it might suggest that here, as perhaps at Luke 22:52 (cf. Luke 22:66), the historian has gone too far in emphasizing the activity of the Jewish authorities. But it is just possible that they feared to let the prisoner out of their sight. Herod was not to he relied on. He might take it into his head to release Jesus out of spite or caprice, as Pilate had threatened to do, and with relentless† [Note: There is a dramatic contrast between the two uses of this Lukan term εὐτόνως here and in Acts 18:28Copyright Statement
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