The primary fact which emerges from such a study is that when Jesus Avas brought before the
* Professor Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission (p. 139).
TEIAL OF JESUS
TRIAL OF JESUS
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Jewish authorities,* 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 oft-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 neces- sary, if the problems are even to be stated, much less solved.
(a) Jesus before the Jeivish authorities (Mk 14^3-65 = Mt 26"-68 = Lk 225'»-"i).— 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 anil 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 ex- tremely 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 Galilfean 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 judg- ment, 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 foims were observed.!
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 Jilay 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. Tlien, 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
* St. Paul sometimes makes the whole nation (1 Th 214. 15)^ sometimes the rulers especially (cf. Ac 132V. 28)^ responsible for the crime, and once he ascribes it to demonic impulse (1 Co 28). St. Peter, in Ac 3i3ff., also blames the Jerusalemites, rather than Pilate, whom from the first the Evangelic tradition rightly re- garded 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.
t 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 qtto 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 Geographie de la Palestine (,'18(}7), p. 201, had already urged this view. He explained the precipitate conduct of the proceed- ings as impossible for Pharisees, and due to the well-known severity of the Boethusians. Rabbi Ziegler (in Der Kampf zwischen Jvdentvm mid Christentum, 1907, p. 34 f.) fixes the blame upon the Herodians.
only then were its decisions valid (cf. SANHEDRfN). But this does not necessarily prove that it is more original, for St. Luke may have been smoothing out what appeared to liim an irregularity in the previous tradition. Upon the other hand, the diffi- culties 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 tlie forms of legal process ; and it is ifficult 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 (Mk 15^ = Mt 27\ 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 examina- tion shoAvs 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, Avas too firmly established in the primi- tive 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 ^hat there really was such a hasty pre- liminary 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,* and then removed to the house of Caiaphas, where the proceedings eventually took place which are recorded by Mark and Matthew.