* The term lV«i (Mk 1456, of. v. 69) refers to harmony of state- ment. Had the Evangelist meant ' adequate,' ' equal to the occasion,' he would have used lxx.va.i or some equivalent.
t Compare the discussion of Strauss {Life of Jesus, Eng. tr. by George Eliot, § 114), who upholds its historicity against the suspicions of Bretschneider.
sary 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 Mk 13^ would inevitably colour it, and the passion of these utter- ances indicates that the mind of Jesus must have been concerned with the Temple and its future in relation to His message more deeph^ 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 wit- nesses. 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 thi- length. Not merely is he silent upon the disagreement of the witnesses (contrast Mk 14^"- ^^), but he refuses to call them false witnesses outright, although this may be implied in 26®^""". 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 (26*""6i), 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 Avas 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,* probably for the reason given in the words put by Luke into His mouth (226^- 68). it ^as 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 malevo- lent prejudice deprived them of the right to de- mand information about His mission. The high priest, who spoke in their name, was eager, not to elicit the truth, but to make the prisoner in- criminate Himself as a mezith 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 calcula- tions. 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, per- haps, that several members f rather approved of
* Cf. Bushnell's Nature and the Supernatural (ch. x.).
t 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 seriousl.y and instantly challenged by the authorities (Mk 1127), and its sequel proves that no exception was taken to it by the religious people of the city or even by the Romans.
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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 miglit be carried to Pilate. Furthermore, there was the people to consider. Jesus had sympa- thizers whose number was unascertained. If He was to be got rid of, it must be on some broad, serious charge whicli might command a wave of overwhelming popular enthusiasm and indignation. Sacerdotal diplomacy is generally a past master in the art of j)laying 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 a\\are of the Messianic claims of Jesus and astute enough to iise them, as a last resource, for the purpose of forcing some incriminating answer? Or was the grouml really shifted ? Might it be inferred from the primitive Evangelic tradition, as reproduced by Mk. and INIt. alike, that tlie saying about the Temple (Mk 14=8 = Mt 26fii) was held to imply a sort of Messianic claim* upon the part of Jesus? In tiiat 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 at- tempt to make capital out of the witnesses' report, Caiaplias proceeds to put the straight and final question, 'Art thou the Christ?' (Mk 14«i = Mt 26''3, cf. Lk 22««; Mk.'s addition, 'the Son of the Blessed,' is probably more original than Mt.'s generalized 'the Son of God').i It was a cate- gorical and crucial qviery. Matters were now brought to an issue which Jesus could not and would not evade.