Abandoning this line of testimony, the Priests next brought forward probably some of their own order, who on the first Purgation of the Temple had been present when Jesus, in answer to the challenge for a sign' in evidence of His authority, had given them that mysterious sign' of the destruction and upraising of the Temple of His Body. [5945] [5946] They had quite misunderstood it at the time, and its reproduction now as the ground of a criminal charge against Jesus must have been directly due to Caiaphas and Annas. We remember, that this had been the first time that Jesus had come into collision, not only with the Temple authorities, but with the avarice of the family of Annas.' We can imagine how the incensed High-Priest would have challenged the conduct of the Temple-officials, and how, in reply, he would have been told what they had attempted, and how Jesus had met them. Perhaps it was the only real inquiry which a man like Caiaphas would care to institute about what Jesus said. And here, in its grossly distorted form, and with more than Eastern exaggeration of partisanship it was actually brought forward as a criminal charge!
Dexterously manipulated, the testimony of these witnesses might lead up to two charges. It would show that Christ was a dangerous seducer of the people, Whose claims might have led those who believed them to lay violent hands on the Temple, while the supposed assertion, that He would [5947] or was able [5948] to build the Temple again within three days, might be made to imply Divine or magical pretensions. [5949] A certain class of writers have ridiculed this part of the Sanhedrist plot against Jesus. It is, indeed, true, that, viewed as a Jewish charge, it might have been difficult, if not impossible, to construe a capital crime out of such charges, although, to say the least, a strong popular prejudice might thus have been raised against Jesus - and this, no doubt, was one of the objects which Caiaphas had in view. But it has been strangely forgotten that the purpose of the High-Priest was not to formulate a capital charge in Jewish Law, since the assembled Sanhedrists had no intention so to try Jesus, but to formulate a charge which would tell before the Roman Procurator. And here none other could be so effective as that of being a fanatical seducer of the ignorant populace, who might lead them on to wild tumultuous acts. Two similar instances, in which the Romans quenched Jewish fanaticism in the blood of the pretenders and their deluded followers, will readily recur to the mind. [5950] In any case, Caiaphas would naturally seek to ground his accusation of Jesus before Pilate on anything rather than His claims to Messiahship and the inheritance of David. It would be a cruel irony if a Jewish High-Priest had to expose the loftiest and holiest hope of Israel to the mockery of a Pilate; and it might prove a dangerous proceeding, whether as regarded the Roman Governor or the feelings of the Jewish people.
But this charge of being a seducer of the people also broke down, through the disagreement of the two witnesses whom the Mosaic Law required, [5951] and who, according to Rabbinic ordinance, had to be separately questioned. [5952] But the divergence of their testimony does not exactly appear in the differences in the accounts of St. Matthew and of St. Mark. If it be deemed necessary to harmonise these two narratives, it would be better to regard both as relating the testimony of these two witnesses. What St. Mark reported may have been followed by what St. Matthew records, or vice versâ, the one being, so to speak, the basis of the other. But all this time Jesus preserved the same majestic silence as before, nor could the impatience of Caiaphas, who sprang from his seat to confront, and, if possible, browbeat his Prisoner, extract from Him any reply.