. . . . . . . .
Now on the morrow, which is after the preparation [the Friday], the chief priests and the Pharisees were gathered together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, which He was yet alive, After three days I rise again. Command, therefore, that the sephulchre be made sure until the third day, lest haply His disciples come and steal Him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Take a guard, go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, the guard being with them.'
. . . . . . . .
But was there really need for it? Did they, who had spent what remained of daylight to prepare spices wherewith to anoint the Dead Christ, expect His Body to be removed, or did they expect - perhaps in their sorrow even think of His word: I rise again?' But on that holy Sabbath, when the Sanhedrists were thinking of how to make sure of the Dead Christ, what were the thoughts of Joseph of Arimathæa and Nicodemus, of Peter and John, of the other disciples, and especially of the loving women who only waited for the first streak of Easter-light to do their last service of love? What were their thoughts of God - what of Christ - what of the Words He had spoken, the Deeds He had wrought, the salvation He had come to bring, and the Kingdom of Heaven which He was to open to all believers?
Behind Him had closed the gates of Hades; but upon them rather than upon Him had fallen the shadows of death. Yet they still loved Him - and stronger than death was love. __________________________________________________________________
[6034] St. John xix. 16.
[6035] ver. 6.
[6036] St. Mark xv. 95.
[6037] St. John xix. 25.
[6038] The evidence is collected by Nebe, u. s. vol. ii. p. 166, 167.
[6039] Keim seems to imagine that, not indeed the whole cohort,' but a manipulus of about 120, or a centuria of about 60 men, accompanied the procession. But of this there is not evidence, and all indications lead to a contrary inference.
[6040] Tradition calls him Longinus.
[6041] This was the Jewish practice also (Sanh. vi. 2). At the same time it must be remembered, that this was chiefly to elicit testimony in favour of the criminal, when the execution would be immediately arrested; and also that, as the Sanhedrin had, for centuries before the redaction of the Mishnah, been deprived of the power of life and death, such descriptions read very like ideal arrangements. But the practice seems also to have been Roman (per præconem pronunciati').
[6042] Such as concerning Veronica and the bearing of the Virgin-Mother (Acta Pilati, vii. x.; Mors Pilati [Tischendorf] 433).
[6043] Jos. Ant. xiii. 14, 2; War i, 4, 6.
[6044] With application of Lev. xix. 26, Sanh. 63 a.
[6045] Sanh. vi. 4.
[6046] This explains how the witnesses' at the stoning of St. Stephen laid down their garments at the feet of Paul.
[6047] Sanh. vi. 3, 4.
[6048] This opinion, however, was not shared by the majority of Rabbis. But, as already stated, all those notices are rather ideal than real.
[6049] According to the Rabbis, when we read in Scripture generally of the punishment of death, this refers to the lighest, or strangulation (Sanh. 52 b). Another mode of execution reads like something between immuring alive and starvation (Sanh. 81 b) - something like the manner in which in the Middle Ages people were starved to death.
[6050] Heb. xiii 12.
[6051] St. John xix. 20.
[6052] This view was first propounded by Thenius, and afterwards advocated by Furrer (Wander. d. Paläst, pp. 70, &c.), but afterwards given up by him. As to the locality, comp. Quart. Statement of Pal. Explor. Fund,' Oct. 1881, pp.317-319; Conder's Handbook to the Bible,' pp. 355, 356, and for the description of Jeremiah's Grotto, Bäedeker-Socin, u. s. p. 126. Of course, proof is in the nature of things impossible; yet to me this seems the most sacred and precious locality in Jerusalem.