If the Christian cannot change his mind about his belief, has he really got one to change?

The Trial of Jesus 1

The Trial before Pilate

Abstract

Having been turned over to the Romans by the priests, Jesus Barabbas was quickly brought for trial. The Romans had built and administered the greatest empire the world had seen by being systematic, organised and thorough. Admittedly, they were a severe and cruel people but they had a sense of justice, and Roman law is still the model for civil law everywhere. Is it credible that they felt threatened by a man who told moral tales and thought he had a kingdom in heaven? Christians insist it is, but the Roman governors of Judaea had a lot more to concern them than mendicant preachers. Judaea had been in turmoil since even before the Romans annexed it in 6 AD, and only a quarter of a century after the crucifixion of the Christian god from Galilee, the Jews rose as a nation against their foreign rulers in a bloody war. When Jesus was crucified as a king, the problem for Roman governors was constant rebellion in Judaea.

The Trial before Pilate

Mark 15:1 tells us that the Sanhedrin held a consultation and delivered Jesus to the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate, the highest official in the province. Is this the same morning as the arrest or has another day gone by in Mark? It is ambiguous. The consultation mentioned might have really been the committal hearing already described which, as we saw, it is difficult to believe was held at night. But conceivably the priests wanted to report their decision to the full Sanhedrin.

Now in fact, Jewish law required a court to meet twice on separate days to convict a man legally of a capital crime. These courts were formalities because Pilate was not going to let a seditionist free whatever the Jews decided, but we have no reason to believe that the formalities would have been omitted, except that it suits the Christian myth. Mark is not clear, but he seems to be saying that a second meeting was held in the morning, thereby inserting another day into the story. If the Passover was over and the next day was not a sabbath, the Sanhedrin could have met. Bearing in mind that the solar calendar of the Essenes, which would have been the one used for relating the original Nazarene tradition, was different from the priests’, it becomes possible for Jesus to have completed his Passover before the lunarists, the priests, had celebrated theirs.

Having been turned over to the Romans by the priests, Jesus Barabbas was quickly brought for trial. The Romans had built and administered the greatest empire the world had seen by being systematic, organised and thorough. Admittedly, they were a severe and cruel people but they had a sense of justice, and Roman law is still the model for civil law everywhere. Is it credible that they felt threatened by a man who told moral tales and thought he had a kingdom in heaven? Christians insist it is, but the Roman governors of Judaea had a lot more to concern them than mendicant preachers. Judaea had been in turmoil since even before the Romans annexed it in 6 AD, and only a quarter of a century after the crucifixion of the Christian god from Galilee, the Jews rose as a nation against their foreign rulers in a bloody war. When Jesus was crucified as a king, Roman governors were worried about the constant rebellions that occurred in Judaea.

When full scale war eventually broke out, it was no minor fracas. It lasted from 66 AD until 70 AD but the last resistance of the Jews was not broken until 73 AD when Jewish defenders the fortress of Masada committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans. The fanatical resistance by the Jews against the world’s greatest war machine had brewed over centuries of oppression by foreign rulers. The Romans were particularly hated but Jews hardly distinguished them from the Greeks who started the trouble in the time of the anonymous author of the scriptural Book of Daniel—about 160 BC.

Pontius Pilate, the Prefect of Judaea in the latter part of the reign of Tiberius as Emperor, had taken on the difficult task of ruling this people convinced they were breaking a law God had handed down to Moses—the Royalty Law—by accepting a foreigner, the Roman Emperor, as their king. Pilate also had to raise taxes, called “tribute”, for the Emperor and had to raise enough for his own remuneration, pension and lifestyle as a colonial governor—Prefects were not paid. The Jewish priestly aristocracy also lived off the backs of the people and so the burden of taxation was quite severe, though possibly not much worse than most imperial colonies.

Being orderly people, the Romans wanted to know how much revenue to expect by determining how many people were available to pay it and how wealthy they were. So every fourteen years they held a census, a law instituted by the first Emperor, Augustus. We know that Quirinius, Legate of Syria supervised a census in 6 and 7 AD and can deduce therefore that they were held every fourteen years thereafter. The Jews thought this was as bad as being ruled from abroad—the Mosaic law also proscribed numbering the people. So, we had yet another cause of tension.

The most important event of the career of the historical Jesus was his manner of death. Jesus was crucified. The Christian explanation is that a travelling holy man, the only begotten son of God himself, impoverished, docile and peace loving, who scarcely ever lost his temper, was thought such a threat to the rulers of Judaea that they sentenced him to hang on a cross, a death reserved for slaves and traitors. Christians say that Jesus was neither. He was not a criminal at all. But somehow this divine teller of parables had given the authorities the impression he wanted to be a Jewish king—to rival Caesar in one of his dominions—when all he really wanted to do was to save mankind from its sins. The Roman governor of Judaea even ordered the hanging man to be labeled with a sign saying “The King of the Jews”.

Something is odd here. How could an innocent man suffer the lowest form of death? Christians say it was all a mistake—a cruel injustice brought upon by his enemies. So we have a peculiarity. Christians tell us their god suffered the death of a traitor to the Emperor through an error. It is a peculiarity of Christianity that it is built on excuses. They are the sign of pious lying.

Knowing the background, can we really imagine that Pilate was mistaken or even jesting when he had the notice “The King of the Jews” written on the cross? Even Christians accept Jesus as the messiah. What is a messiah in Jewish mythology? A king! Perhaps Pilate had sound reasons to think Jesus was a king.

Jesus is delivered up to Pilate. The gospels record the trials of Jesus as if there were a visitors’ gallery in each of the courtrooms. Ordinary Jews or supporters of Jesus could not have been present at either of the two hearings. Roman practice was only to admit the public for the verdict, not during the hearing. The gospel writers can have known little about the proceedings—they were not there taking shorthand. It is not clear therefore how accurate records of the proceedings of the Roman Court or the Court of the High Priest could have reached us. If the story were related at second hand by others who were present then distortions are more likely. A brief report of the trial by Pilate must have been posted and could have formed the basis of subsequent romanticized versions by the disciples.

Mark speaks of no evidence offered. Only Luke 23:2 tells us the charges brought before Pilate against Jesus. They are precisely those of an insurrectionist and they exactly match the crimes described in the gospels:

We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a king.

These charges were serious. They are charges of treason. There is absolutely no doubt that Crimen Laesae Majestatis, High Treason against the Emperor, was the most serious felony in the Roman book. Notionally, sacrilege was more serious but with the emperors taking on the role of gods from the time of Augustus, even though as yet informally, in practice the two crimes were already equal.

Majestas, as it was known for short, was any crime against the Roman people or their security, and so included conspiracy, abetting the enemies of Rome or assuming the power of a king. Under the less liberal emperors it became broader and less well defined so that any offence against an emperor, such as abusing his statue, was culpable. Refusing to pay tribute to the emperor fell under this heading. The crime was usually death.

The sheer audacity of Christian commentaries on the trials before the Sanhedrin and Pilate are staggering. They take the—quite inconsistent—gospel accounts and act as umpire as to their legality under laws and conditions that they know nothing about. Most important, they ignore the evidence of the rest of the gospels, pretending that the only evidence at hand was that supposedly presented to the courts according to the gospel authors. The gospels tell us, in describing scenes preceding the trial, what happened and we can judge for ourselves whether the accused was guilty on the basis of that evidence, not on the basis of the bogus evidence that the gospel writers say was offered.

The gospels categorically admit that Jesus and the Nazarene band committed crimes, though they do not say they are crimes. So, it is foolishmess or dishonesty to pretend that Jesus was innocent on the basis of the bogus accounts given of the proceedings. The writers sought to present Jesus as innocent, confident apparently that Christians were too thick to draw their own conclusions. Their confidence has proved sound for 2000 years. If we take it that the gospels themselves are the evidence on which Jesus and the Nazarenes had to be tried then any court would have to find them guilty under Roman law.

Let us consider a crime that was committed but which was not explicitly put before the court—the crime of carrying a sword in a public place and causing grievous bodily harm to a servant of the state, namely cutting off his ear. The gospels admit this but do not say it was a crime punishable by death—it was! Jesus did not commit the crime, the gospels tell us, but he was in charge and had told his men to purchase swords. In Roman eyes, he was therefore responsible, and was unequivocally guilty on this evidence.

Jesus is plainly guilty of a crime that was too trivial to be brought, unless it was subsumed by the charge of perverting the nation, in that Jesus persuaded citizens to buy and carry weapons illegally. Suffice it to say that ordering tradesmen from a public place, namely the temple, was taking the law into his own hands—in Roman law, Laesae Majestatis, and that was sufficient for Romans to bring in a verdict of guilty of the crime of Laesae Majestatis too. The same conclusion can be reached in respect of the other charges brought, as we shall see below.

So, the three charges were put before Pilate: perverting the nation, refusing tribute and making himself a king. Prosecutions did not bring every possible charge because, in Roman courts each had to be tried separately, and the proceedings would get unnecessarily complicated. There was a good reason for bringing only the most serious charges. In the gospels, Pilate immediately ignores the first two and begins to interrogate Jesus on the most serious one. A conviction on this would save the bother of hearing the others.

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Last uploaded: 11 May, 2008.