WHO MOVED THE STONE?
The GOSPEL TRUTH By
Frank Morison
PREFACE
This study is in some ways so unusual and provocative that the writer thinks it desirable to state here very briefly how the book came to take its present form.
In one sense it could have taken no other, for it is essentially a confession, the inner story of a man who originally set out to write one kind of book and found himself compelled by the sheer force of circumstances to write another.
It is not that the facts themselves altered, for they are recorded imperishably in the monuments and in the pages of human history. But the interpretation to be put upon the facts underwent a change. Somehow the perspective shifted --not suddenly, as in a flash of insight or inspiration, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, by the very stubbornness of the facts themselves.
The book as it was originally planned was left high and dry, like those Thames barges when the great river goes out to meet the incoming sea. The writer discovered one day that not only could he no longer write the book as he had once conceived it, but that he would not if he could.
To tell the story of that change, and to give the reasons for it, is the main purpose of the following pages.
1. THE BOOK THAT REFUSED TO BE WRITTEN
2. THE REAL CASE AGAINST THE PRISONER
3. WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON THURSDAY
4. A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLELOGRAM OF FORCES
5. THE SITUATION ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON
7. ON THE BEHAVIOR OF TWO SISTERS AND THE MEN WHO FLED IN THE NIGHT
9. THE HISTORIC CRUX OF THE PROBLEM
10. THE EVIDENCE OF THE PRINCIPAL FISHERMAN
11. THE EVIDENCE OF THE PRISONER'S BROTHER
12. THE EVIDENCE OF THE MAN FROM TARSUS
13. THE WITNESS OF THE GREAT STONE
14. SOME REALITIES OF THAT FAR-OFF MORNING
1. THE BOOK THAT REFUSED TO BE WRITTEN
I suppose that most writers will confess to having hidden away somewhere in the secret recesses of their most private drawer the first rough draft of a book that, for one reason or another, will never see the light of day.
Usually it is Time -- that hoary offender -- who has placed his veto on the promised task. The rough outline is drawn up in a moment of enthusiasm and exalted vision; it is worked on for a time and then it is put aside to await that leisured "tomorrow" that so often never comes. Other and more pressing duties assert themselves; engagements and responsibilities multiply; and the treasured draft sinks farther and deeper into its ultimate hiding place. So the years go by, until one day the writer awakens to the knowledge that, whatever other achievements may be his, this particular book will never be written.
In the present case it was different.
It was not that the inspiration failed, or that the day of leisure never came. It was rather that when it did come the inspiration led in a new and unexpected direction. It was as though a man set out to cross a forest by a familiar and well-beaten track and came out suddenly where he did not expect to come out. The point of entry was the same; it was the point of emergence that was different.
Let me try to explain briefly what I mean.
When, as a very young man, I first began seriously to study the life of Christ, I did so with a very definite feeling that, if I may so put it, His history rested on very insecure foundations.
If you will carry your mind back in imagination to the late nineties you will find in the prevailing intellectual attitude of that period the key to much of my thought. It is true that the absurd cult that denied even the historical existence of Jesus had ceased to carry weight. But the work of the higher critics -- particularly the German critics -- had succeeded in spreading a prevalent impression among students that the particular form in which the narrative of His life and death had come down to us was unreliable, and that one of the four records was nothing other than a brilliant apologetic written many years, and perhaps many decades, after the first generation had passed away.
Like most other young men deeply immersed in other things, I had no means of verifying or forming an independent judgment upon these statements, but the fact that almost every word of the Gospels was just then the subject of high wrangling and dispute did very largely color the thought of the time, and I suppose I could hardly escape its influence.
But there was one aspect of the subject that touched me closely. I had already begun to take a deep interest in physical science, and one did not have to go very far in those days to discover that scientific thought was obstinately and even dogmatically opposed to what are called the miraculous elements in the Gospels. Very often the few things the textual critics had left standing science proceeded to undermine. Personally I did not attach anything like the same weight to the conclusions of the textual critics that I did to this fundamental matter of the miraculous. It seemed to me that purely documentary criticism might be mistaken, but that the laws of the universe should go back on themselves in a quite arbitrary and inconsequential manner seemed very improbable. Had not Huxley himself declared in a peculiarly final way that "miracles do not happen," while Matthew Arnold, with his famous gospel of "Sweet Reasonableness," had spent a great deal of his time in trying to evolve a non-miraculous Christianity?
For the person of Jesus Christ Himself, however, I had a deep and even reverent regard. He seemed to me an almost legendary figure of purity and noble manhood. A coarse word with regard to Him, or the taking of His name lightly, stung me to the quick. I am only too conscious how far this attitude fell short of the full dogmatic position of Christianity. But it is an honest statement of how at least one young student felt in those early formative years when superficial things so often obscure the deeper and more permanent realities that lie behind.
It was about this time -- more for the sake of my own peace of mind than for publication -- that I conceived the idea of writing a short monograph on what seemed to me to be the supremely important and critical phase in the life of Christ -- the last seven days -- though later I came to see that the days immediately succeeding the Crucifixion were quite as crucial. The title I chose was "Jesus, the Last Phase," a conscious reminiscence of a famous historical study by Lord Rosebery.
I took the last seven days of the life of Jesus for three reasons:
1. This period seemed remarkably free from the miraculous element that on scientific grounds I held suspect.2. All the Gospel writers devoted much space to this period, and, in the main, were strikingly in agreement.
3. The trial and execution of Jesus was a reverberating historical event, attested to indirectly by a thousand political consequences and by a vast literature that grew out of them.
It seemed to me that if I could come at the truth why this man died a cruel death at the hands of the Roman power, how He Himself regarded the matter, and especially how He behaved under the test, I should be very near to the true solution of the problem.
Such, briefly, was the purpose of the book I had planned. I wanted to take this last phase of the life of Jesus, with all its quick and pulsating drama, its sharp, clear-cut background of antiquity, and its tremendous psychological and human interest -- to strip it of its overgrowth of primitive beliefs and dogmatic suppositions, and to see this supremely great Person as He really was.
I need not stay to describe here how, fully ten years later, opportunity came to study the life of Christ as I had long wanted to study it, to investigate the origins of its literature, to some of the evidence at first hand, and to form my own judgment on the problem it presents. I will only say that it effected a revolution in my thought. Things emerged from old-world story that previously I should have thought impossible Slowly but very definitely the conviction grew the drama of those unforgettable weeks of human history stranger and deeper than it seemed. It was the strangeness of many notable things in the story that first arrested and held my interest. It was only later that the irresistible logic of their meaning came into view.
I want to try, in the remaining chapters of this book, to explain why that other venture never came to port, what were hidden rocks on which it foundered, and how I landed to me, an unexpected shore.
2. THE REAL CASE AGAINST THE PRISONER
In attempting to unravel the tangled skein of passions, prejudices, and political intrigues with which the last days of Jesus are interwoven, it has always seemed to me a sound principle to go straight to the heart of the mystery by studying closely the nature of the charge brought against Him.
I remember this aspect of the question coming home to me one morning with new and unexpected force. I tried to picture to myself what would happen if some two thousand years hence a great controversy should arise about one who was the center of a criminal trial, say, in 1922. By that time most of the essential documents would have passed into oblivion. An old faded cutting of The Times or Telegraph, or perhaps some tattered fragment of a legal book describing the case, might have survived to reach the collection of an antiquary. From these and other fragments the necessary conclusions would have to be drawn. Is it not certain that people living in that far-off day, and desiring to get at the real truth about the man concerned, would go first to the crucial question of the charge on which he was arraigned? They would say: "What was all the trouble about? What did his accusers say and bring against him?" If, as in the present instance, several charges appear to have been preferred, they would ask what was the real case against the prisoner.
As soon as we set this question in the forefront of our inquiry, certain things emerge that throw new and unexpected light on the problem. It will help us to an understanding of what these significant things are if we consider first the very singular character of the trial itself. For not only did it take place at an unprecedented hour for such proceedings, but it was marked throughout by peculiarities of a special kind. Consider in the first instance the vital element of time.
All the historians agree that the arrest of Jesus took place in the Garden of Gethsemane at a late hour on the evening immediately preceding the day of the Crucifixion, and there is strong justification for believing that it could not possibly have been earlier than eleven-thirty.
This estimate is based on the amount of time required by the recorded events between the breaking up of the Supper party, probably in a house in the upper city, and the arrival of the armed band in the Garden at the foot of Olivet. There are three things that point irresistibly to the hour being late:
1. The disciples were manifestly tired, and even the sturdy fisherman Peter, accustomed to lonely vigils on the deep, could not keep awake.2. Both Matthew and Mark refer to three separate periods of slumber, broken by the periodical return of Christ from His prolonged communing under the neighboring trees.
3. The fact that it was dark, and that owing to the use of torches, Christ was able to discern the approach of the arrest party a considerable distance off (see Mark 14:42: "Arise, let us be going: behold, he that betrayeth me is at hand").
No one can read the records of this extraordinary episode without realizing that this particular sojourn in the garden was different from any of those previous visits to the same spot hinted at by John. These men were being held there by the will of Christ long after the time when they would ordinarily have been in their beds at Bethany. They were waiting at His bidding for something for which He also was waiting, and which was an unconscionably long time in coming. Assuming the supper to have been over at nine-thirty and the garden itself reached as early as 10 p. m., the arrest could hardly have been effected much before eleven-thirty. This fixes for us with some certainty the hour of the preliminary trial.
It is generally agreed by archaeologists and students of the topography of ancient Jerusalem that an old flight of steps descended from the upper city to the gate leading to the pool of Siloam at the south-eastern angle of the city wall. Nehemiah mentions "the stairs that go down from the city of David" (3:15); and again, he says, "By the fountain gate, and straight before them, they went up by the stairs of the city of David, at the going up of the wall" (12:37).
There were thus two routes open to the arrest party. One was to follow the course of the Kidron Valley to the foot of these steps, and thence to the high priest's house. The other was to take the main Bethany road into the new town and thence by the Tyropean Valley to the priestly quarter. Even if tradition had not strongly indicated the former, it is clear that to have conducted Jesus through the populous quarter of the lower city would not only have been inexpedient, but would have necessitated a detour by which valuable time would have been lost. And in this strange nocturnal business time was a very important factor.
If, therefore, by some magic reversal of the centuries we could have stood at some vantage point in old Jerusalem about midnight or shortly afterwards on that memorable 14th of Nisan, we should probably have witnessed a small party of men leading a strangely unresisting figure through the darkness, along the rocky defile that skirted the precipitous eastern face of the temple wall, up the historic causeway at the southeastern angle of the city wall to the headquarters of His avowed and inveterate enemies.
How did it come about that the most distinguished Hebrew of His generation found Himself in this dangerous and menacing situation, in the dead of night, on the eve of one of the most solemn of the Jewish festivals? What were the secret and hidden forces that precipitated His arrest? Why was this particular and highly inconvenient moment chosen? Above all, what was the gravamen of the charge brought against Him?
It will require much more than this chapter to answer these questions, to which indeed the whole book is a very partial and inadequate reply. But two things stand out sharply from the records of this trial and call for the closest study. The first is the peculiar nature of the only definite charge brought against Jesus. The second is the admission upon which His conviction was based.
Now it seems to me that we make a grievous mistake if we assume (as has so often been done by Christian writers) that everything the priests did that night was ultra vires and illegal. Of course, there are aspects of the affair that, on any reading of the case, must be considered definitely, and even flagrantly, to be at variance with Jewish law. That, I think, is conceded by every competent student of the Mishna and of Jewish institutions as they existed at the time.
It was illegal, for example, for the temple guard, acting officially as the instrument of the high priest, to effect the arrest. That should have been left to the voluntary action of the witnesses. It was illegal to try a capital charge (trial for life) by night. Only "trials for money" could be conducted after sunset. It was illegal, after the testimony of the witnesses had broken down, for the judges to cross-examine the Prisoner. They should have acquitted Him, and if the testimony given was demonstrably false, the witnesses should have been sentenced to death by stoning.
These things lie on the surface of the situation. But beneath these flagrant instances of irregularity in the trial of Jesus, there runs a strong undercurrent of legality -- an almost meticulous observance of certain minor points of the law -- which is very illuminating and instructive to the impartial student of history.
This fact emerges very strikingly if we study the singular way in which the very ground of the accusation shifted during the course of the trial. As everyone who has attentively studied the records knows, there were in all three main charges brought against Jesus during the course of the successive phases of the trial. We may summarize them briefly as follows:
1. He had threatened to destroy the temple.2. He had claimed to be the Son of God.
3. He had stirred up the people against Caesar. 16 The Real Case Against the Prisoner
The third of these charges can be dismissed from our consideration at once. It was not the real grievance of the Jews. It was framed solely for political ends. The Roman law took no cognizance of the offenses for which Christ was condemned to death, yet without Pilate the death could not be consummated. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, to find a political charge to justify before the Roman procurator the extreme penalty they had already tacitly imposed. They chose the charge of conspiracy against Caesar because it was the only kind of charge that would carry weight with Pontius Pilate, or indeed with any representative of the Roman power. Even that almost failed, and would have failed completely, had the procuratorship been in stronger hands.
But, as I have said above, it does not matter what the ostensible charge before Pilate was. The thing we are concerned with very deeply is what the real charge of the Jews was against Christ. When we concentrate on this we get an extraordinarily luminous view of what was behind the prosecution.
It must be remembered that, according to a long-estalished Hebrew custom, the accusers in a Jewish criminal trial were the witnesses. No other form of prosecution was legal, and the first clearly defined act in the midnight drama, after the Prisoner had been brought before the court, was the calling of witnesses, as the law demanded. Both Matthew and Mark are explicit on this point.
Mark says: "Many bare false witness against him" (14:56).
Matthew says: "Many false witnesses came" (26:60).
Mark affirms that the evidence of these witnesses did not "agree together" and was therefore overthrown.
To those unfamiliar with the subtleties of Jewish jurisprudence, and especially with the singular orientation of the law in favor of the prisoner, it may seem curious that, having been at considerable pains to secure witnesses for the prosecution, the court should have proceeded forthwith to reject the evidence. If the story of the witnesses was a deliberate fabrication, it should not have been very difficult to have harmonized it in advance, or, in the ancient phraseology, to have made it "agree together." The very fact that the court did reject the testimony proves that in this fundamental matter of the witnesses even Caiaphas himself was under some compelling necessity to follow the traditional and characteristic Hebrew usage in a "trial for life."
What that usage was is described for us with great wealth of detail in the Mishna. There were three classes of testimony recognized by the law:
1. A vain testimony.2. A standing testimony.
3. An adequate testimony.
There was a very practical distinction between these three classes of evidence. A "vain testimony" was testimony obviously irrelevant or worthless and immediately recognized by the judges as such. A "standing testimony" was evidence of a more serious kind to be accepted provisionally, until confirmed or otherwise. An "adequate testimony" was evidence in which the witnesses "agreed together." "The least discordance between the evidence of witnesses," says the distinguished Jewish writer, Salvador, "was held to destroy its value."
It is clear, therefore, that whatever may have been the subject-matter of the preliminary witnesses referred to by the two evangelists, it did not get beyond the second and provisional stage. This can only mean that it was either demonstrably contrary to the experience and knowledge of the Court, or it was invalidated on technical grounds. Mark's statement that it did not "agree together" strongly indicates the latter.
But now comes a very curious thing. When this preliminary and unsatisfactory witness had been cleared away, two men came forward with a very definite and circumstantial piece of evidence.
Mark says:
There stood up certain, and bare false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands (14:57, 58).
Matthew, who in this case is probably not quoting Mark, but drawing upon another ancient source, confirms it by saying:
But afterward came two, and said, This man said, l am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days (26:61, 62).
Whatever else took place, therefore, on that memorable night, it seems certain that two men came forward and, with the torch-light falling full on the face of Christ, accused Him of having used words similar to these. That is a very important fact, and I will ask the reader to keep it in mind for a few moments.
Now the thing of immediate importance is to know whether these men were deliberately inventing the charge or were merely perverting for their own purpose an actual and somewhat similar saying of Christ. Even if no other data were available, I should personally hesitate to believe that so definite and circumstantial a statement was a pure invention. It is a much more deadly thing to distort what a man has said in the hearing of others than to lie deliberately about him. The distortion will elicit uproarious support from overwrought and angry men. Only the most brazen will voice approval of a deliberate and calculated lie. It always has been so, and we can be reasonably sure that it was so in this case. These men had heard Christ make a resounding statement in the temple courts, and there was no more deadly thing they could do than to give a distorted and misleading version of it at His trial.
But there is another, and, to me, a very conclusive reason why we may regard the testimony of these witnesses as a reflex of something Christ Himself actually said on some public occasion. Both men declared that they had heard the Prisoner use certain words that, if substantiated, involved the double offense of sorcery and sacrilege. The penalty for sorcery was death. The penalty for sacrilege was stoning and exposure of the body. From the standpoint of the enemies of Jesus a more fatal charge could hardly have been laid to His account. Even so, the testimony was overthrown.
Now why was that? There must be a satisfactory and historical explanation, lithe testimony of these two men had been an absolute invention; if it had originated in the scheming brain of Caiaphas, and the witnesses had, so to say, been "put up" to play their part, there would surely have been no bungling of the affair in this naïve and exasperating way. After all, the witnesses had only a few words to say, and the most elementary sort of prudence would have secured their agreement in advance. The case against Christ ought to have gone swiftly and triumphantly to a conviction.
But we do not find that kind of situation at all. We find a situation in which the court, despite the illegality of its being in session at this very late hour, wasted a great deal of precious time on a judicial process that carried it nowhere. At the end of all this elaborate hearing of witnesses Jesus Christ was virtually uncaused, and certainly unconvicted. The entire proceedings threatened to break down on a vital point of Jewish law.
Two things emerge from this unquestionably historic fact. In the first place, Caiaphas was clearly not all-powerful to work his will in that assembly. There were evidently very strong influences in the council chamber in favor of a rigorous observance of the law, particularly in the crucial matter of the witnesses. It must always be remembered that the judgment of this tribunal was not final. Whatever these men did that night had to pass muster the next morning before the great Sanhedrin in plenary sifting. There had apparently been trouble once before when Nicodemus, a member of that body, had protested against condemnation without a fair hearing. They could justify the illegality of the night hearing of the case on the grounds of high political necessity and the near approach of the Feast. But any serious flaw in the accusation might easily have led to the compulsory release of the Prisoner at a moment when immense multitudes would unquestionably have flocked to His side.
The very fact, too, that the testimony was being sifted so rigorously implies a corresponding cautiousness of statement by the witnesses themselves. Under the Jewish system of jurisprudence, weighted as it undoubtedly was to lean in favor of the accused, it was a very dangerous thing to be a witness in a "trial for life." The penalty for uttering a false testimony was death. Hence the number of these trials was few.
But the really impressive inference from all these singular proceedings is surely this: If the testimony was not preconcerted; if its disagreement both surprised and exasperated the high priest, it is clear that it was at least bona fide testimony, and bore some definite relation to the facts. Thus, even if the writer of John's Gospel had not preserved for us what we may call the "official" version of what took place in the temple courts, we should be compelled to believe that Jesus did upon some historical occasion use some words closely resembling those with which He was charged.
What was the historic utterance that lay behind this charge? What did Jesus really say to give rise to these circumstantial statements? There are three versions from which we may choose. According to Mark's "witness," Jesus deliberately threatened to destroy the temple and to replace it magically in three days. The words are very explicit:
I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands (14:57, 58).Matthew's witness modifies and softens the accusation considerably. The suggestion of the magical replacement of the temple is still there, but Christ is represented as only claiming the power to do this:
This man said, tamable to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days (26:61, 62).Can we, in the absence of a more authentic version of what the original utterance was, accept either of these statements as the true one? Surely we cannot without doing violence to the whole Synoptic impression of the historic Jesus. For consider their import. Jesus is made to say that, of His own power and volition, He could pull down the temple of Herod, or cause it to fall down or disappear, and replace it by another. Such a claim could, of course, be validated only by the exercise 'of supernormal or magical powers beyond anything ever asserted of Christ and beyond the wildest dreams of the most deluded disciple of Eastern necromancy. Indeed, we may say that no really sane person, especially one of the spiritual and moral category to which Christ belongs, would make a statement of this particular sort.
We can imagine some fanatical and half-willed person, whose whole mentality bordered on the insane, throwing out this preposterous boast in a sudden access of frenzy, knowing full well that he would never be called upon to justify it. But the Prisoner in this trial does not come within that definition. He does not come within a thousand miles of it. In all His story there is no trace of those characteristics that are the hallmark of the unstable mind. On the other hand, there are many indications of the high sanity that accompanies a firmly disciplined mind. He seems to have been supremely a lover of truth and sincerity, and the inner humility that is man's greatest claim to kinship with God; He was a great hater of shams and hypocrisies and futile boasts.
The version of two witnesses, therefore, must at least be held suspect until we have corroborative testimony of the most emphatic kind. But the evidence at our disposal points in quite a different direction. According to John, what Jesus really did say was: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." And the writer adds parenthetically: "But he spake of the temple of his body" (2:19,21).
Of course, no serious student of this problem will deny for a moment that this is a difficult saying, whatever interpretation is put on it. But if we are to decide between three divergent and contradictory readings, I am bound to say that there is one thing that impresses me profoundly the fact that the words "in three days" are found in them all. I do not think that the immense weight of that circumstance has been fully realized.
In ordinary life, when confronted with several divergent accounts of a given happening, it is a sound and consistent rule to examine first the points on which the narrators are agreed. The presumption that such points of agreement represent something solid and original is very strong. Particularly is this the case when the witnesses come, as it were, from opposite camps and are in marked disagreement on other essential features of the case.
Now the peculiarity of the phrase "in three days" lies in the fact that it occurs very rarely in the recorded teaching of Christ, and then only in circumstances that have seemed to many critics to present grave doubts as to the authenticity of the passages in question. Take, for example, the three outstanding instances occurring in the Gospel of Mark:
8:31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.9:31: For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered up into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he shall rise again.
10:33: Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him unto the Gentiles: and they shall mock him, and shall spit upon him, and shall scourge him, and shall kill him; and after three days he shall rise again.
The modern reader, coming to these passages with a certain instinctive reluctance to accept anything that transcends the field of normal experience is inclined to say, "I can understand Jesus predicting His own death. He must have foreseen what was the probable outcome of the ever-widening gap between Himself and the priests, and I think it is not unlikely that He may have prepared the disciples privately for the event. But surely these direct references to His rising from the dead can have been written only after His death and are not an integral part of the original utterances."
Let us admit frankly that it does look like that at first sight. However, when we come to examine closely the minutes of this trial with all its primitive marks of authenticity, its meticulous and, in the end, fruitless hearing of hostile witnesses, we make the startling discovery that these very words ("in three days"), which reason asserts could never have been uttered by Christ, are precisely the words that according to all the witnesses formed the pith and core of the fatal and historic sentence with which He was charged. It would have been a strange coincidence indeed if the one sentence chosen by the enemies of Christ on which to base the most deadly charge they could bring against Him found no counterpart or parallel whatever in all the varied teaching of the two preceding years.
What, then, do we find? We find the Prisoner accused of making a claim so fantastic and absurd that, even if His judges had not rejected the testimony, we should have had to receive it with the gravest possible doubt. Yet from the very texture of the circumstances there seems to emerge the fact that what He probably did say was more extraordinary still.
He said in effect: "If you kill me, I will rise again from the grave." I see no escape from the logic of that conclusion. We may hold that He was mistaken, that He was held by some strange mental obsession that periodically flashed out in His public utterance. But that He said this singular and almost unbelievable thing seems to me to be very nearly beyond the possibility of doubt.
But we have still to consider the other outstanding feature of this remarkable trial. Jesus of Nazareth was condemned to death, not on the statements of His accusers, but on an admission extorted from Him under oath.
It is clear that after the hearing of the witnesses, and the final rejection of their testimony, the whole conduct of the case began to take an unquestionably illegal form. The illegality consisted in the president of the court attempting to supply, by direct questioning of the Prisoner, the necessary grounds for a conviction that the witnesses themselves had been unable to produce.
This was, of course, directly contrary both to the letter and the spirit of the elaborate judicial code by which the Jewish law sought to protect the life of the citizen. The power of accusation in a Hebrew "trial for life" was vested solely in the witnesses. It was their business to effect the arrest and to bring the accused man to the court. It was the duty of the court to protect the interests of the prisoner in every possible way, while seeking to arrive at a just and impartial judgment on the evidence submitted.
That this judicial protection was not extended to the Prisoner in the present case is clear from even a superficial reading of the narrative. It comes out in the tone of marked exasperation with which the high priest addressed the Prisoner when the last of the long line of testimonies had broken down.
Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witness against thee? (Mark 14:60).In itself this question was perhaps not objectionable. As an accused man Christ undoubtedly had the right to bring forward any facts or explanations in His defense. Hitherto He had maintained complete silence. It was appropriate that He should be asked if He had anything to say bearing on the evidence. It is the unveiled hostility to the Prisoner that is so significant and that instinctively warns us of what is to follow. For, in the next moment, the high priest seems to have thrown all pretense at legality to the winds.
Standing in his place, in the center of the tribunal, Caiaphas applied to Christ the most solemn form of oath known to the Hebrew Constitution, the famous Oath of the Testimony: "I adjure thee by the living God" (Matt. 26:63). To this, Christ, as a pious and law-abiding Jew, had no alternative but to answer.
If [says the Mishna] one shall say, I adjure you by the Almighty, by Sabaoth, by the Gracious and Merciful, by the Long-suffering, by the Compassionate, or by any of the Divine titles, behold they are bound to answer.
Stripped of the peculiar phraseology with which the Hebrew mind of the period invested the conception of the Messiah, the question Caiaphas, the high priest, put to Jesus was a direct and simple one:
'Art thou the Christ? Dost thou claim to be He that shall come?' (Mark 14:61).The reply of the Prisoner was not less direct. Here are the three versions:
I am (Mark 14:62).Thou hast said (Matt. 26:64).
Ye say that I am (Luke 22:70).
As Mr. Baring-Gould has pointed out, these answers are really identical. The formula "Thou hast said" or "Ye say that I am," which to modem ears sounds evasive, had no such connotation to the contemporary Jewish mind. "Thou sayest" was the traditional form in which a cultivated Jew replied to a question of grave or sad import. Courtesy forbade a direct yes or no.
Christ therefore said this very considerable thing with great definiteness and emphasis. The satisfaction of Caiaphas at obtaining by a single stroke this tremendous and (from the Prisoner's standpoint) very dangerous confession is obvious. One can almost hear the ring of triumph in his voice as he swung round upon the assembled rabbis and exclaimed:
What further need have we of witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? (Matt. 26:65,66).Now to the student whose mind is alert for what I may call the submerged facts of the story, this sudden rising of the case to its dramatic climax is full of interest.
Why did the trial suddenly take this pronouncedly unconstitutional form at a relatively late hour in the proceedings, after much valuable time had been occupied in sifting the evidence of the witnesses? If the compulsory affirmation of the Prisoner was sufficient to secure conviction, why were the witnesses heard at all?
The answer to these questions lies undoubtedly in the peculiar nature of the tactical and judicial problem that confronted Caiaphas. That the powerful Sadducean family to which the high priest belonged had fully determined to get Jesus out of the way is obvious, and nothing but the death penalty would satisfy them. Yet, strangely enough, even an indisputably proven case of blasphemy or sorcery was not sufficient. Caiaphas had to look beyond the purists of the Sanhedrin and the provisions of the Mosaic law to that far more formidable barrier, the power and tolerance of Rome.
None knew better than Caiaphas what were the personal and political consequences of the coming of the real Messiah in the flesh. That it involved some definite kind of kingship, with Jerusalem and the holy places as its court, is obvious. It involved, further, an immediate and bloody clash with the Roman garrisons throughout the land. It meant a vast uprising of the people and the certainty of a punitive expedition, led by a Roman leader of resource, such as that which forty years later laid the city in ruins.
All these things belong to the broad outlines of a situation as inevitable as that night follows day. These facts could not have escaped the penetrating eyes of those responsible for the maintenance of the hard-won Jewish privileges under the Roman occupation. Caiaphas, as the acting high priest, made an exceedingly acute observation in political statecraft when he said:
It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not (John 11:50).
But the personal consequences to Caiaphas and his family were hardly less distasteful. We do not know what changes in the Constitution of the Sanhedrin would have taken place under a truly Messianic regime. They would probably have been very considerable. But one thing is certain: the supreme ascendancy of the high priest, as the arbiter of the national fortunes, would have suffered eclipse. Whatever aspects of its ancient and historic form the Hebrew Constitution might have retained, the real dynast would have been the Messiah. As the national deliverer and the supreme representative of the God of Israel, His right to impose policy and to direct events would have been final and absolute. The prospect of the Nazarene Carpenter stepping into this unique and unparalleled seat of national power must have been profoundly disturbing to certain men (and women) who had an unquestioned interest in the maintenance of the status quo.
The problem, therefore, was to bring a conclusive case that was not only proof against possible criticism by the Seventy-one, but that also gave undisputable grounds for action under the Roman law.
In the search for this formula many witnesses were apparently examined and their testimony rejected as insufficient. Then came two witnesses with what seemed to be a particularly promising case. It involved two offenses, each punishable by death under the Hebrew code. Yet here again the same fatal weakness disclosed itself. It might pass the Sanhedrin, but would it pass the Roman procurator? Most assuredly it would not. Something more serious than this apparently idle threat to destroy and rebuild the temple would be necessary to secure the assent of Pilate to a penalty that had been expressly removed by Caesar from sectarian hands.
The whole prosecution was thus obviously on the point of breaking down when the alert brain of Caiaphas conceived an expedient for saving the situation. It was illegal, but it was the last desperate throw of a man pushed to the very edge of endurance by the miscarriage of his plans. He applied the Oath of the Testimony, to which even silence itself was an unforgivable offense. It succeeded probably beyond his dreams, because in that fearless reply, "I am," there flashed out the long-sought base of the deadliest of all charges before the Roman procurator.
Caesar might be indifferent to the somewhat eccentric utterances of an itinerant preacher. He could not be indifferent to a claimant for a throne. In the hush of the court as the solemn words of the affirmation fell from the Prisoner's lips, certain other words were probably already forming in the mind of Caiaphas: "If thou lettest this man go, thou/art not Caesar's friend."
3. WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON THURSDAY
I suggested on an earlier page that considerations of time played a peculiar and decisive part in determining the events that immediately preceded the death of Christ. If we wish to get at the real truth about this matter we must study it with our eyes, as it were, constantly upon the clock. Particularly is this the case when we approach two very important elements in the case: The dealings that the Jewish leaders had with judas and later with Pontius Pilate.
Both these men played a strange and, at first sight, an inexplicable role in the happenings of those twelve hours that closed the earthly life of Christ. Let us begin by considering the case of Judas.
The first thing that challenges thought about the affair of Judas is the very curious fact that Caiaphas and his friends should have found it necessary to employ him at all. Why does this man Judas come suddenly into the story? What was it that he could offer the priests that was not theirs already by virtue of their official status? Why should even the trivial amount of the blood-money have been expended in securing his services?
These questions are vital, and affect profoundly our reading of the whole case. To regard Judas merely as a common informer, ready (for a consideration) to lead the authorities to the secret hiding place of his erstwhile Friend and Leader, is absurd. Jesus was not in hiding. From the moment He arrived at Bethany late on Friday afternoon, no attempt seems to have been made to conceal His movements. He appears to have attended a dinner in His honor at the house of Simon the leper, either on Saturday or Tuesday evening. On three successive days (Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday) He journeyed openly to Jerusalem, returning to Bethany each evening.
It is ridiculous to suppose, when even as early as Sunday morning vast numbers of the populace knew sufficient of His movements to throng the roadside to Jerusalem, that the leaders themselves were ignorant of His whereabouts. The fact obviously is that they knew very well. On any one of the four critical evenings they could have sent swiftly and secretly to Bethany and effected His arrest. Why was it not done? What was it for which they were waiting, and only Judas could supply?
It is customary to meet these questions by laying stress on that part of the answer that is recorded in the Gospels: the fear of the people. It does not appear, however, to have been widely discerned that, quite inevitably, this was only half of the real truth and that the other half was withheld.
It must not be forgotten that the Gospels were written from material gathered mainly from the party identified with Christ. Judas died without disclosing his secret and the Jewish leaders would hardly have been likely to betray it. But to suggest that all Judas did was to take the officers of the Sanhedrin to a lonely and secluded spot where they could secretly arrest Jesus, when they could have done it on their own initiative in the early hours of any morning at Bethany when the villagers were asleep, or at a suitable spot on the road across Olivet on any evening except Wednesday, or throughout Wednesday in the quiet groves of that tiny and peaceful hamlet, is to miss entirely the subtlety of the psychological factors that are involved here.
To avoid any possibility of misunderstanding on a vital point, let me say here that I would be the very last to deny that fear of the people carried great weight with the Jewish leaders. No one knew, no one could know, what would be the political consequences of the forcible seizure of the person of One whom a large section of the populace regarded as the Messiah of prophecy. The whole situation was unprecedented, and one of extreme sensitiveness and delicacy. Everything these men did was done, as it were, with a furtive glance over the shoulder towards that unfathomable entity, the popular will.
But mere fear of the people does not explain some of the strangest things about the affair. Something Judas told the priests caused them to precipitate events at the last moment; to go through with the thing at a time that presented the maximum legal and official difficulties. It caused them to keep the strangest appointment between a wanted man and His persecutors of which history gives us any cognizance. It led them to send to Him, an undefended man in a lonely and deserted garden at midnight, an imposing and even ridiculous display of force, supplemented by precautions, the meaning of which no one can mistake.
What does all this signify? Personally, I am convinced that beneath the ostensible and acknowledged fear of the people, there was a deeper and more potent fear -- a fear that explains all their singular hesitancies and vacillations, until a welcome message reached their astonished ears -- the fear of Christ Himself.
Lest this should seem to be a strange and unfamiliar thought, let us look at the facts. It is impossible to dissociate these men from the mental limitations and superstitions of their age. Whether the reader believes that the miracles of Christ were actually performed or are merely the legendary ascriptions of a superstitious and unscientific age, the fact remains that the personal ascendancy and repute of Jesus during His own lifetime was immense. The stories of His cures of the blind, the paralytic, and the possessed were widespread. They came from all parts of the country and were apparently implicitly accepted even in high quarters in Jerusalem. The fact that He possessed certain definite powers beyond the normal does not seem to have been doubted by His contemporaries.
It is difficult to read the Gospels impartially, particularly the closing chapters, without realizing that the nimbus of mystery that encircled the person of Jesus reacted most powerfully on the plans of the leaders. They were dealing with an unknown and incalculable quantity, and their acts plainly show it. Throughout the four critical days that preceded the day of the arrest, when, had He wished, Jesus could have raised the city to an unimaginable pitch of tumult and excitement, they behaved like men under the compulsion of some secret fear. There is none of that swift and decisive grappling with a dangerous situation that we might have expected from men occupying the seat of power. Hesitancy and vacillation are written upon their acts. Even after the terrific and scathing denunciation on Tuesday afternoon, they left the initiative with Christ. Indeed, it is one of the master facts of this strange narrative that the initiative remained with Christ even to the end.
Personally, I cannot avoid feeling that, in all their dealings with Jesus, these men were apprehensive of something happening that they did not care to define. They seem to have been in some doubt whether even a considerable force would be adequate to take Him, and that in the last moment He might even prove to be unarrestable. This impression is unmistakably strengthened by their singular behavior in the matter of Judas.
Nothing can be clearer than that, throughout the week preceding the arrest, there was some impediment that led to the event being postponed to the eleventh hour, when in the nature of things their difficulties were increased. The first interview with Judas seems to have promised well because we are told:
And they, when they heard it, were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought bow he might conveniently deliver him unto them (Mark 14:11).If we are to follow the chronology of the Gospels, this happened at the very latest on Tuesday, after the dinner at the house of Simon the leper. Yet still no overt move was made. It was not until late on Thursday night, when Judas hurried from the Supper room, that their hesitation changed into resolution, and a phase of intense and feverish activity set in.
Now it is just here that the element of time becomes so important and illuminating. If the arrest of Jesus had followed within a short time of His arrival in the Garden, it would be a legitimate assumption that Judas's part of the pact was limited to warning the authorities where He could be found late on Thursday evening and accompanying the arrest party for purposes of identification. This assumption presupposes that it was a deliberate part of the leaders' plans to effect the arrest on the last evening before the Feast, so as to give the minimum opportunity for a popular reaction.
Plausible as this explanation appears at first sight, it will not stand examination. The facts point in quite a different direction. Suppose the understanding the priests had with Judas was this: "We intend to take Him on Thursday night. Remain with Him until you are absolutely sure of His movements, and then come quickly and tell us. We will do the rest." It is obvious that a plot of this kind implies that all needful preparations for so important an event would have been made. The officers of the temple guard detailed to accompany the expedition would have been warned and in readiness. Within a few minutes of the receipt of the message the arrest party would have been mobilized and ready to move off.
Did things take this course? Most assuredly they did not. An extraordinary and intensely suggestive delay of several hours intervened between the time when Judas withdrew from the Supper party, and the arrival of a motley and miscellaneous contingent (armed, one might say, to the teeth) in the Garden of Gethsemane. What is the historical explanation of that delay? Consider the situation carefully and mark its strangeness, for it is full of strange, and otherwise unaccountable things.
First, and foremost, there is the delay of something approaching three hours between the departure of Judas from the supper chamber and the arrival of the arrest party in Gethsemane. That this period could hardly have been shorter will be apparent if we piece together the unmistakably historical events that intervened. I have already referred to the length of time that must have elapsed in the Garden itself to allow for the thrice-repeated waking of the disciples. The fact that these men went to sleep at all points to a very late hour and a long vigil before fatigue overcame the natural desire to keep awake and to share with their Master whatever danger or experiences the night might bring. We do not know how long they resisted the temptation, but when sleep would no longer be denied, we can hardly assume that less than half an hour elapsed between each waking. This, with the half-hour roughly occupied in the walk from the city, brings us to two hours. To this we must add the time required by the conversations in the Supper room after Judas had left and (if John's account is trustworthy) by the lovely nocturnal prayer in the street without, before the party finally wended its way to the gate of the city.
If anyone will sit down in the twilight of some quiet evening and read through this section of the narrative, and reflect upon it as he goes, he will find it all amazingly true to life. But he will find also that the set pace of the events cannot be rushed or hurried. He will be constantly tempted by stray words and allusions rather to slow down the pace and to allow a longer period than we are now contemplating. Can we imagine, for example, the disciples on arriving at Gethsemane on some obviously strange and mysterious errand, lying down and going to sleep forthwith? Human beings are not built that way. There would be a period during which whispered questions and vague surmises would pass from lip to lip. There would be long moments of anxious waiting and wondering until one by one, from sheer fatigue, they dropped to sleep.
Now this very significant gap of at least three hours in the movement of an otherwise tense and closely knit drama has to be explained. It is imperative that we should know what Judas was doing all the time, and especially why, when the expedition did at last set out, Judas knew where he would find Jesus. In some ways this is the master fact of the situation. When we know that, we have the key to what is surely the strangest episode in history.
Primarily, the impression the records give is that the message Judas brought found the Jewish leaders in some way unprepared. Personally, I cannot escape that impression, and further reflection serves only to deepen it. Had it been a deliberate part of the Jewish plan to postpone the arrest of Jesus until the latest moment on Thursday and to carry it through regardless of consequences, there would have been signs of preparedness and organization. These men did not know where they might not have to send to secure their Prisoner. They might even have to go as far as Bethany. Indeed, the probabilities were strongly in favor of that course, for who could have foreseen that the wanted man would wait conveniently in a neighboring garden? In this case Nemesis would have swiftly overtaken Jesus when the secret rendezvous was known, as it must have been within a few minutes of Judas's departure from the Supper table.
Instead of this, we get a delay running into hours, a circumstance that might easily have been fatal to the success of the whole expedition. Had the wanted man been any ordinary fugitive, it would have failed.
The more closely the facts of this momentous episode are considered, the stronger the impression becomes that the visit of Judas to the priests that night, while not wholly unexpected, put their problem in a new and urgent light. Time was needed for consultation, for the taking of great decisions, for the improvisation of means, and when the expedition to Gethsemane did at last move off, it did so at the earliest possible moment consistent with these hurried preparations. I submit that the narratives, as preserved in the four Gospels, bear that interpretation and no other.
Now there are two factors in this very interesting situation that are unmistakably historical, and that, dovetailing as they do into each other, explain the delay. The first is that the message Judas brought from the Supper room contained a new and surprising piece of information that completely resolved the hesitation and doubts of the rulers. The second is that Christ Himself was challenging and indeed facilitating His own arrest.
Whatever may have been the actual words employed, the burden of the conversation Judas had with the priests must have been this: "He is thinking and talking of death. He is going to the garden at the foot of Olivet and will wait there till I come. Make your arrangements quickly and I will take you to Him." There seems to be no escaping this inference because it is buttressed at both ends by the silent but unimpeachable witness of the behavior of the two principal actors in the drama. We have documentary track of both parties. We know that Judas took the expedition unerringly to the groves of Gethsemane, despite the darkness and the extreme lateness of the hour. We know that Jesus waited in those very groves, to the exhaustion of His friends, and would apparently have gone on waiting even to the dawn.
We do not ordinarily get a situation like that without implying something that, from sheer poverty of language, I must call an understanding. Let no one hastily jump to the conclusion that there was a kind of pact between Jesus and His betrayer. I do not think it was like that in the least. Jesus was a master of psychology, and His irrevocable determination to deliver Himself to His accusers that night was accomplished by infinitely subtler means. But when Judas left the upper room on an ostensibly innocent mission' he knew of a surety two things. He knew that Jesus was going to the Garden of Gethsemane and he knew also that His spirit was already bending to the Cross. These two great facts coming in fortuitous combination were his great opportunity and his supreme temptation.
His alert brain was quick to perceive that this was better news than he had ever hoped to carry to his new masters. The impediment was gone. For this night at least Jesus would not resist arrest. The mood of surrender was on Him. It only remained to send quickly to achieve their purpose.
[It adds greatly to the verisimilitude of the story when we remember that the arrangement to meet in Gethsemane was probably arrived at quite naturally and in the ordinary course of events. Judas had apparently certain duties to perform on behalf of the band that necessitated his absence for a while, and it is natural that a place should be appointed where they should meet prior to returning in a body across the hills to Bethany. The Garden of Gethsemane was a peculiarly appropriate place for the rendezvous, because it stood in the triangle between the two most frequented routes over the shoulder of Olivet to the little hamlet. Both of these mountain tracks, in addition to the main road (which skirted the garden), led to Bethany.]
With this new fact uppermost in his mind, Judas, in all human probability, hurried direct to the high priest's house. His private business, even if he now intended to go through with it, could wait. It was of supreme importance that the machinery of state should be put into action without delay.
What, then, would be the effect of this intelligence on Caiaphas and the little coterie of Sadducees whose interests were so closely involved in the death of Christ? Fortunately we are able to define the answer to this question pretty accurately, because there were two fundamental things about the situation that, from their standpoint, outweighed every other consideration and governed their policy.
In the first place, it would have been fatal to their interests to have made an unsuccessful attempt to arrest Jesus at this particular juncture. By this I mean that, if, after launching their venture, it had failed through causes that could even remotely be attributed to the supernatural, the damage to their prestige would have been irreparable.
Second, it would have been even more dangerous to have arrested Christ and to have been compelled to hold Him without trial during the seven days prescribed by the Feast. This they simply dared not do. Jerusalem at feast times, with its huge nonresident population, was notoriously turbulent and prone to high feelings. They could probably count on the popular stupefaction occasioned by so resounding an event as the arrest of Jesus lasting a few hours, but reaction would follow swiftly.
To men confronted with these alternatives, the news that Judas Iscariot brought late on Thursday night ameliorated their problem and increased its practical difficulties tenfold. It ameliorated it because it gave them the assurance and certainty of arrest. It told them that the time of their opportunity had come. It increased their difficulties because it came at such a late hour as to render it almost certain that they must face the second and more deadly of their perils.
The practical question that arose immediately, therefore, was probably this: "Can we possibly carry the thing through all its inevitable legal stages in time to secure execution before sundown tomorrow?" It was a very big and complicated issue, not lightly to be answered.
I cannot see that this question could have been answered offhand even by the high priest himself, fortified as he undoubtedly was by the secular wisdom and long experience of his father-in-law Annas. The plan demanded consultation at least with the representative men of the different groups constituting the Sanhedrin. The situation was so entirely without precedent. And failure to carry the whole process through, even by a hair's breadth, involved consequences of a very dangerous order.
Whatever else, therefore, had to be done, some considerable part of those three hours must have been occupied in hurried consultations, in swift passings to and fro between the executive sitting at the high priest's house, and those indispensable leaders of Jewish thought on whom they must rely for ratification in the Sanhedrin. All this is written plainly between the lines of the narrative. But was there something else? Personally, I think there was.
Whatever interpretation we put on the circumstances leading up to the arrest of Christ, it seems to me certain that, before the fateful word was given to the arrest party to proceed to Gethsemane, some communication must have taken place between the Jewish leaders and Pontius Pilate.
It is against everything we know about the character of Pilate and the nature of the Roman occupation to assume that a serious case like this could have been thrust upon Pilate early on Friday morning without his knowledge and without first ascertaining his readiness to take it.
The fact that none of the four Gospel writers refers to a prior consultation with Pilate is not difficult to understand. They were writing from their own particular standpoint. The assent of Pilate to the Jewish plans would seem to them of small moment and was in any case an administrative detail in which they had probably little interest. But the moment we put ourselves in the place of the priests we see how very vital it was that, late as the hour might be, the consent and cooperation of the procurator should be obtained.
If anyone feels that the received narrative does not quite carry this conviction, let me enjoin him to consider carefully one small but significant circumstance. There is a deeply rooted tradition in the early Christian literature (supported, of course, by John's detailed account of the Roman trial) that Pilate departed from the usual practice on this occasion by coming out to the Jews, so as to meet their ceremonial objection to entering the Court of the Stranger on that day. The reason was of course that time did not permit of the necessary purification prior to the Feast. If this is a historical fact it can mean only one thing, viz., that had it not been for the supreme and urgent case of Christ, Pilate would have held no court on that day. It would have been absurd, in the ordinary course of events, to hold judicial proceedings on a day when, in the nature of the case, the principal officers and witnesses could not be present. The fact that Pilate did sit on that day and that without apparent demur he proceeded to hear the case in the open space outside the praetorium points to an understanding of a very definite kind.
Thus, if we try to get into the inner mind of the priests and look at the very complicated problem they had to solve at short notice, we see that some kind of communication with Pilate was inevitable. They were suddenly offered the opportunity of arresting Jesus under unexpectedly favorable conditions. It was night, and the populace were preoccupied with the preparations for the Feast. Moreover, the prospective Prisoner Himself was strangely willing, and in some inexplicable way seemed to be facilitating their plans. From the purely political side the course was clear. The door they expected they would have to force stood open.
On the other hand, the legal difficulties were immense. The problem of assembling the court after nightfall, of getting together the necessary witnesses, and of arranging for a full session of the Sanhedrin the next morning called for hard thinking and rapid organization. Much would necessarily have to be left to chance and to the hope of things working out roughly to plan. But the broad lines of their program would have to be settled before beginning the action that was to put their fortunes to the test.
But even when the bard minimum of their essentials had been settled -- the arrest, the midnight hearing to formulate the charge and secure conviction, the early meeting of the Sanhedrin to ratify the finding -- there still remained one supreme question to which a definite answer must be forthcoming. Could they secure the Roman conviction in time to guarantee crucifixion before the Feast? Would Pilate be willing to hear the case under the peculiar conditions they were bound to impose? Would he insist on a full trial or could they count on a formal endorsement of a finding previously arrived at by their own courts?
Such questions as these would ordinarily be settled through official channels and as a matter of administrative routine. There must have been some kind of calendar for the trial of Jewish prisoners, whose cases necessitated review by the procurator, and in the preparation of this calendar Pilate's personal convenience would invariably be consulted.
The extreme urgency of the present case, however, precluded reliance on these channels. It was already very late in the evening. If the conviction was to go through, it was imperative that some kind of provisional arrangement should be made with the procurator to hear the case early the next morning.
There was probably only one man in Jerusalem who could seek an audience with Pilate at an hour ordinarily devoted to his private pleasure. That man was Caiaphas, the high priest, and it was Caiaphas, in all human probability, who went. He alone could present with the full authority of his supreme office the high reasons of state behind the prosecution.
It may seem a small matter whether the titular chief of the Jewish nation visited Pilate at a very late hour on that memorable evening or not. But if things took the course that we will discuss in the next chapter, it will be found that that unrecorded visit has profound and far-reaching significance. It explains something that on any other supposition is wholly inexplicable. I mean the very curious behavior of Pilate the next day during the critical hours that decided the fate of Christ.
4. A PSYCHOLOGICAL PARALLELOGRAM OF FORCES
If anyone thinks that in approaching the trial of Jesus of Nazareth by Pontius Pilate he is approaching the simple and the obvious he is making a big miscalculation.
This thing is extremely subtle: Outwardly, it has all the placidity of still waters, but beneath the apparent stillness there are deep and hidden currents that make it incomparably the greatest and most profoundly interesting psychological study in history. We do not get rid of the mystery of Christ when we bring Him to the Roman bar; we increase it tenfold.
The first hint that there is something curious about this story that is not directly disclosed by the narratives comes, strangely enough, not from the behavior of the Jews, or even of the Prisoner Himself, but from the behavior of Pilate. I remember reading through the four accounts side by side, not once but many times, trying to discover what it was that subconsciously stamped the story of this trial as peculiar. And every time I read them the conviction grew that the hidden and disturbing element lay in what, for want of a better phrase, I must call the unsatisfactory alignment of Pilate's behavior, as uniformly reported in the Gospels, with his known character and antecedents.
We know something at least about the previous history of this brusque and uncultured soldier of the Roman Empire. A tradition, which may not be reliable, says that he was born at Seville in Spain. He came of a fighting family, was a member of the ordo equester and served for a time under Germanicus in Germany. During a prolonged stay in Rome he seems to have captured the affection of a Roman girl of very high connections, Claudia Procula, whom he was destined to marry, and of whom we shall hear more shortly. As the illegitimate daughter of Claudia, the third wife of Tiberius, Claudia Procula was the granddaughter of Augustus Caesar. It is obvious from the sequel that this accidental connection with the ruling house served Pilate's personal interests in an unexpected degree, for in AD. 26, on the recommendation of Sejanus, he was appointed Procurator of Judea, and in accepting the post he applied for and obtained the very unusual privilege of taking his wife with him.
Such are the few but suggestive facts that we know about Pilate prior to his coming to Judea. However, when we reach the ten critical years of his life with which history is chiefly concerned, we begin to get light thrown upon him from new directions. Three episodes stand out during that stormy decade. There was the affair of the Roman ensigns, the affair of the "Corban," and the affair of the votive shields. To these may be added the incident of the Samaritan imposture that occasioned his recall and ultimate banishment. Each of these episodes in its way illustrates and defines the man with whom we have to deal.
If anyone will read carefully and impartially the contemporary classical accounts of these events, paying particular heed to the behavior of Pilate, as distinct from the motives ascribed to him, he will form a very definite impression of a somewhat coarse, rather tactless, and very obstinate man, a man to whom authority denoted power to enforce his own will rather than responsibility and consideration toward others. There is not a trace of that tact in handling foreign and subject peoples that characterized Julius Caesar and certain other far-seeing high-born Romans. He was the embodiment of that personal aggressiveness with which men and women, thrust into a position of authority that exceeds their powers, so often seek to attain their ends.
His obstinacy and complete lack of ordinary political insight come out very strikingly in the matter of the Roman ensigns. We do not know what prompted him to send the ensigns and other insignia of the Legions into Jerusalem. But the fact that he did so at night suggests that he knew there was going to be trouble. When the trouble came and he was practically besieged at Caesarea for six days and six nights, he made apparently not the slightest effort to arrive at a solution by discussion or argument. His only reply on the sixth day was to surround the deputation by armed force. When he found as a result of this belated test that he could get his way only by wholesale massacre (so fanatical was the objection to graven images in Jerusalem) he capitulated and the ensigns were withdrawn.
It is fortunate that we are able to compare the behavior of Pilate in this matter with the handling of an almost identical situation by another Roman soldier, Petronius. The story is told with some fullness by Josephus. The salient feature about this narrative is the manifest recognition by Petronius that there were deep-seated moral forces behind the native Jewish demonstration with which even the political might and statecraft of Rome must reckon. He tried to remove the obstacles by fair reasoning and private conference. He had an infinitely stronger incentive than Pilate to enforce his will, for he had been definitely commissioned by a mad emperor to place the imperial image in the Jewish temple, and failure to do so invited unpleasant consequences. When he ran against the same unshakable rock that confronted Pilate he wrote a report to Caius that not only stamps him as a very brave man, but unquestionably raised the prestige of Rome in the East.
But the point I want to bring out is that the difference between Petronius' handling of this delicate affair and Pilate's action in closely similar circumstances is characteristic and deeply instructive. It marks the whole difference between two types of mind that were poles apart. All Pilate's affairs were handled with the same lack of mental resilience and understanding.
Take, for example, the affair of the "Corban," or sacred treasury. The object for which Pilate took this money was in itself a commendable one -- the financing of an aqueduct from the pools of Solomon to the interior of the city. The Jews were as much interested in a sure and safe water supply for Jerusalem as anybody. The problem had occupied successive kings and statesmen for centuries, and more than one exclusively Jewish attempt had been made to solve it.
The question of finding the money for this necessary public work would not have been difficult if it had been put squarely to the authorities. But Pilate raided the "Corban," a fund devoted exclusively to religious purposes. When the populace quite naturally revolted he provoked a needlessly bloody and fatal tumult by sending soldiers disguised as civilians into the mob.
We get precisely the same characteristic and implacable cast of mind in the matter of the votive shields Pilate installed in the Herodian Palace. There was apparently not the slightest attempt to understand or appreciate the deep-seated character of the religious objection to these tablets, or any desire even to discuss it. It was only when a letter from the chief men of the nation to Tiberius brought a strong reproof from the emperor that Pilate gave way.
There is a hint, too, in the Gospels of an affair in which Pilate mingled the blood of certain Galileans with their "sacrifices." We do not know to what this refers, but it agrees pretty closely with what we know of his temperament, and bears a resemblance to his handling of the Samaritan affair as recorded by Philo.
Such, then, are the lineaments of Pontius Pilate as they emerge from the only independent and secular accounts we have of him. They are all amazingly self-consistent and true to type.
Now, when we turn to the Gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus by this man we get an immediate and unmistakable impression that the personality revealed does not lie foursquare on the impression we have previously formed of him. Somehow this does not seem to be the real Pilate haughty, overbearing, truculent who is trying the Lord of Life. He seems so remarkably anxious to conciliate the Jews, and yet so unaccountably reluctant to concede to their wishes. He gives the impression of a man being torn apart by two opposite and irreconcilable forces.
Personally, I cannot escape the feeling that Pilate did not want to touch this thing. He had one idea paramount in his mind to get Christ acquitted, somehow, and at all costs. We see this motif running through everything the attempt to shift the matter to Herod, the thrice-acclaimed innocence of the Prisoner, the washing of hands the last desperate attempt to substitute Barabbas, as a sop to the insistence and clamour of the people. It was only when the sinister cry, "Thou art not Caesar's friend," began to make itself heard above the tumult that a new and greater fear triumphed over the one that had been gnawing at his mind.
What is the explanation of this apparently inconsistent behavior of a man who normally had a very strong will of his own and who did not readily brook opposition to it? Why does Pilate, the tyrant of secular history, appear as Pilate the irresolute in the pages of the Gospels?
I do not think we will ever reach the true explanation of this phenomenon until we take into account various personal matters on the side of Pilate and especially what probably took place in his own household on the evening before the trial.
It will be remembered that in tracing the causes of certain peculiar and otherwise inexplicable delays connected with the arrest of Jesus, we reached the conclusion that Pilate must have been warned of what was about to take place, and that the interview at which this was done could not have occurred much earlier than eleven o'clock in the evening.
Strong as the evidence for this unreported interview with Pilate undoubtedly is, it is strengthened by one small but highly significant circumstance the fact that Claudia Procula was in the Herodian palace that night. It is extraordinarily suggestive that the only reference to Claudia in this particular connection that has survived the centuries should be that she dreamed about Jesus Christ on the night before His death.
So long as we think of the Roman trial of Jesus as developing along the traditional lines (so often inferred from the Gospels), by which the Jews without prior arrangement brought Christ on Friday morning to the bar of Pilate, the reference to Procula seems utterly illogical and its substance improbable. But the moment we put these events in their natural sequence the truth seems to look us in the face. For consider the most likely trend of events that memorable night.
Pilate was in town, not for a brief flying visit, but for the full ten days ordinarily covered by the Feast. The probability, therefore, that Claudia came with him is very strong, even if we did not have Matthew's definite statement that such was the case. Their friends in the foreign capital were undoubtedly few. A man occupying Pilate's position had to restrict severely the circle of his intimate acquaintances, and the two were necessarily thrown much on each other's company.
We are probably not far wrong if on this particular night we imagine them sitting before the fire in one of the spacious apartments of their private suite in the palace, for we know from Peter's warming of his hands that the evening was chilly. To appreciate fully what happened after that we must remember the peculiar limitations of time that the problem imposes. We know from the Gospel records that Pilate heard the case very early on Friday morning. The hurried visit of Judas to the high priest's house took place probably between eight and nine o'clock, for the Supper party lingered on after he had gone, and we have still the two hours' waiting in the Garden to account for. If the decision to arrest Jesus was taken as the result of the information Judas carried to the priests (and we have the strongest reasons for believing such to be the case) it is clear that Pilate must have been approached some time between nine o'clock and, say, eleven thirty. How else could arrangements involving the personal movements of the procurator early the following morning have been consummated?
As I have suggested in a previous chapter, there was probably only one person in Jerusalem who could safely intrude himself upon the privacy of Pilate's household at such a late hour, and then only on urgent political grounds. That man was the high priest himself. Indeed, I do not see how Pilate's services in this matter could have been secured at all at such extremely short notice, apart from urgent personal representations from the highest authority in the Jewish state.
It would seem, therefore, that we are well within the margin of historic probability if we assume that some time between the hours of nine o'clock and eleven, and probably much nearer the latter than the former, a distinguished caller presented himself at the Herodian palace. Possibly the visitor was shown directly into the private apartment, but more probably Pilate went out to an ante-chamber to meet him.
Then, as I conceive it, in a few anxious minutes for the powers in Jerusalem, the outline of the impending Demarche was disclosed. An important political offender was to be arrested that night. The trial would be consummated the next morning, and a verdict involving the extreme penalty was probable. Would Pilate consent to review the case at an early hour so that the necessary ratification might be given in time to secure death by sunset?
Probably also some conversation took place on the difficult question of defilement. It was not permissible for those charged with high duties in the temple to enter the Court of the Stranger on this particular day. Yet the matter was urgent. The alternative to summary jurisdiction (having regard to the character of the city's huge temporary population) was an insurrection. Would Pilate be prepared on this occasion to come out to the deputation who would present the Prisoner and the finding of the Jewish court?
With the discussion of such questions as these, from twenty minutes to half an hour probably went by, and with the departure of his visitor Pilate returned to the fireside. Now does anyone with personal knowledge of the immemorial characteristics of women suppose for a moment that an incident like this would pass without Claudia wanting to know something about it? She would not have been a woman if she had not been curious, and we may be practically certain that before they retired to rest that night there was some conversation about the unexpected visit, the identity of the Prisoner, and the reasons (satisfactory or otherwise) behind the arrest. Anything that foreboded trouble between her husband and the Jews had a special interest for Procula.
When, therefore, Claudia retired to her room in the late evening, it would be, almost certainly, with the thought of Jesus in her mind. And when she awoke next morning after a vivid and painful dream, to find that Pilate had already risen and left the Palace, she knew where he had gone and the delicate matter in which he was engaged. It was at this moment that, according to Matthew, she sent him a message -- almost telegraphic in its brevity and urgency -- designed to convey in the fewest possible words her own grave, apprehensions and the course which she thought he ought to take:
Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him (Matt. 27:19).So far we have a logical and intelligible sequence of events. Is the sequel equally logical? I submit that it is. For the characteristic that immediately strikes us about Claudia's message to Pilate is its urgency. The words are those of someone who is manifestly writing in great haste, and who wants to convey in the fewest possible words a message at once grave and immediate. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a sentence of greater brevity that would have conveyed so precisely the information Procula apparently desired to get through to Pilate. She wanted to warn him primarily and above all else not to touch this thing. She seems to have been under something more than an impression that Pilate was going to commit Christ to His enemies, and that at an early stage in the proceedings. Hence the need for her instant warning.
I will not waste time here arguing the obvious point that if Claudia knew of the arrest overnight in the circumstances suggested above, that in itself is an adequate and sufficient cause for the dream. But I do want to draw attention to a significant detail, viz., that the dream would not have had the instant terror for Procula, on awakening early the next morning, if she had not known, or had exceptionally strong reasons for suspecting, that Pilate was going to hand over the Prisoner to His enemies. The whole tenor of the message suggests this:
Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.However we construe the words, they could have been written only by a woman who was anxious to avert something she was afraid was going to happen. The facts seem to point to one conclusion, viz., that Claudia had reason to believe that Pilate intended to ratify the finding of the Jewish tribunal without rehearing, or at any rate with a bare minimum of official formality. In other words, that he had practically decided to confirm the Jewish decision, and had probably already given assurances to that effect overnight.
I confess that my own mind was prepared somewhat for this conclusion by the very nature of the peculiar political situation that drove the priests to take the extreme measure they did. I cannot help feeling that the principal thing Caiaphas wanted to know before he sanctioned the arrest was whether Pilate would do this very thing. If on this particular occasion, and on the personal pronouncement of the high priest that the offense committed was worthy of death, Pilate would consent to ratify the finding of the Sanhedrin, the whole thing could be settled and done with before sunset. If not, then no one could tell what delays might take place, and it would be safer to postpone the arrest to a more convenient season. The fact that the arrest did take place according to plan seems to point to the Jews' having received assurance on this point.
But what I was not prepared for -- what, indeed, came to me personally as a surprise -- was the discovery that the narratives of the Roman trial itself unmistakably bear out and confirm this view.
The matter is one that will repay very careful study.
If anyone will take the four gospel records of the trial of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, and after putting them side by side, make a careful comparative study of them, he will find them absolutely unanimous upon one point, viz., that Pilate addressed to Jesus the question: "Art thou the King of the Jews?"
Now this is significant because the two earlier evangelists give no hint that Pilate had even been told what the charge was. Both Matthew and Mark, with their accustomed brevity and that complete absence of subsidiary detail characteristic of them, described Pilate as asking this leading question at once thus:
Mark
Matthew
And straightway in the morning the chief priests with the elders and scribes, and the whole council, held a consultation, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him up to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? (15:1, 2).
Now when morning was come, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: and they bound him, and led him away, and delivered him up to Pilate the governor.
Now Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? (27:1,2, 11).
It is perfectly obvious that this could not, in any circumstances have been the beginning of these proceedings. Both of these Synoptic writers have jumped over something that is exceedingly important for us to know, viz., how this vital and rather peculiar question was led up to, and what it was that caused Pilate to ask it.
Fortunately we have two other independent versions to which we can turn and I will ask the reader to examine these with some care. To facilitate comparison we will set them out fully below:
Luke
John
And the whole company of them rose up, and brought him before Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king. And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? (23:1-3).
Pilate therefore went out unto them, and saith, What accusation bring ye against this man?
They answered and said unto him, If this man were not an evil-doer, we should not have delivered him up unto thee. Pilate therefore said unto them, Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law. The Jews said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death: that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying by what manner of death he should die. Pilate therefore entered again into the palace, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews? (18:29-33).
Two things stand out from these accounts. First, they offer a much fuller and more intelligible account of what happened. But second, and chiefly, Pilate's question comes, as we knew it must, after some preliminary interchange of argument with the Jews. It is that preliminary phase of the trial to which I want to direct particular attention.
If we were left solely with the evidence and witness of Luke, we should have to assume that the moment the priests brought their Prisoner to the bar they launched their general accusation thus:
We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king.Let it be said here that, psychologically, this would have been a perfectly natural and satisfactory opening to the case, and if no other data were available, we should be justified, even compelled, to assume that it began in that way. But there is something in the version of the Fourth Gospel that arrests attention, because it throws new light on the way in which the case was presented from the Jewish side. It is not that the writer of John's version contradicts what the Synoptic writers have said. On the contrary, he confirms it. But he seems to begin a little farther back, and he supplies a link in the narrative that is missing from the other three.
He states first what on every ground we must regard as most probable, viz., that when Jesus was brought to Pilate, the Prisoner Himself was conducted into the palace while the priests and other accusers remained outside.
After a short interval, according to John, Pilate came out and put the formal question to the Jews: "What accusation do you bring against this man?" This was the definite opening of the Roman trial, for it was an essential part of the Roman system that a public Accusatio should be made, followed by the Interrogation of the judge, and the Excusatio of the prisoner.
The reply of the priests to this question is so significant and suggestive that I do not think due weight has been given to it. The priests replied:
If this man were not an evil-doer, we should not have delivered him up unto thee.Before we consider what this phrase means, let us look again closely at the narratives of Luke and John in the table above. It is obvious even upon the cursory reading that there is a gap in John's version following the words "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death." In no conceivable circumstance could Pilate have passed directly from the evasive and resentful answer to his leading question to Jesus: "Art thou then a King?" Some intervening conversation must have led up to it.
Fortunately the missing sentence has been furnished by Luke, and we may therefore fill the gap as shown in the complete narrative printed below:
RECONSTRUCTED NARRATIVE OF THE OPENING OF THE ROMAN TRIAL
Presentation of the Prisoner to Pilate:
They lead Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the palace: and it was early; and they themselves entered not into the palace, that they might not be defiled, but might eat the passover.
Pilate's demand for the "Accusatio":
Pilate therefore went out unto them, and saith, What accusation bring ye against this man?
The priests' obvious reluctance to produce a charge:
They answered and said unto him, If this man were not an evil-doer, we should not have delivered him up unto thee.
Pilate's rejoinder:
Pilate therefore said unto them, Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law.
The priests' reply with an improvised charge:
The Jews said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.
And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king.
Pilate's question to the Prisoner:
Pilate therefore entered again into the palace, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?
Not only does this reconstructed narrative contain the essential facts recorded by the four writers in the order in which they give them, but it is really the only account we possess of these proceedings, for, as an examination of the documents will show, the four writers are almost unanimous when their particular point of entry has been reached. Moreover, it reads like an authentic piece of history.
With this description now before us we can attempt a reconstruction of an incident which, both historically and psychologically, is probably without precedent in the annals of the world.
The first definite act of the drama of which we have historical record is the bringing of Jesus from the place of His confinement (probably the high priest's house) to the place of trial. This occupied, perhaps, twenty minutes, but as it was still quite early probably few people witnessed the little procession as it made its way swiftly through the narrow streets of Old Jerusalem. The procurator, himself astir early, was awaiting the deputation. On arrival at the gate of the palace we must probably allow for a halt of a few moments for the examination of credentials, after which the Prisoner was conducted alone, under a Roman escort, to the presence chamber of Pilate. Meanwhile, the deputation and their attendants waited without.
We come now to a point of considerable interest. After a brief interval, Pilate himself came out to the Jewish deputation and put the question: "What accusation do you bring against this man?" As I have said above, this was an unmistakable indication that Pilate intended to rehear the case, and it seems to have aroused intense resentment on the part of the priests -- for their answer is not only lacking in proper respect for Pilate, who was acting fully within his duty, but points to their having a special grievance against him in this matter.
If this man were not an evil-doer, we should not have delivered him up unto thee.Assuming, as I do, the historicity of this reply, it seems to me that there is only one possible interpretation to be placed on it. The priests resented Pilate's sudden determination to rehear the case. They were clearly under the impression that he would not insist on a formal restatement of the case against Jesus, and they appear to have come without any prepared or public accusation at all. If we were to attempt a broad but, I think, quite legitimate paraphrase, we may regard the priests as saying, "Can't you be satisfied with the finding of our court, that this man is an evil-doer? Why reopen the case when we ourselves have found him worthy of death?"
To this Pilate made a very subtle reply:
Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law.The inevitable answer to this skillful counter-thrust was a renewed demand for ratification:
It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.It would seem then that, realizing the hopelessness of getting what they wanted without the production of a case:
They began to accuse him, saying, We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king.The mention of the words "a king" at last gave Pilate something to work on, and he retired into the palace to put the historic question to Jesus: "Art thou the King of the Jews?"
Now there are two things about this episode which call for special notice.
First, it reads like a transcript from life.
Second, the manifest resentment and surprise shown by the priests when Pilate indicated his intention of rehearing the case, or at any rate of closely examining the Prisoner, points unmistakably to something resembling an understanding. They would hardly have made so insolent and pointed a reference to ratification of their own sentence if they had not been led in some way to expect it.
But when we place this fact in juxtaposition with that other fact -- the urgency of Claudia's reported message to her husband --- its intrinsic probability is increased. We begin to see why Claudia was so anxious to get her message into her husband's hands before it was too late. For if events took the course that it seems they must have done, Claudia knew not merely the identity of the Prisoner when she retired to rest, but she knew also that Pilate was contemplating (if he had not already promised) the ratification of the Jewish sentence. It was this that gave the whole point to her hurried communication. She wanted to tell him at all costs not to take that course.
If this is a true reading of this remarkable episode, then one thing stands out clearly. The message Claudia Procula sent to Pontius Pilate on the morning of the crucifixion changed in certain essential respects the course of history. If Pilate actually received this message he must have done so shortly after his arrival at the place of trial, for high-strung women are generally light sleepers, and the whole tenor of the message suggests its hurried indictment on waking. That Pilate had come down to the audience chamber intending formally to ratify the Jewish sentence seems to be certain. Before the deputation arrived, however, something happened that caused him to change his mind. But not only so. Psychological states have the peculiarity when suddenly challenged of swinging to their opposite extremes, and Pilate throughout his dealings with the Jews on this particular morning seems to have had one concern only -- to shift the responsibility for the affair to others.
This fact is ineradicable from the pages of the narrative. We find it in his initial attempt to get the Jews to carry out their own sentence. We find it in the thrice-proclaimed public acquittal of the Prisoner; we find it in the remission to Herod; we find it supremely in that tense moment, when, unable any longer to make himself heard above the tumult, he washed his hands as a sign that he would have no part in it.
So in a member of Pilate's own household we discover the fourth factor in the psychological parallelogram of personal forces that brought about the death of Christ. The influence of Jesus on the women of His day was profound, and of surpassing interest. He took Mary Magdalene from her native Magdala and made her His bond-slave for ever. He took the sons and breadwinners away from women like Salome and Mary. the wife of Cleophas, yet they would have died willingly for His cause, and did later endure unspeakable hardships on His account. He was the close and intimate friend of cultured women like Mary and her sister Martha. He had in Joanna a faithful and devoted follower in the very household of Herod. Must we add Claudia to the circle of His adherents?
In the sense of actual discipleship, no. But in the sense that in some mysterious way she had come under the impress of His moral influence and His commanding spiritual and intellectual stature, I think we must say yes. It was she who stiffened the Roman instinct for justice in Pilate, at a moment when he was tempted, from personal considerations, to humor the prejudices of the Jewish camarilla, and commit Jesus on their recommendation alone. It was she who was the author of that resplendent phase when the tyrant was seen for a few hours in the guise of a patient administrator anxious to weigh the truth to the last ounce. Let us not belittle this glowing if transient chapter in Pilate's checkered life.
While the stimulus lasted his handling of this difficult and perplexing case was well-nigh perfect. No more lust hearing than this could any man have asked or obtained in any court of that far-off day. The restraining influence of one who clearly believed that Jesus was innocent is obviously upon it. It was only as the stimulus faded against the grinding and growing opposition of the Jewish party that the threat of Caesar's intervention became paramount, and he ended as he intended to begin, by delivering the Prisoner into their hands.
So the baffle of wills closed in the defeat of the Roman procurator, and it was probably a sad and intensely irritated man who made his way back to the imperial apartments of the royal palace. But we do not have to wait long for the repercussion.
A few hours later the priests came back to him again. In his haste, or perhaps out of a coarse wish to turn the tables on his tormentors, he had written in three languages the immortal inscription: "This is the King of the Jews." They wanted him to alter it. He refused. "What I have written I have written" -- the real Pilate came out at last, when the supreme moment of his own personal and individual crisis had passed.
5. THE SITUATION ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON
If we are to gain a teal insight into the events immediately following the death of Christ we shall have to begin by studying carefully the situation as it probably existed about four o'clock on Friday afternoon.
Hitherto we have approached this subject almost exclusively from the official and priestly point of view. That point of view was extremely important in the earlier stages of the case. The prosecution was the priests', and it was vital to our purpose to know what lay behind it. But with the achievement of their main object, these official representatives of Jewry recede temporarily into the background and a new group of people takes their place. It is with this group the personal friends and adherents of Jesus-that we shall be chiefly concerned in the next two or three chapters. Let us begin by considering who these people were, and what the documents tell us with regard to them.
If we exclude Mary and Martha of Bethany, and their brother Lazarus, who, for certain reasons that we shall discuss later, are not heard of in connection with the final tragedy, we are left with a group of sixteen persons, all of whom are known to have belonged to the inner circle of Christ's personal supporters:
The eleven surviving apostles.Mary the mother of Jesus.
Mary, the wife of Cleophas.
Salome, the wife of Zebedee.
Mary Magdalene.
Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward.
To these should perhaps be added two men of a higher social class, who, though not openly avowing discipleship, were apparently strongly sympathetic toward the cause of Christ Joseph of Arimathea and the councilor Nicodemus.
According to the narratives, every one of these eighteen persons was present in Jerusalem or its vicinity at this particular Feast. We have documentary track of them all. This is particularly important in the case of the women, because, as we shall see, their evidence carries special weight in certain contingencies that were shortly to arise.
Now the question we have chiefly to consider here is this: In what way did the blow occasioned by the summary arrest and crucifixion of Christ fall on this little group of people? What were the exact circumstances in which they realized what was happening and how did they behave under the stress of events that not only brought death to their Leader, but were destined profoundly to affect their own lives?
Fortunately we can answer this question for the disciples outright. There does not seem to be any reasonable doubt that full realization came late on Thursday evening. The special solemnity of the words of Jesus during the Supper in the upper room had doubtless prepared them for some undefined catastrophe. But it was probably only when Judas arrived with the armed contingent that the dastardly and terrible character of the betrayal came home to them. After a brief and futile attempt at resistance on the part of Peter, the majority of them appear to have fled. The night passed into the morning with Jesus in the hands of His captors and His most intimate followers scattered and terrified by what they had seen.
Before the day was more than an hour old, however, two of these men, Peter and John, reappear in the dangerous and highly compromising neighborhood of the high priest's house. It seems reasonable to assume that they entered the city by following closely on the heels of the arrest party. If we are to accept the accounts given to us of the arrest, it was a somewhat heterogeneous body that accompanied the officers of the Sanhedrin to the Garden of Gethsemane. Arrangements had doubtless been made at the gates to readmit this gathering on the return of the expedition, and it should not have been difficult in the darkness and general confusion for Peter and John to have slipped in without their identity being recognized. Once inside the city gates they would probably follow the main body to the high priest's house, where John's acquaintance with the fortress seems to have served them in good stead.
With regard to the other nine disciples, it is doubtful whether any of them slept in the city that night. They were evidently panic-stricken, and fled to avoid the possibility of arrest. Admitting the known fact that the rules governing the opening of the gates of the city after sundown were greatly relaxed during the feasts, when many pilgrims slept in booths on the surrounding hills, it seems very unlikely that men under a sudden impulse of fear would risk detection by seeking admission at such an unusual hour. It is far more likely that they took a quite different course, which will be dealt with fully in a later chapter.
The women of the party were, therefore, in all human probability, cut off from direct knowledge and participation in this affair until at any rate the nocturnal phase of the trial of Jesus was over. It should not be forgotten that while news flies quickly in these days of newspapers, radio, and television, the conditions in Old Jerusalem were peculiar. The arrest of Jesus was not decided upon until very late the previous night when the majority of citizens had gone to bed. The return of the arrest party was probably made by the least frequented route, and there would be few stragglers in the upper city at that hour. The circumstances therefore favored that degree of secrecy so much desired by the priests. When the gates opened at sunrise and people began to pass in and out, rumors of the dramatic night proceedings doubtless began to circulate and a steadily growing stream of curious people probably made their way to the upper city. But it seems to be implied in the narratives that anything like a wide or universal realization of what was taking place was delayed until later, when the great tragedy was being consummated.
We shall, therefore, be very near to the real truth in this matter if we assume that the women of the party did not learn of the deadly and menacing turn that events had taken until early on Friday morning, either through the spread of rumors, or (as is more likely) by a hurried visit from Peter or John. To those who loved Jesus it would be a prime consideration to inform His mother at all costs.
If this is a reasonably accurate estimate of the position, it will be seen that the working efficiency of the party of Jesus in Jerusalem on Friday morning was reduced from sixteen persons to seven, of whom five were women. Had any of the nine remaining disciples succeeded in joining forces, either with Peter and John on the one hand or the women on the other, it seems incredible that we should not have heard of them.
The probability, too, that none of these nine men had yet returned is very greatly strengthened by the fact that the people we hear about in connection with the final scene at the cross are drawn from this same group of seven persons. And they are all there except two' whose absence is justifiable. No anguish could prevent the mother of such a Son from being present in the hour of His final agony, and we find Mary at the fo