Ep. 128: Jesus before the religious leaders

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LUKE 22:67-71

When in the morning they led Jesus to the Praetorium, it was not as a prisoner condemned to death of whom they asked the execution, but as one against whom they laid certain accusations worthy of death. When Pilate asked them to judge Jesus according to Jewish Law, they did not admit that they had done so already, but that they had no competence to try capital cases. But although Jesus was not tried and sentenced in a formal meeting of the Sanhedrin, there can be no question that his condemnation and death were the work of the whole body of the Sanhedrin, with only very few exceptions.

We bear in mind, that the resolution to sacrifice Jesus had already been taken. They first sought a ‘false witness’ against him. Since this was throughout a private investigation, this witness could only have been sought from their own people. Hatred, fanaticism and unscrupulous exaggeration would readily misrepresent and distort certain of his sayings, or falsely impute others to him. But the witnesses contradicted themselves so grossly, or their testimony so notoriously broke down, that for very shame such trumped-up charges had to be abandoned. The majestic calm of his silence must have greatly contributed to this result. On directly false and contradictory testimony, it must be best not to cross-examine at all, but to leave the false witness to destroy itself. Abandoning this line of testimony, the priests next brought forward probably some of their own order, who on the first ‘Purgation of the Temple’ had been present when Jesus, in answer to the challenge for ‘a sign’ in evidence of his authority, had given them that mysterious ‘sign’ of the destruction and upraising of the Temple of his Body. They had quite misunderstood it at the time and its inclusion now as the ground of a criminal charge against Jesus must have been directly due to Caiaphas and Annas.

We remember that this had been the first time that Jesus had come into collision, not only with the Temple authorities but also with the avarice of ‘the family of Annas.’ We can imagine how the incensed High Priest would have challenged the conduct of the Temple officials, and how, in reply. He would have been told what they had attempted, and how Jesus had met them. Perhaps it was the only real inquiry that a man like Caiaphas would care to put forward about what Jesus said.

And here it was, in its grossly distorted form and it was actually brought forward as a criminal charge! Cleverly manipulated, the testimony of these witnesses might lead up to two charges; to show that Christ was a dangerous seducer of the people, whose claims might have led those who believed them to lay violent hands on the Temple. Also, the supposed assertion that he was able to build the Temple again within three days, might be made to imply Divine or magical pretensions. No charge could be so effective as that of being a fanatical seducer of the ignorant populace, who might lead them on to wild tumultuous acts. But this charge also broke down, through the disagreement of the two witnesses whom the Mosaic Law required and who, according to Rabbinic ordinance, had to be separately questioned.

Only one thing now remained. Jesus knew it well, and so did Caiaphas. It was to put the question, which Jesus could not refuse to answer and which, once answered, must lead either to his acknowledgement or to his condemnation. As we suppose, the simple question was first addressed to Jesus, whether he was the Messiah? he replied by referring to the needlessness of such an enquiry since they had predetermined not to credit his claims. He had only a few days before in the Temple refused to discuss them.

Edersheim draws us into the unfolding drama:

‘It was upon this that the High Priest, in the most solemn manner, adjured the True One by the Living God, whose Son he was, to say it, whether he were the Messiah and Divine - the two being so joined together, not in Jewish belief, but to express the claims of Jesus. No doubt or hesitation could here exist. Solemn, emphatic, calm, majestic, as before had been his silence, was now his speech. And his assertion of what he was, was conjoined with that of what God would show him to be, in his Resurrection and Sitting at the Right Hand of the Father, and of what they also would see, when he would come in those clouds of heaven that would break over their city and polity in the final storm of judgment. ‘

They all heard it and, as the Law directed when blasphemy was spoken, the High Priest rent both his outer and inner garment. Jesus would neither explain, modify, nor retract his claims. They had all heard it; what use was there of witnesses. He had spoken Giddupha (blaspheming). Then, turning to those assembled. He put to them the usual question which preceded the formal sentence of death. As given in the Rabbinical original, it is, ‘what think you gentlemen? And they answered, if for life, ‘For life!’ and if for death, ‘For death.’’

But the formal sentence of death, which, if it had been a regular meeting of the Sanhedrin, must now have been spoken by the President, was not pronounced. On that night of terror, when all the hatred of man and the power of hell were unchained, even the falsehood of such malevolence could not lay any crime to his charge, nor yet any accusation be brought against him other than the misrepresentation of his symbolic Words. What testimony to him this solitary false witness! Again, ‘they all condemned him to be worthy of death.’

This is an extract from the book, Jesus : Life and Times, available for £12 here (Finalist for Academic Book of the year at 2023 CRT awards)