Putting Jesus on Trial (Part 2)
Facing a New Problem
Last week (here), we looked at the sham trial put on by the Sanhedrin as they reached their boiling point with the threat posed to them by Jesus. Having concluded that the only workable outcome for their dilemma was the death of the one posing the threat, the Jews faced a new obstacle.
Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?” They answered, “He deserves death.”
– Matthew 26:65-66, ESV
As we saw last week, the religious leaders of Israel needed two witnesses with stories that agreed in all details, and they needed Jesus to implicate himself with his own lips. They got both of those elements and, with them, declared Jesus worthy of death. That declaration brought the Sanhedrin to their next hurdle.
Rome, and Capital Crimes
Under Roman rule and the policy of ius gladii1, life and death pronouncements and enactments were reserved for the Roman prefect or procurator. You’ll recall this as a topic of conversation when Jesus came before Pilate for his Roman trial.
So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?”
– John 19:11, ESV
The Romans routinely stripped provincial councils, like the Sanhedrin, of the right to carry out formal executions.2 The Jews hid behind this restriction when it suited them and ignored it when it was inconvenient to them. We see examples of them ignoring it in the stoning of Stephen3, the stoning of Paul4, and the attempted stoning of the woman in John 8.5
We know, also, from extra-biblical history, that James, the brother of Jesus was executed during the transition of power from Festus to Albinus. As a result, the High Priest, Ananus II, was deposed for overstepping his authority in that matter.
Having been unable to kill Jesus in their many attempts to date,6 the Jews turned to Rome to bring about that desired outcome. There were difficult hoops to jump through to get a death sentence under Jewish law, but getting that same sentence from Rome was an entirely different matter.
There was no chance of Pilate caring the least bit about the Jewish charge of blasphemy. That was purely a Jewish, religious matter. The Jews needed to come up with a violation against the Roman system, one serious enough that it would be seen as a capital crime.
Wordplay
Many of you are likely able to recall the time President Bill Clinton escaped a perjury charge in a 1999 U.S. Senate trial by responding to a direct question saying, “Well, that depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” If Clinton could twist “is” into meaning something different than what it meant by the prosecutor, and if he could make a case that it is reasonable to think the twisted meaning is what he understood “is” to mean at the time the question was asked, then no perjury charge could be brought.
The Jews engaged in similar wordplay with Pilate.
Since Pilate did not care one way or the other about the Jewish term “Messiah,” a spiritual or covenantal title, the Jews reframed the accusation into Rex Iudaeorum, “King of the Jews,” and presented it as a political, seditious title. This shift from Messiah to King was not a mere shift in vocabulary. It was a weaponization of terms. The Jews were moving the offense of Jesus from the synagogue to the Roman court. They had to move the argument from the realm of theology to that of the Roman state.
Lex Maiestatis – The Law of Majesty
Under The Law of Majesty, it was treason to claim any authority that challenged the authority of the Emperor, Tiberius Caesar. When the Jews presented Jesus as a man claiming to be the Son of God,7 Pilate dismissed it, probably as superstition or lunacy, and he attempted to set Jesus free. The Jews were having none of that!
From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”
– John 19:12, ESV
Amicus Caesaris
In the world of debate, there is a fallacious technique known as the False Dichotomy. This is a fallacy that limits the number of valid options to a dilemma to (usually) two options. Is your favorite color turquois or are you stupid? By posing this disjunctive claim, I have oversimplified the question, limiting your viable options to only two. I boxed you in and forced you to select the option I want you to select.
Pilate should have been aware enough to see through this manipulative ploy from the crowd, but he was already emotionally worked up, having been warned from his wife who had a dream saying, “Have nothing to do with this righteous man!”8
But the “no friend of Caesar” accusation frightened an already mentally compromised Pilate, and he caved in to it. If Pilate were to release a self-proclaimed king, he would be complcit to an act of sedition. Add to that that fact that Pilate was already on thin ice with Rome due to recent riots in Judea and he simply could not afford a report saying he was being soft on a potential Jewish revolutionary.
But let’s look at the mental state of the Jews as well, knowing that, at this point in their history, there was no hatred in their hearts greater than their hatred of Rome. Consider this exchange.
Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.”
– John 19:12, ESV
Oh, how the chief priests must have choked on those words. In their emotional frenzy borne of their deep disgust with Jesus, the religious leaders of Israel feigned a deceptive loyalty to a man they despised. Do not miss the irony of this historic moment wherein the religious leaders, who despised the Roman occupation, were willing to humiliate themselves by publicly pledging absolute fealty to a pagan Emperor in order to reallize a short-term goal.
The Swap – Choose Your Son
An odd tradition related to the Passover Feast presented Pilate an “out” for his discomforting situation. The governor regularly used the Jewish Passover Feast to gain favor by releasing one prisoner of the people’s choosing. Before them stood Jesus, the Son of God, and Barabbas, literally “Son of Father.” We have the true Son of the Father and we have a violent revolutionary who bore that name.
Choose.
Repeatedly, Pilate declared the innocence of Jesus,9 but the crowd was committed to an outcome rather than to the truth.
The crowd’s demand for Barabbas is fascinating because there could not be a greater contrast between a man of the Spirit and a man of the flesh. The religious elites persuaded the crowd to demand Barabbas as a liberator over Jesus, the accused blasphemer, and did so, ostensibly, to protect their own claim to power and position.
The Ironic Titulus
It was the practice of the Romans to hang a placard above the heads of each crucifixion victim—the Titulus, a description of their crime. The chief priests used the title of King to secure a Roman judgment against Jesus. In his disgust for them, Pilate threw that bogus accusation in their faces. They chose the linguistic shift, and now they had to live with that choice.
Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”
– John 19:20-22, ESV
Synopsis
Myriad forces pressed the players in this entre morbid event, driving them to make the fatal decisions they made. Other forces tugged and pulled them away from one and toward another path and another outcome. Whether it was Judas, who had his own agenda, or the Sanhedrin, or the false witnesses, the howling crowd, even the disciples…each was acting out of their own sense of duty or justice.
We can argue that the inflamed passions of Jesus’ opponents pushed honor and truth aside. But this is most certainly not the case. Oh, they tried! Satan, the great deceiver thought he had won. The Son of God was put to death and out of the way. But the reality is, the great deceiver was himself horribly deceived. Deception failed. Truth won in the end, and both God’s honor and God’s justice were victorious.
1. “The right of the sword” 8:44
2. In John 18:31, Pilate instructed the Jews to deal with Jesus themselves. They explicitly replied, “It is unlawful for us to put anyone to death.” Further evidence from Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:1 & 7:2 show that Jewish law required a specific court and specific methods which did not include crucifixion. Talmud Sanhedrin 1:1 indicates that Rome removed the Jews’ power to adjudicate capital cases around 30 AD.
3. Acts 7:54-60
4. Acts 14:19
5. John 7:53-8:11
6. Matthew 2:13–18, Luke 4:28–30, Mark 3:6, John 8:58–59, 10:31–39, 11:47–53
7. John 19:7
8. Matthew 27:18
9. Luke 23:4, Luke 23:14, Luke 23:22, John 18:38, John 19:4, John 19:6
