Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [165]
Who put Jesus on trial?
In the 1960s, archaeologists made a rather startling discovery. The name Pontius Pilate was found inscribed in the city of Caesarea, the seat of Roman rule in Judea. It was the first physical confirmation outside of literature that one of history’s most notorious characters existed. Pontius Pilate was governor of the Roman provinces of Judea, Samaria, and Idumaea from 26 to 36 CE and the port city of Caesarea was his base. Most likely as military governor he would have traveled to Jerusalem during Passover week to lead the troop buildup in the city at a time when the city was crowded, anti-Roman sentiment ran high, and insurrection was considered more likely. Pilate seriously offended Jews of the day by bringing Roman shields and flags into Jerusalem. They contained idolatrous images offensive to the Jews. After ten years in Judea, Pilate was eventually dismissed and recalled to Rome after failing to contain a local uprising.
But it was Pilate who had ultimate authority over affairs in Jerusalem when Jesus was arrested, and he held the fate of Jesus or any other criminal in his hands. The question of who tried, convicted, and ultimately executed Jesus is more than a historical “parlor game” or religious “bar argument.” In fixing the blame for Jesus’ execution on the Jewish people as a whole lies the awful seeds of Christian anti-Semitism, or what Peter Gomes in The Good Book terms “Christianity’s original sin.”
After his arrest at Gethsemane, Jesus was actually tried—or interrogated—twice. The first interrogation took place in the house or place of Jerusalem’s high priest, the highest-ranking Jewish authority of the day. Another Gospel glitch here, though. Two Gospels don’t name this high priest. Matthew calls him Caiaphas. But in John, Jesus is said to be taken first before a high priest named Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas. Annas had been high priest earlier and then deposed. Annas questions Jesus and then sends him to Caiaphas, the true high priest. In John, there is no account of Jesus being questioned by Caiaphas.
The Jewish council, or Sanhedrin, questioned Jesus on a number of counts. In Mark, false witnesses are brought against him. While they don’t agree on Jesus’ specific crimes, they chiefly accuse him of plotting to destroy the Temple. When the high priest asks Jesus point-blank if he is the Messiah, Jesus replies, in Matthew and Luke, “You have said so,” and in Mark, “I am.” That’s enough for the high priest, who decides Jesus has committed “blasphemy,” a crime punishable under Jewish Law by stoning. But the actual power of life and death still lay in the hands of Rome’s representative. So off they all went to Pontius Pilate for a second trial that conformed with traditions of Roman justice.
The men who brought Jesus to Pilate brought along a laundry list of charges: Jesus is a subversive. He opposes paying taxes to the emperor—which was exactly the opposite of what Jesus had said. He is stirring up resistance to Rome. In all of the Gospels, Pilate is presented as initially reluctant to pass judgment in a case that appears to him to be a local argument among Jews. In Matthew, Pilate’s wife even tells her husband that in a dream she has been told that Jesus is innocent. In Luke, Pilate tries to send Jesus to Herod Antipas, the Jewish ruler of Galilee, but Herod sends Jesus back. Many commentators, Jewish and Christian, have detected an overly “apologetic” tone toward Pilate in the Gospels, shifting the “blame” for Jesus’ execution to both the Jewish authorities and in a larger sense to the Jewish people. This has been explained by the fact that the Gospel writers, who were confronting Roman persecution, did not want to further alienate the Romans.
This might be a purely academic issue if not for the fact that centuries of Christians preaching that Jews were “Christ killers” underlie the modern history of anti-Semitism. It was not until 1959 that Pope John XXIII removed the phrase “perfidious Jews” from a Roman Catholic prayer