The Trial of Jesus from a Lawyer's Standpoint Volume II Part 5

This question is keenly suggestive of the presence of a judge and of the beginning of a solemn judicial proceeding. Every word rings with Roman authority and administrative capacity. The suggestion is also prominent that accusation was a more important element in Roman criminal trials than inquisition. This suggestion is reenforced by actual _dictum_ from the lips of Pilate's successor in the same place: "It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have license to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him."[67]

The chief priests and scribes sought to evade this question by answering:

"If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee."[68]

They meant by this that they desired the procurator to waive his right to retry the case; accept their trial as conclusive; and content himself with the mere execution of the sentence. In this reply of the priests to the initial question of the Roman judge, is also revealed the further question of that conflict of jurisdiction between Jews and Romans that we have already so fully discussed. "If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee." These words from the mouths of the priests were intended to convey to the mind of Pilate the Jewish notion that a judgment by the Sanhedrin was all-sufficient; and that they merely needed his countersign to justify execution. But Pilate did not take the hint or view the question in that light. In a tone of contemptuous scorn he simply replied:

"Take ye him, and judge him according to your law."

This answer indicates that Pilate did not, at first, understand the exact nature of the proceedings against Jesus. He evidently did not know that the prisoner had been charged with a capital offense; else he would not have suggested that the Jews take jurisdiction of the matter. This is clearly shown from the further reply of the priestly accusers:

"It is not lawful for us to put any man to death."[69]

The advice of Pilate and the retort of the Jews have been construed in two ways. A certain cla.s.s of critics have contended that the procurator granted to the Jews in this instance the right to carry out capital punishment, as others have maintained was the case in the execution of Stephen. This construction argues that Pilate knew at once the nature of the accusation.

Another cla.s.s of writers contend that the governor, by this language, merely proposed to them one of the minor penalties which they were already empowered to execute. The objection to the first interpretation is that the Jews would have been delighted to have such power conferred upon them, and would have exercised it; unless it is true, as has been held, that they were desirous of throwing the odium of Christ's death upon the Romans. The second construction is entirely admissible, because it is consonant with the theory that jurisdiction in capital cases had been withdrawn from the Sanhedrin, but that the trial and punishment of petty offenses still remained with it. A third and more reasonable interpretation still is that when Pilate said, "Take ye him and judge him according to your law," he intended to give expression to the hatred and bitterness of his cynical and sarcastic soul. He despised the Jews most heartily, and he knew that they hated him. He had repeatedly outraged their religious feelings by introducing images and s.h.i.+elds into the Holy City. He had devoted the Corban funds to unhallowed purposes, and had mingled the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices. In short, he had left nothing undone to humiliate and degrade them. Now here was another opportunity. By telling them to judge Jesus according to their own laws, he knew that they must make a reply which would be wounding and galling to their race and national pride. He knew that they would have to confess that sovereignty and nationality were gone from them. Such a confession from them would be music to his ear. The substance of his advice to the Jews was to exercise their rights to a certain point, to the moment of condemnation; but to stop at the place where their sweetest desires would be gratified with the exercise of the rights of sovereignty and nationality.

Modern poetry supports this interpretation of ancient history. "The Merchant of Venice" reveals the same method of heaping ridicule upon a Jew by making him impotent to execute the law. Shylock, the Jew, in contracting a usurious loan, inserted a stipulation that if the debt should not be paid when due, the debtor must allow a pound of flesh to be cut from his body. The debt was not discharged at the maturity of the bond, and Shylock made application to the Doge to have the pound of human flesh delivered to him in accordance with the compact. But Portia, a friend of the debtor, though a woman, a.s.sumed the garb and affected the speech of a lawyer in his defense; and, in pleading the case, called tauntingly and exultingly to the Jew:

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood; The words expressly are, a pound of flesh: Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods Are by the laws of Venice confiscate Unto the State of Venice.[70]

But whatever special interpretation may be placed upon the opening words pa.s.sed between the priestly accusers and the Roman judge, it is clearly evident that the latter did not intend to surrender to the former the right to impose and execute a sentence of death. The substance of Pilate's address to the Jews, when they sought to evade his question concerning the accusation which they had to bring against Jesus, was this: I have asked for a specific charge against the man whom you have brought bound to me. You have given not a direct, but an equivocal answer. I infer that the crime with which you charge him is one against your own laws. With such offenses I do not wish to meddle. Therefore, I say unto you: "Take ye him and judge him according to your law." If I am not to know the specific charge against him, I will not a.s.sume cognizance of the case. If the accusation and the facts relied upon to support it are not placed before me, I will not sentence the man to death; and, under the law, you cannot.

The Jews were thus thwarted in their designs. They had hoped to secure a countersign of their own judgment without a retrial by the governor.

They now found him in no yielding and accommodating mood. They were thus forced against their will and expectation to formulate specific charges against the prisoner in their midst. The indictment as they presented it, is given in a single verse of St. Luke:

"And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ, a King."[71]

It is noteworthy that in this general accusation is a radical departure from the charges of the night before. In the pa.s.sage from the Sanhedrin to the Praetorium, the indictment had completely changed. Jesus had not been condemned on any of the charges recorded in this sentence of St.

Luke. He had been convicted on the charge of blasphemy. But before Pilate he is now charged with high treason. To meet the emergency of a change of jurisdiction, the priestly accusers converted the accusation from a religious into a political offense. It may be asked why the Sanhedrists did not maintain the same charges before Pilate that they themselves had considered before their own tribunal. Why did they not lead Jesus into the presence of the Roman magistrate and say: O Governor, we have here a Galilean blasphemer of Jehovah. We want him tried on the charge of blasphemy, convicted and sentenced to death. Why did they not do this? They were evidently too shrewd. Why? Because, in legal parlance, they would have had no standing in court. Why? Because blasphemy was not an offense against Roman law, and Roman judges would generally a.s.sume cognizance of no such charges.

The Jews understood perfectly well at the trial before Pilate the principle of Roman procedure so admirably expressed a few years later by Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, and brother of Seneca: "If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you: but if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters."[72] This att.i.tude of Roman governors toward offenses of a religious nature perfectly explains the Jewish change of front in the matter of the accusation against Jesus. They merely wanted to get themselves into a Roman court on charges that a Roman judge would consent to try. In the threefold accusation recorded by the third Evangelist, they fully accomplished this result.

The first count in the indictment, that He was perverting the nation, was vague and indefinite, but was undoubtedly against Roman law, because it was in the nature of sedition, which was one of the forms of treason under Roman jurisprudence. This charge of perverting the nation was in the nature of the revival of the accusation of sedition which they had first brought forward by means of the false witnesses before their own tribunal, and that had been abandoned because of the contradictory testimony of these witnesses.

The second count in the indictment, that He had forbidden to give tribute to Caesar, was of a more serious nature than the first. A refusal, in modern times, to pay taxes or an attempt to obstruct their collection, is a mild offense compared with a similar act under ancient Roman law. To forbid to pay tribute to Caesar in Judea was a form of treason, not only because it was an open defiance of the laws of the Roman state, but also because it was a direct denial of Roman sovereignty in Palestine. Such conduct was treason under the definitions of both Ulpian and Cicero. The Jews knew the gravity of the offense when they sought to entrap Jesus in the matter of paying tribute to Caesar.

They believed that any answer to the question that they had asked, would be fatal to Him. If He advised to pay the imperial tribute, He could be charged with being an enemy to His countrymen, the Jews. If He advised not to pay the tribute, He would be charged with being a rebellious subject of Caesar. His reply disconcerted and bewildered them when He said: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto G.o.d the things that are G.o.d's."[73] In this sublime declaration, the Nazarene announced the immortal principle of the separation of church and state, and of religious freedom in all the ages. And when, in the face of His answer, they still charged Him with forbidding to pay tribute to Caesar, they seem to have been guilty of deliberate falsehood.

Keim calls the charge "a very flagrant lie." Both at Capernaum,[74]

where Roman taxes were gathered, and at Jerusalem,[75] where religious dues were offered, Jesus seems to have been both a good citizen and a pious Jew. "Jesus bon citoyen" (Jesus a good citizen) is the t.i.tle of a chapter in the famous work of Bossuet ent.i.tled "Politique tiree de l'Ecriture sainte." In it the great French ecclesiastic describes very beautifully the law-abiding qualities of the citizen-prophet of Galilee.

In pressing the false charge that he had advised not to pay taxes to Rome, the enemies of Jesus revealed a peculiar and wanton malignity.

The third count in the indictment, that the prisoner had claimed to be "Christ a King," was the last and greatest of the charges. By this He was deliberately accused of high treason against Caesar, the gravest offense known to Roman law. Such an accusation could not be ignored by Pilate as a loyal deputy of Tiberius. The Roman monarch saw high treason in every word and act that was uncomplimentary to his person or dangerous to his power. Fifty-two prosecutions for treason, says Tacitus, took place during his reign.

The charges of high treason and sedition against Jesus were all the more serious because the Romans believed Palestine to be the hotbed of insurrection and sedition, and the birthplace of pretenders to kingly powers. They had recently had trouble with claimants to thrones, some of them from the lowest and most ign.o.ble ranks. Judas, the son of Hezekiah, whom Herod had caused to be put to death, proclaimed royal intentions, gathered quite a mult.i.tude of adherents about him in the neighborhood of Sepphoris in Galilee, raised an insurrection, a.s.saulted and captured the palace of the king at Sepphoris, seized all the weapons that were stored away in it, and armed his followers with them. Josephus does not tell us what became of this royal pretender; but he does say that "he became terrible to all men, by tearing and rending those that came near him."[76]

In the province of Perea, a certain Simon, who was formerly a slave of Herod, collected a band of followers, and had himself proclaimed king by them. He burned down the royal palace at Jericho, after having plundered it. A detachment under the command of the Roman general Gratus made short work of the pretensions of Simon by capturing his adherents and putting him to death.[77]

Again, a certain peasant named Athronges, formerly a shepherd, claimed to be a king, and for a long time, in concert with his four brothers, annoyed the authorities of the country, until the insurrection was finally broken up by Gratus and Ptolemy.[78]

In short, during the life of Jesus, Judea was pa.s.sing through a period of great religious and political excitement. The Messiah was expected and a king was hoped for; and numerous pretenders appeared from time to time. The Roman governors were constantly on the outlook for acts of sedition and treason. And when the Jews led Jesus into the presence of Pilate and charged Him with claiming to be a king, the recent cases of Judas, Simon, and Athronges must have arisen in his mind, quickened his interest in the pretensions of the prisoner of the Jews, and must have awakened his sense of loyalty as Caesar's representative. The lowliness of Jesus, being a carpenter, did not greatly allay his fears; for he must have remembered that Simon was once a slave and that Athronges was nothing more than a simple shepherd.

When Pilate had heard the accusations of the Jews, he deliberately arose from his judgment seat, gathered his toga about him, motioned the mob to stand back, and beckoned Jesus to follow him into the palace. St. John alone tells us of this occurrence.[79]

At another time, in the Galilean simplicity and freedom of His nature, the Prophet of Nazareth had spoken with a tinge of censure and sarcasm of the rulers of the Gentiles that lorded it over their subjects,[80]

and had declared that "they that wear soft clothing are in kings'

houses."[81] Now the lowly Jewish peasant was entering for the first time a palace of one of the rulers of the Gentiles in which were soft raiment and royal purple. The imagination is helpless to picture the historical reflections born of the memories of that hour. A meek and lowly carpenter enters a king's palace on his way to an ignominious death upon the cross; and yet the greatest kings of all the centuries that followed were humble wors.h.i.+pers in their palaces before the cross that had been the instrument of his torture and degradation. Such is the irony of history; such is the mystery of G.o.d's providence; such is the mystic ebb and flow of the tides and currents of destiny and fate.

Of the examination of Jesus inside the palace, little is known. Pilate, it seems, brushed the first two charges aside as unworthy of serious consideration; and proceeded at once to examine the prisoner on the charge that he pretended to be a king. "If," Pilate must have said, "the fellow pretends to be a king, as Simon and Athronges did before him; if he says that Judea has a right to have a king other than Caesar, he is guilty of treason, and it is my solemn duty as deputy of Tiberius to ascertain the fact and have him put to death."

The beginning of the interrogation of Jesus within the palace is reported by all the Evangelists in the same words. Addressing the prisoner, Pilate asked: "Art thou the King of the Jews?" "Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?"[82]

This was a most natural and fitting response of the Nazarene to the Roman. It was necessary first to understand the exact nature of the question before an appropriate answer could be made. Jesus simply wished to know whether the question was asked from a Roman or a Jewish, from a temporal or a spiritual standpoint. If the interrogation was directed from a Roman, a temporal point of view, His answer would be an emphatic negative. If the inquiry had been prompted by the Jews, it was then pregnant with religious meaning, and called for a different reply; one that would at once repudiate pretensions to earthly royalty, and, at the same time, a.s.sert His claims to the Messiahs.h.i.+p and heavenly sovereignty.

"Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: What hast thou done?"

To this Jesus replied: "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence."[83]

This reply of the Master is couched in that involved, aphoristic, strangely beautiful style that characterized His speech at critical moments in His career. Its import is clear, though expressed in a double sense: first from the Roman political, and then from the Jewish religious side.

First He answered negatively: "My kingdom is not of this world."

By this He meant that there was no possible rivalry between Him and Caesar. But, in making this denial, He had used two words of grave import: My Kingdom. He had used one word that struck the ear of Pilate with electric force: the word Kingdom. In the use of that word, according to Pilate's reasoning, Jesus stood self-convicted. For how, thought Pilate, can He pretend to have a Kingdom, unless He pretends to be a king? And then, as if to cow and intimidate the prisoner, as if to avoid an unpleasant issue of the affair, he probably advanced threateningly upon the Christ, and asked the question which the Bible puts in his mouth: "Art thou a king then?"

Rising from the simple dignity of a man to the beauty and glory and grandeur of a G.o.d, Jesus used the most wonderful, beautiful, meaningful words in the literature of the earth: "Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice."[84]

This language contains a perfectly clear description of the kingdom of Christ and of His t.i.tle to spiritual sovereignty. His was not an empire of matter, but a realm of truth. His kingdom differed widely from that of Caesar. Caesar's empire was over the bodies of men; Christ's over their souls. The strength of Caesar's kingdom was in citadels, armies, navies, the towering Alps, the all-engirdling seas. The strength of the kingdom of the Christ was and is and will ever be in sentiments, principles, ideas, and the saving power of a divine word. But, as clever and brilliant as he must have been, Pilate could not grasp the true meaning of the words of the Prophet. The spiritual and intellectual grandeur of the Galilean peasant was beyond the reach of the Roman lord and governor. In a cynical and sarcastic mood, Pilate turned to Jesus and asked: "What is truth?"[85]

This pointed question was the legitimate offspring of the soul of Pilate and a natural product of the Roman civilization of his age. It was not asked with any real desire to know the truth; for he turned to leave the palace before an answer could be given. It was simply a blank response born of mental wretchedness and doubt. If prompted by any silent yearning for a knowledge of the truth, his conduct indicated clearly that he did not hope to have that longing satisfied by the words of the humble prisoner in his charge. "What is truth?" An instinctive utterance this, prompted by previous sad reflections upon the wrecks of philosophy in search of truth.

We have reason to believe that Pilate was a man of brilliant parts and studious habits. His marriage into the Roman royal family argued not only splendid physical endowments, but rare intellectual gifts as well.

Only on this hypothesis can we explain his rise from obscurity in Spain to a place in the royal family as husband of the granddaughter of Augustus and foster daughter of Tiberius. Then he was familiar, if he was thus endowed and accomplished, with the despairing efforts of his age and country to solve the mysteries of life and to ascertain the end of man. He had doubtless, as a student, "mused and mourned over Greece, and its search of truth intellectual--its keen and fruitless search, never-ending, ever beginning, across wastes of doubt and seas of speculation lighted by uncertain stars." He knew full well that Roman philosophy had been wrecked and stranded amidst the floating debris of Grecian thought and speculation. He had thought that the _ultima ratio_ of Academicians and Peripatetics, of Stoics and Epicureans had been reached. But here was a new proposition--a kingdom of truth whose sovereign had as subjects mere vagaries, simple mental conceptions called truths--a kingdom whose boundaries were not mountains, seas, and rivers, but clouds, hopes, and dreams.

What did Pilate think of Jesus? He evidently regarded Him as an amiable enthusiast, a harmless religious fanatic from whom Caesar had nothing to fear. While alone with Jesus in the palace, he must have reasoned thus with himself, silently and contemptuously: The mob outside tells me that this man is Rome's enemy. Foolish thought! We know who Caesar's enemies are. We have seen and heard and felt the enemies of Rome--barbarians from beyond the Danube and the Rhine--great strong men, who can drive a javelin not only through a man, but a horse, as well. These are Caesar's enemies. This strange and melancholy man, whose subjects are mere abstract truths, and whose kingdom is beyond the skies, can be no enemy of Caesar.

Believing this, he went out to the rabble and p.r.o.nounced a verdict of acquittal: "I find in him no fault at all."

Pilate had tried and acquitted Jesus. Why did he not release Him, and, if need be, protect Him with his cohort from the a.s.saults of the Jews?

Mankind has asked for nearly two thousand years why a Roman, with the blood of a Roman in him, with the glorious prestige and stern authority of the Roman empire at his back, with a Roman legion at his command, did not have the courage to do the high Roman act. Pilate was a moral and intellectual coward of arrant type. This is his proper characterization and a fitting answer to the world's eternal question.

The Jews heard his sentence of acquittal in sullen silence. Desperately resolved to prevent His release, they began at once to frame new accusations.

"And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place."[86]

This charge was intended by the Jews to serve a double purpose: to strengthen the general accusation of high treason recorded by St. Luke; and to embitter and poison the mind of the judge against the prisoner by telling Pilate that Jesus was from Galilee. In ancient times Galilee was noted as the hotbed of riot and sedition. The Galileans were brave and hardy mountaineers who feared neither Rome nor Judea. As champions of Jewish nationality, they were the fiercest opponents of Roman rule; and in the final catastrophe of Jewish history they were the last to be driven from the battlements of Jerusalem. As advocates and preservers of the purity of the primitive Jewish faith, they were relentless foes of Pharisaic and Sadducean hypocrisy as it was manifested by the Judean keepers of the Temple. The Galileans were hated, therefore, by both Romans and Judeans; and the Sanhedrists believed that Pilate would make short work of Jesus if he learned that the prisoner was from Galilee.

But a different train of thought was excited in the mind of the Roman governor. He was thinking about one thing, and they about another.

Pilate showed himself throughout the trial a craven coward and contemptible timeserver. From beginning to end, his conduct was a record of cowardice and subterfuge. He was constantly looking for loopholes of escape. His heart's desire was to satisfy at once both his conscience and the mob. The mention of Galilee was a ray of light that fell across the troubled path of the cowardly and vacillating judge. He believed that he saw an avenue of escape. He asked the Jews if Jesus was a Galilean. An affirmative reply was given. Pilate then determined to rid himself of responsibility by sending Jesus to be tried by the governor of the province to which He belonged. He felt that fortune favored his design; for Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee, was at that very moment in Jerusalem in attendance upon the Pa.s.sover feast. He acted at once upon the happy idea; and, under the escort of a detachment of the Praetorian Cohort, Jesus was led away to the palace of the Maccabees where Herod was accustomed to stop when he came to the Holy City.