466 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



break, without the least opportunity of summon- 

 ing witnesses for his defense. But what the 

 Gemara describes as the atrocity of thus antici- 

 pating the day of death of the accused 1 was ex- 

 ceeded in open injustice by the earlier outrage of 

 commencing, and probably substantially conclud- 

 ing, the real trial under cloud of night. That 

 would have been an intolerable scandal even in 

 the case of an ordinary civil suit. Such a suit 

 could only be called and commenced during the 

 day, though upon occasion it might be prolonged 

 after the shadows had fallen until a verdict were 

 returned. 2 But a grave criminal case — and cer- 

 tainly a capital case of crime — was to be begun, 

 and resumed or continued, and finished, only in 

 the light of day. And of all criminal cases, that 

 a trial in which a son of Israel, acknowledged to 

 be mighty in deed and word before all the peo- 

 ple, was to be judged for his life — that such a trial 

 should be begun and finished and sentence for- 

 mally pronounced, between midnight and morning, 

 was a violence done to the forms and rules of 

 Hebrew law as well as to the principles of jus- 

 tice. And the circumstance that this huge blot 

 is wholly ignored by Salvador 3 makes it very un- 

 necessary to notice in detail his defense of other 

 parts of the supposed formal judicial proceeding. 

 Yet there can be no doubt that at some un- 

 timely hour, between Thursday night and Friday 

 morning, the form and somewhat more than the 

 form, of a trial by Hebrew law did take place. 

 The judges, unjust as they were, were men trained 

 in that law of minute scruples and mighty sanc- 

 tions ; aud they would have felt it impossible to 

 dispense with process and form altogether. The 

 last words we caught from Jesus were his demand 

 for open accusation and trial : " Why askest thou 

 me ? ask them which heard me." And we shall 

 hear no further utterance until the close. For 

 when this demand for public justice was met by 

 a nocturnal trial, the accused declined to take 

 part in it. Meantime much was going on. The 

 members of the council present sought for wit- 

 ness against Jesus. Matthew says they sought 

 for false witness. But even the former was a 



1 " Proferre diem morti damnati nefas est."— Mishna 

 De Synedriis, iv., 1. Note 8 by Cocceius. 



2 Even this is forbidden by another text in the treatise 

 "Nidah," and the jurists have had to settle the question 

 of their relative authority. 



3 He narrates the trial and condemnation as taking 

 place before a full meeting of the Sanhedrim, and adds (vol. 

 i., 391), "Le conseil se rassembla de nouveau dans la mati- 

 nee du lendemain ou dumrlendemain, comme la juris- 

 prudence l'exigeait. pour confirmer la sentence oul'annu- 

 ler.'" This is mere invention of the history. 



scandalous indecorum. Hebrew judges, as we 

 have seen, were eminently counsel for the ac- 

 cused. And one of the strangest sights the world 

 has ever seen must have been the adjuration or 

 solemn address to the witnesses who came to 

 speak against the life of Jesus, by the magistrate 

 who had — no doubt with perfect sincerity — held 

 it expedient that one man should die for the peo- 

 ple. That form of adjuration or solemn appeal 

 still exists in the body of the law. 1 It was the 

 duty of the high-priest to pronounce it to each 

 witness in a capital case, and so to put them on 

 oath. Who can measure the effect of its utter- 

 ance by the sacred judge of Israel upon men 

 who, while the words were uttered, were forced 

 to gaze into the face of him whose life it guarded ? 



"Forget not, witness, that it is one thing to 

 give evidence in a trial as to money, and another 

 in a trial for life. In a money suit, if thy witness- 

 bearing shall do wrong, money may repair that 

 wrong. But in this trial for life, if thou sinnest, 

 the blood of the accused, and the blood of his seed 

 to the end of time, shall be imputed unto thee. . . . 

 Therefore was Adam created one man and alone, 

 to teach thee, that if any witness shall destroy one 

 soul out of Israel, he is held by the Scripture to be 

 as if he had destroyed the world ; and he who saves 

 one such soul to be as if he had saved the world. 

 . . . For a man, from one signet-ring, may strike 

 off many impressions, and all of them shall be ex- 

 actly alike. But he, the King of the kings of kings, 

 he the holy and the blessed, has struck oif from 

 his typo of the first man the forms of all men that 

 shall live ; yet so that no one human being is whol- 

 ly alike to any other. Wherefore let us think and 

 believe that the whole world is created for a man 

 (such as he whose life hangs on thy words)." 



The Son of man whose life was surrounded by 

 the law with this tremendous sanction stood si- 

 lent before those witnesses ; and, whatever was 

 the reason, their testimony was found ineffectual. 

 What was the Hebrew law of evidence ? The Tal- 

 mud divides all oral evidence into — 



1. A vain testimony. 



2. A standing testimony. 



3. An adequate testimony ; or (perhaps) the 

 testimony of them that agree together. 3 



The evidence of the earlier witnesses who on 

 that night were examined seems to have been set 

 aside as belonging to the first class ; for a " vain 

 testimony " was not even accepted provisionally, or 

 retained until afterward confirmed. A " standing 



i Mishna, De Synedriis, iv., 5. " Intro vocatis terrorem 

 ineutiunt testibus." — ii.. 6. 



- Ibid., v., 3, -1. And see Lightfoofs Hor. Ileb., Mark 

 xiv. 56. 



