THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. 



467 



testimony," on the other hand, was admitted in 

 the mean time and provisionally, but not held valid 

 until confirmed by others. To this intermediate 

 rank attained the evidence of that witness who 

 at length came forward to speak to the early ut- 

 terance of Jesus about the destruction and re- 

 building of the temple. And when following him 

 another came, the question was at once raised 

 whether the testimony of both did not amount to 

 tha third and complete order of evidence, known 

 as " the testimony of them that agree together." 

 " But neither so," says Mark, using the exact 

 technical term, " neither so did their witness agree 

 together." l This may undoubtedly have been a 

 mere discrepancy in their narration of facts. 

 That discrepancy cannot have been great, accord- 

 ing to our modern ideas. For Mark gives the 

 evidence of both in one indiscriminating sentence. 

 And Matthew does the same in another sentence, 

 slightly different. Neither of them makes any 

 explicit distinction between what the two wit- 

 nesses said. Let us suppose that the discrepan- 

 cy between the two (alleged by Mark) amounted 

 only to this, that the one said, in Matthew's 

 phrase, " I am able to destroy the temple of God," 

 and the other, " I will destroy this temple." It is 

 by no means clear that even such a difference as 

 this might not have been sufficient to nullify their 

 testimony. For in a Hebrew criminal trial "the 

 least discordance between the evidence of the 

 witnesses was held to destroy its value ; " i and 

 this rule, like others, was pushed to that childish 

 extreme which we now call Judaical. A mere 

 verbal distinction may have sometimes been a 

 fatal objection in the mind of even such a judge 

 as Caiaphas. But the evidence of men who are 

 not reported to have said anything extreme, but 

 whom the evangelists, departing from their usual 

 reserve, distinctly call " false witnesses," 3 was 

 probably reckless and inaccurate. And it is just 

 possible that the variation between the reports 

 of the two evangelists covers not a mere verbal 

 distinction, but a substantial and serious difficulty, 

 of great importance for the conduct of the case. 



For at this point we are confronted by one of 

 the most important questions in the whole in- 

 quiry : What was the crime for which Jesus was 

 all this time being tried ? What was the charge, 



1 Unless Mark, when he says their testimonies were ova 

 *<rai, means that they were not "adequate," rather than 

 not '• accordant.'" 



2 Salvador's " Institutions," i., 373. 



3 There were gradations among- false witnesses as 

 among true — especially as they were consciously or uncon- 

 sciously false. See Lightfoot on the Talmudic and techni- 

 cal meaning of the w r ord, Hor. Heb., Matthew xxvi., CO. 



1 what the indictment, upon which he stood before 

 the council? Up to this point we have had no 

 intimation on that subject. In modern times 

 that would be an extraordinary state of matters. 

 To try a man, especially for his life, without 

 specifying beforehand the crime on which he is 

 to be tried, is justly held to be an outrage. Some 

 of the greatest events in English constitutional 

 history turn on the illegality of " general war- 

 rants" — the illegality, that is, not of trying a 

 man without specifying his crime — the most ar- 

 bitrary of our kings did not venture to do that — 

 but of even committing him for trial without 

 specifying his accusation in the warrant of com- 

 mittal. But we must not judge Jewish law, or, 

 indeed, early law of any nation, by our modern 

 rules. Hebrew law, as we have seen, gave a pe- 

 culiarly important position to the witnesses. I 

 believe we shall not fully realize that position 

 unless we remember that, at least in the earlier 

 days of that law, the evidence of (he leading wit- 

 nesses constituted the charge. There was no other 

 charge : no more formal indictment. Until they 

 spoke, and spoke in the public assembly, the 

 prisoner was scarcely an accused man. When 

 they spoke, and the evidence of the two agreed 

 together, it formed the legal charge, libel, or in- 

 dictment, as well as the evidence for its truth. 

 This, to us paradoxical but really simple and 

 natural origin of a Hebrew criminal process, is 

 nowhere better illustrated than in that ancient 

 cause celebre of Naboth the Jezreelite : " They 

 proclaimed a fast, and set Naboth on high among 

 the people. And there came in two men, children 

 of Belial, and sat before him ; and the men of 

 Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth, 

 in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth did 

 blaspheme God and the king. Then they carried 

 him forth out of the city, and stoned him with 

 stones that he died." The essential points of a 

 Hebrew trial for life are here given with admi- 

 rable terseness. 1 But in the case of Naboth 

 the false witnesses suborned by the Sidonian 

 queen are represented as using the technical 

 word, or nomen juris, of blasphemy. In the trial 

 of Jesus the only witnesses distinctly spoken to 

 reported a particular utterance of the accused. 

 What crime was this utterance intended by the 

 accusers, or the judges, to infer ? There are two 

 distinct meanings which may have been innuen- 

 doed. According to one of them, the words, " I 

 will destroy this temple that is made with hands, 

 and within three days I will build another made 



1 See also Josephus's account of the trial of Zacharias 

 the son of Baruch : "De Bello Judaico," iv., 5, 4. 



