A70 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



law was observed. We must, in that case, imag- 

 ine the council as sitting in the hall Gazith, half 

 within and half without the holy place. 1 The 

 seats were placed in a circle, and half of the 

 seventy sat on the right and half on the left of 

 the president or Nasi, who, on this occasion, 

 was the High-Priest Caiaphas. At his one hand 

 sat the "father of the court," at the other the 

 " sage." Two scribes waited at the table to 

 record the sentence : two officers guarded the 

 prisoner, who stood in front of the president. 

 Among the semicircular crowd of judges, Caia- 

 phas and his friends represented the great Sad- 

 ducean element. The Sadducees, as rationalists, 

 had no particular enmity to Jesus, over and 

 above their general distaste for the introduction 

 of the divine as an element in human affairs. 

 But, as the aristocratic and official party, they 

 were most keenly alive to the disorganization 

 which that element often produces, and were 

 always disposed to suppress it before it had got 

 to a dangerous length. The previous appeal of 

 the high-priest to the sal us populi a3 overriding 

 all individual claims of right — " Ye know nothing 

 at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us 

 that one man die for the people, and that the 

 whole nation perish not " — was one full of rea- 

 son. Uis plan seems to have been founded on 

 a just and sound view of the temper of his own 

 nation and of the Roman authorities, a clear- 

 sighted and comprehensive view, omitting no ele- 

 ment that ought to be taken into account, ex- 

 c(pt the existence of God and his nearness to 

 men. But in the working out of that plan a 

 certain exasperation must by this time have 

 mingled with the calm determination to get rid 

 of a saintly fellow-citizen. The Pharisees, on 

 the other hand, were an equally large part of 

 the council, and their patriotic and religious feel- 

 ings had originally been fur more appealed to by 

 the preaching of Jesus. But the inward strug- 

 gle which had certainly preceded their rejection 

 of his claims had caused that rejection to be fol- 

 lowed, according to the ordinary laws of human 

 nature, by a growing hostility, which by this time 

 was a very active hatred. It was they, the zeal- 

 ots of the council, who, no doubt, took the initia- 

 tive in the extraordinary and tumultuous scene 

 which closed the sitting. During the later exam- 

 ination of witnesses Jesus had been silent ; but 

 the thought of his Messianic and divine claim 

 pressed upon his judges with overwhelming 



nisi a septuaginta et mrius judicum ccmsessu judicantur." 

 — Mishna, De SynedrUs, i., 5. 

 1 Hut see Lightfoot and others. 



force, and broke out at last into passionate utter- 

 ance. The discrepancy between the evangelists 

 at this point only brings out the whole scene 

 more historically. "Art thou the Christ? tell 

 us," they cried ; and the irrepressible exclama- 

 tions of the judicial crowd described in one gos- 

 pel were only put an end to by the solemn adju- 

 ration of their president, recorded in another. 

 To the eager and hostile questions of the coun- 

 cil, Jesus answered at first in a twofold utter- 

 ance : "If I tell you, ye will not believe." Was 

 he thinking sadly of their forgotten duty to weigh 

 his claims, and of a result to himself, or to them ? 

 But he adds : " And if I also ask you," as he had 

 done a few days before in the temple, when they 

 had demanded his authority, " if I, instead, put 

 my questions to you, ye will not answer me, and 

 ye will not release" your prisoner. It was tiue; 

 but the council was long past being turned from 

 its purpose by the reference which, I think, these 

 words again have to judicial fairness and the or- 

 der of justice. They saw in his face the light of 

 that more than earthly claim which his lips only 

 for a few moments delayed to make ; and with a 

 mixture of terrible and hateful emotions starting 

 to their feet, " Then said they all, Art thou, then, 

 the Son of God ? " But above that crowd of 

 aged and evil faces was now seen rising the High- 

 Priest of Israel, and all voices sunk away as the 

 chief magistrate and judge of the sacred nation 

 demanded, in the name of the God whose office 

 he bore, an answer to his most solemn adjuration, 

 " I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell 

 us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of the 

 Blessed ! " It was the question for which men 

 had waited so long ; and now the answer came, 

 "I am," the Christ, the Son of God: and, turn- 

 ing to the crowd who sat in their places of power 

 around him, he added, " Hereafter shall ye see the 

 Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, 

 and coming in the clouds of heaven." When a 

 king declared himself in Israel, the manner was 

 that he stood in the temple by a pillar, and the 

 people of the land receiving him rejoiced with 

 hosanna and song, with palm-branch and with 

 trumpet. And if this was the manner of a king, 

 how should the King-Messiah be received ? But 

 when a man blasphemed the name of God, the 

 ordinance in Israel was that every man who 

 heard it should rend his garment from the top 

 downward — rend it into two parts which might 

 again never be sewed into one. And scarcely had 

 Jesus witnessed his confession before those 

 " many witnesses," when the high-priest, stand- 

 ing in his place, rent his clothes, saying: "He 



