TEE TRIAL OF JESUS CHE 1ST. 



G5 



hedrim itself no doubt maintained, as the Jews 

 generally did on its behalf, an exclusive right to 

 judge in the first instance ; and its tendency 

 would be very strong to deny any re-cognitio by 

 the Roman power, and either not to call in that 

 power at all, or to limit it to a mere right of 

 countersign. What view the Roman governor 

 might take, in the very unusual case of such a 

 charge being brought to his tribunal, was an- 

 other matter. 



But in truth, while the dialogue-narrative of 

 the fourth Gospel admirably illustrates the his- 

 torical relations of the parties at the time, the 

 narrative, in that Gospel and in the others, su- 

 persedes the necessity for referring to these more 

 general relations. Whether it was legitimate or 

 not for the Jews to condemn for a capital crime, 

 on this occasion they did so. Whether it was 

 legitimate or not for Pilate to try over again an 

 accused whom they had condemned, on this oc- 

 casion he did so. There were certainly two tri- 

 als. And the dialogue already narrated expresses 

 with the most admirable terseness the struggle 

 which we should have expected between the ef- 

 fort of the Jews to get a mere countersign of 

 their sentence and the determination of Pilate to 

 assume his full judicial responsibility, whether 

 of first instance or of review. The reluctance 

 of the Jews on the present occasion was no 

 doubt prompted not so much by their usual ec- 

 clesiastical independence as by their dread lest 

 inquiry by Pilate should prevent his carrying out 

 their scheme. But as matters actually turned 

 out, the collision which the procurator's first 

 words provoked had the effect of binding him 

 | publicly, before the men of both nations who 

 surrounded his judgment-seat, to deal with this 

 capital case in his judicial capacity. It was 

 henceforth ho mere matter of administration ; no 

 incident of summary police jurisdiction or mili- 

 tary court-martial : it was a deliberate judgment 

 of life and death by the supreme civil ruler who 

 had interposed his jurisdiction between an ac- 

 cused man and the chief authorities of the sub- 

 ject nation. 



The accusation demanded by Pilate neces- 

 sarily followed, now that he had insisted on be- 

 ing judge in the cause. We have this given 

 with considerable formality in the Gospel of 

 Luke ; and, though it is omitted in the three 

 others, the first question of Pilate to Jesus, 

 which they all record, implies a previous charge. 

 Luke gives it thus : " We found this man per- 

 verting the nation, and forbidding to give trib- 

 ute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a 



41 



king." Had the accusation retained the form in 

 which it was brought before the Sanhedrim — had 

 it been a merely religious or ecclesiastical crime 

 which was now named — a different question 

 would have arisen. Had the chief priests, when 

 they " began to accuse " Jesus, said at once what 

 they passionately exclaimed at a later stage of the 

 cause, " We have a law, and by our law he ought 

 to die, because he made himself the Son of God," 

 it may be doubtful what Pilate would have done. 

 He was authorized as governor to administer their 

 law, or to preside over and control its administra- 

 tion ; and while his leaning would be, like that 

 of Gallio, to consider this question a matter of 

 words, he might have been induced to see that 

 these words covered grave consequences to the 

 state. But such questions are superseded by the 

 deliberate change in the form of the accusation 

 — or, rather, the reverting to that accusation 

 which had been originally intended, and for which 

 the ecclesiastical procedure of the night before was 

 a pretext or preliminary. If we accept the sen- 

 tence of Luke as equivalent to the nominis delatio 

 of the Roman law, or to the affidavit of the prose- 

 cutor-witness of the Hebrew law already consid- 

 ered — and it has resemblances to both — it throws 

 a flood of light before as well as behind. The 

 charge of " perverting " (5iacrrp€(poi/Ta), including 

 perhaps " revolutionizing " as well as " seducing " 

 the nation, was fairly true, and was distinctly in- 

 cluded in the Jewish procedure of the night be- 

 fore. No doubt to Roman ears it was ambiguous, 

 but the ambiguity recalls that very real doubt 

 which had governed his mind who said, "If we 

 let him alone, all men will believe on him, and 

 the Romans will come and take away our place 

 and our nation." The culminating charge, that 

 Jesus called himself " Christ a king," was also 

 true, and had just been acknowledged to be true, 

 though scarcely in the sense in which the accusers 

 expected that the ears of the governor would re- 

 ceive it. But if we are to take Luke's narrative, 

 we must believe that the charge was not left in 

 this doubtful and ineffective form. The managers 

 of the impeachment had no doubt not intended 

 to make a deliberately untrue statement before 

 the heathen judgment-seat. They wished, at as 

 small an expense of falsehood as possible, to 

 throw upon the foreign power the odium of a 

 prophet's death. But the prompt utterances of 

 Pilate seem to have forced them into the vil- 

 lainy they would rather have avoided, and, be- 

 tween the more ambiguous charges of seducing 

 the nation and claiming a royal Messiahship, they 

 add, by way of illustration, " forbidding to give 



