The trial as a historical problem
Of course,
one can hardly ignore the thorny historical problems surrounding the trial, all
of which have been compiled and reiterated in a sub-specialized literature. Rather
than recount the conversation in full, it will be sufficient to set forth the
presenting difficulties, as recognized by scholarship in this area. Assuming
(1) that Jesus was being tried before Caiaphas for a capital crime, and (2)
that the regulations of mishnaic Judaism would have been in force in Jesus’
day, sceptics have mainly stumbled on seven points:
1.
Whereas the ancient Jews not only tried capital cases during the day (m.
Sanh. 4.1), Mark relates that Jesus was tried at night.
2.
Whereas Jewish practice forbade
capital cases on Sabbath or feast days (m. Sanh. 4.1; m. Basah 5.2),
Mark’s story has Jesus being tired during Passover week.
3.
Whereas Jewish prescriptions required deferring the passing of
sentence to a separate hearing (m. Sanh. 4.1), Jesus is tried and
sentenced in the same convening.
4.
Whereas blasphemy by definition requires the pronouncing of the divine
name (m. Sanh. 4.1), the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel never does so, yet still
incurs the indictment of blasphemy.
5.
Whereas trials were required to be held in the council meeting room of
the Sanhedrin (m. Sanh. 11.2), the Gospel accounts set Jesus’ trial at
Caiaphas home.
6.
Whereas cases of this nature would require the defendant to make an
initial response to the staged charge, bringing in supporting witnesses as
appropriate (m. Sanh. 4.1), Jesus makes his only statement towards the
end of the proceedings.
7.
Finally, whereas the high priest’s role would typically involve his
serving as judge rather than prosecutor, Mark’s account likewise falls short of
historical verisimilitude.
On the face
of it, these considerations seem to comprise damning evidence against Mark’s
reliability as a historian. Such evidence might suggest either that the Evangelist
wilfully set out to deceive his hearers, or that Mark expected his readers to
receive his report as fictive mythology (a position which, as I have just
pointed out, has its own set of problems).
While several
scholars have made plausible cases as to why in fact scepticism regarding Jesus’
trial is finally unwarranted, for my part, I am convinced that the root problem
stems from the way in which the whole issue has been framed. More to the point,
while over the course of the past 80 years scholars have been busily weighing
in on the historicity or non-historicity of Jesus’ trial, the evidence suggests
that this event was actually not a trial at all but in fact something more akin
to a preliminary hearing, convened with the view to eliciting Roman charges of sedition.
Such a hearing would not obviate the necessity of employing many of the same
procedures typically used in a trial, but so long as the convening body did not
presume to pass sentence, the ordinary rule of a capital trial need not apply.
That Jesus’
trial was actually an informal hearing follows from at least four
considerations. First, at best we can tell, the Jews of the period did not
retain the right to try capital cases. Had the Sanhedrin actually attempted a
formal trial resulting in the death penalty, this itself would have been an
illegal act, running a risk with the Romans that would have far outweighed the
benefit accrued in sidelining Jesus. Second, the historical clues suggest that
from the start, the Jewish leaders adopted a strategy whereby they would seek
to entrap Jesus, first by making him run afoul of Jewish sensibilities and,
second, by portraying him as a disrupter of the pax Romana. On the
best-case scenario, the Jewish leadership would drum up sufficient evidence
against Jesus to justify handing him over to Rome (thereby staying in reasonably
good graces with internal constituencies), then allow the magistrate to
implement the punishment. This would also explain why Jesus’ accusers are
especially fixated on getting the witnesses to line up regarding his alleged statements
against the temple (14.5559). If a clear-cut statement against the temple would
have been solid grounds for bringing charges of blasphemy, it would also have
bene meeting the Romans at their ‘sweet spot’ for actionable behaviour. Third, while
several of the elements in Mark’s account do not fit a capital trial (e.g. the intrusive
participation of the high priest, the absence of any initial plea and defence),
they are consistent with an informal proceeding. These are weighty
considerations.
Yet in addition
to these there is a compelling and perhaps decisive point: not once does Mark’s
Sanhedrin see itself as being in a position to hand down a sentence. Instead,
Jesus is merely declared to be worthy of death (enochon einai thanatou)
(14.64). Where we do find technical legal language of condemnation, it is only
in Pilate’s term aition (‘guilty’) on one of his earlier statements about
Jesus: ‘I have examined him in your presence and have not found this man guilty
of any of your charges against him’ (egō enōpion hymōn anakrinas outhen
heuron en tō anthrōpō toutō aition hōn katēgoreite kat’autou). (Luke 23.14b)
In the scriptural record, the closest we come to such language being predicted
of the Jews is in Acts 13.27 (‘Because of the residents of Jerusalem and their
leaders did not recognize him or understand the words of the prophets that are
read every sabbath, they fulfilled those words by condemning [krinantes]
him’), but even here the exception actually confirms the rule, for the next
verse carefully qualifies its antecedent text by denying probative aitia (‘cause’)
for adverse judgement: ‘Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death
[mēdemian aitian thanatou], they asked Pilate to have him killed. (Mark 14.28) According to Luke, the
Jewish leaders were seeing aitia but failing to secure it, despite
having in hand a charge of blasphemy, the Jewish leaders were under no illusion
that blasphemy could pass muster with the Romans as a capital crime: if Jesus
was to be executed, it would have to be the Romans who, convinced by the early
fact-finding mission of the Jewish hearing, would take responsibility for
handing down the formal death sentence.
As
remarkable as it sounds, if so many historical-critical scholars have come to
view Mark’s trial as a Chrisitan fiction, it is largely because of the
unwarranted assumption that the event described in Mark 14.53-65 was a trial.
The truth of the matter seems to be that it was not, nor was it ever intended
to be.
So much for
the potential snags of Mark’s ‘trial account’, but what about the question of
access? Jesus obviously did not have the opportunity to share with his disciples
the details of the proceedings before his execution, and Peter, the disciple,
physically closest to the hearing, was still too far away) and too preoccupied
with his own conversations) to qualify as an eyewitness. How can we account for
the information of what had happened on the inside eventually making its way
into the early Christian Passion narrative? While these are legitimate questions,
their force should not be exaggerated. After all, assuming some continuity
between the hearing of Jesus and the trial of James (both events spanning the
high-priestly reign of the Annas family), and noting that individuals like
Josephus were obviously positioned to report a great deal of detail about the
latter (Ant. 20.9.1 §§197-203), we have no basis for insisting that the
details of Jesus’ interrogation would have been kept under lock and key. That
Caiphas arranged to have the proceedings take place at night was an attempt not
to ensure permanent confidentiality, but to take care of business expeditiously
out of public view, with the hope—if everything went smoothly—of shunting Jesus
over to the Romans as soon possible. Furthermore, despite our having been unconsciously
conditioned to think of Jesus’ trial as an intimate meeting (think, for
example, of Matthew Storm’s famous seventeenth-century painting of Caiaphas and
Jesus huddled around the high priest’s work desk), we have to remember that the
Sanhedrin was made up of dozens of men, some of whom, including probably Joseph
of Arimathea and Nicodemus, would have held varying levels of sympathy for the
Jesus movement. Within weeks after the crucifixion, as the post-Pentecostal
Church began to make inroads with the Jewish priesthood (Acts 6.8), the already
permeable social boundary between the temple leadership structure and the Jesus
movement would become even more porous with the exchange of information.
This all adds
up to one thing: given the size of the gathering, the highly controversial
nature of its focus, and the less than watertight cohesion of the Sanhedrin on
the matter at hand, Caiaphas must have regarded ongoing confidentiality a practical
impossibility. Whether there was an attempt to keep the hearing confidential,
it is doubtful; whether such an attempt would have even been feasible, we can
only say ‘no’. (Nicholas Perrin, Jesus the Priest [Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker, 2018], 266-69)
