by Michael Haag
The Sanhedrin Interrogates Jesus
Caiaphas who was a wealthy and leading member of the aristocratic Sadducees had been appointed high priest in AD 18 by Pontius Pilate’s predecessor Valerius Gratus; his father-in-law Annas had been high priest before him; the position of high priest ran in families. The high priest led the ceremonies at the Temple acting as intermediary between God and the people of Israel. He was also head of the Sanhedrin, that assembly of priests and scribes and elders responsible for Jewish affairs, which had long been the intermediary between the Jewish people and Rome. These were the men before whom Jesus was brought for interrogation inside the walls of the city that night.
The Sadducees, the party of the aristocracy and the chief priests, the party that had most accommodated itself to the Romans, dominated the Sanhedrin, but a growing number of Pharisees filled its ranks. The Sanhedrin was comprised of twenty-three Temple priests, twenty-three scribes who were learned in the law and twenty-three elders who were heads of tribes and families and were leading men of affairs; with the high priest at their head they were seventy in all, though some accounts speak of a deputy head, making seventy-one. Members were men of age and experience, fully versed in the scriptures and the oral law; each was also married and had to be a father; when delivering judgements fathers were considered more merciful. Jesus knew a number of these men, perhaps all of them. He had debated with the priests and the scribes at the Temple and some among the elders were sympathetic to him; the gospels name two of these, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
Joseph of Arimathea is known in all the gospels as the man who buried Jesus in his own freshly-cut tomb. He was probably a Pharisee, not all of whom shared the view of the Sadducees that Jesus was a threat who needed to be eliminated. ‘He was a good man, and a just’, says Luke of Joseph of Arimathea, adding that he had dissented from the Sanhedrin’s verdict against Jesus; moreover Joseph ‘himself waited for the kingdom of God’ (Luke 23:50-51).
This medieval illumination depicts the events of Jesus’ trial in three registers. At the top Jesus is brought before the high priest; in the middle register Peter denies Jesus; and at the bottom Pilate has Jesus scourged. Codex Egberti, Germany, c.980.
Trial of Jesus. Wikimedia Commons.
As for Nicodemus, ‘who was a man of the Pharisees’ (John 3:1), he knew of the plot among members of the Sanhedrin to kill Jesus and turned on them saying, ‘Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?’ (John 7:51). To which they replied with a mixture of dismissiveness and menace, Art thou also of Galilee?’, meaning nothing good comes from Galilee, certainly not Jesus, ‘for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet’ (John 7:52), but they also knew that Nicodemus had family lands in Galilee.
Nicodemus almost certainly told Jesus about the Sanhedrin plot; throughout Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem and up to that night of agony in the Garden of Gethsemane he was filled with knowing and dread, but trusting in the father and the kingdom to come.
When Jesus was arrested and taken to the Sanhedrin Peter followed at a distance and even entered the palace where three times he was noticed but denied that he was one of the disciples.
And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down among them. But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him, and said, This man was also with him. And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not. And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. And about the space of one hour after another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is a Galilaean. And Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew. And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.’ (Luke 22 55-62)
The account of Jesus before the Sanhedrin therefore does not come from Peter, or only partly; primarily it comes from ‘another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest’ (John 18:15). Some say that John the gospel writer was himself that disciple but he would have been as easily identifiable and intimidated as Peter; instead the disciple was known to Caiaphas who could not bar him from the proceedings because he was himself a member of the Sanhedrin; possibly he was Joseph of Arimathea or his name was Nicodemus, who appears only in John’s gospel; but another possibility, as we shall later see, is that he is Lazarus of Bethany.
When Jesus was brought before the Sanhedrin he was mocked and blindfolded and struck about the face, shoved and spat upon and beaten in front of these priests, these scribes, these elders he knew. ‘I spake openly to the world’, Jesus told them; ‘I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. . . . If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me? (John 18:20-23).
In the face of his interrogators Jesus remained silent or turned their questions round. ‘Answerest thou nothing?’ demanded the high priest after false witnesses testified that Jesus had said ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands’, whereas actually Jesus was repeating prophecies found in Jeremiah and Micah. ‘But he held his peace, and answered nothing’ (Mark 14:58-61).
When asked if he was ‘the Son of God’, Jesus answered, ‘Thou has said’ (Matthew 26:64) or ‘Ye say that I am’ (Luke 22:70). But his ambiguous replies were leapt on as admissions. In the version given by Mark 14:61-2 the high priest asks ‘Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven’, but to be a messiah (Christ is Greek for the Hebrew messiah) was not a blasphemy; many people claimed at one time or another to be the messiah and not one was ever accused of or tried for blasphemy. Nor was it blasphemous to be the Son of Man or even the Son of God, as all the people of Israel were the Sons of God – though mention of the name God was blasphemous, explaining why Jesus talks of the ‘Son of man sitting on the right hand of power’; power, not God; he was being careful not to be blasphemous.
But in forgiving sin, as Jesus had done to the sinful woman who washed his feet with her tears in the house of the Pharisee at Capernaum, he could be seen as assuming a power of forgiveness that among Jews belonged to God alone. But whether in response to those words ‘I am’ in Mark or to the ambiguous answers that Jesus gives in the other gospels, including Matthew, the Sanhedrin delivered its judgement. ‘Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy. . . . What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death’ (Matthew 26:65-66).
Although the gospel accounts differ in detail, the synoptics agree that Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin condemned Jesus for blasphemy. But this may have been a misunderstanding by the gospel authors writing generations later; no longer as Jewish followers of Jesus but rather as Christians they saw the messiah as divine in the way Jews did not. But the gospel of John does not make this mistake; it tells a different story, that Jesus was questioned by the high priest but no trial or judgement took place.
All four gospels say, however, that Jesus was now bound and led away to Pontius Pilate. Addressing the Roman governor the Sanhedrin said nothing about the religious charge of blasphemy. They lacked authority to execute anyone; that power lay exclusively with the Romans; but Caiaphas and his followers wanted Jesus out of the way and therefore they presented his transgression as a political one threatening Roman rule. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea and others sympathetic to Jesus had done what they could but this course had been set in advance by the high priest and his supporters who now told the Roman governor that Jesus, who had caused havoc at the Temple, who had entered Jerusalem in triumph, had proclaimed himself the King of the Jews.
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Jesus Brought Before Pontius Pilate
As Judaea was a province of the Roman Empire any claim to be King of the Jews would be taken as rebellion and treason. But Jesus responded to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate in the same way as he had to the Sanhedrin.
And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answering said unto him, Thou sayest it. And the chief priests accused him of many things: but he answered nothing. And Pilate asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing? behold how many things they witness against thee. But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marvelled. (Mark 15:2-5)
The gospel of Luke adds the further information that when Pilate realised that Jesus was a Galilean he decided that he belonged to Herod’s jurisdiction, and therefore he sent him to Herod who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. But though the chief priests and the scribes stood before Herod and vehemently accused Jesus, still he answered nothing, and after the tetrarch’s soldiers ridiculed Jesus and mocked him, Herod returned him without charge to Pilate. This was not the absolution it seemed, however; rather in passing Jesus back and forth between them Pilate and Herod were each acknowledging the authority of the other which gratified them both, for as Luke goes on to say, ‘And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves’ (Luke 23:12).
‘Ecce homo’ – ‘Behold the man’ – Pontius Pilate says to the crowd as he shows them Jesus bound, scourged and crowned with thorns, to which they reply ‘Crucify him!’ A scene by Antonio Ciseri, Swiss, 1871.
Ecce Homo by Antonio Ciseri. Wikimedia Commons.
But there was still the Sanhedrin which Pilate hoped to appease by giving Jesus a good beating. And so he called together the chief priests and the elders and told them that he had ‘found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him. . . . I will therefore chastise him, and release him’ (Luke 23:14,16).
The release of a prisoner at the time of the feast was a custom according to all four gospels. But the crowd that had gathered outside the governor’s quarters were whipped up by the chief priests and their supporters among the elders to cry out for the release not of Jesus but of Barabbas, an insurrectionary, a robber and a murderer. ‘And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him’ (Mark 15:12-14).
Pilate understood that behind this demonstration was the power of the chief priests whose collaboration he required if Judaea was to be governed with the least incident. And so Pilate ‘released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.’ (Mark 15:15)
A Woman from Nowhere
Mary Magdalene was there among the people as Pilate showed them the scourged and bloody figure of Jesus, dressed in a robe of royal colour, a crown of thorns pressed upon his head, and said ‘Behold the man’. And when they answered ‘Crucify him, crucify him’ (John 19:5-6) Mary Magdalene was there.
The Via Dolorosa is the route through Jerusalem that Jesus is traditionally believed to have taken after his conviction by Pontius Pilate to Golgotha, the place of his crucifixion.
The Via Dolorosa. Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt by Sir Charles William Wilson and Stanley Lane-Poole. London 1881-84.
Mary Magdalene pressed her way through the narrow streets as Jesus was led to Golgotha, most likely the hill resembling the top of a skull just outside today’s Lion Gate opposite the Garden of Gethsemane, with the Mount of Olives and Bethany beyond. Here Jesus was stripped naked and Mary Magdalene heard the hammer blows driving iron nails through his hands and feet. A sign was placed at the top of the cross reading in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, The King of the Jews, mocking his entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey less than a week before.
Were it not for Luke 8:1-3 where he mentions those women who travelled with Jesus round Galilee and financed his ministry we would not yet have heard of Mary Magdalene. Even so she arrives on the scene as a surprise, the chief witness to the crucifixion of Jesus and to the events that follow. You would expect that a person who plays such a central role in the final drama would also have appeared elsewhere in the gospels, yet apart from that brief mention in Luke she is not there. She seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Or has she?
Has Mary Magdalene been there all along, the chief witness to the ministry of Jesus and his closest companion?
The theme of anointing runs through the gospels, of women anointing Jesus, in particular the women – or the woman – at Bethany. The gospels of Mark and Matthew do not mention her name which leaves open the possibility that she is Mary Magdalene. We will see that Mark talks of Mary Magdalene coming to anoint Jesus at the tomb.
But strangely the gospel of Luke makes no mention of an anointing at Bethany. Neither does Luke mention Mary Magdalene by name at the crucifixion nor as one of the women from Galilee who prepares spices and ointments to anoint Jesus at the tomb. But Luke does tell of a sinner woman who washes Jesus’ feet and anoints him at Capernaum, and he does so in chapter 7 of his gospel immediately before introducing Mary Magdalene by name in chapter 8 as a woman possessed by seven devils, which might make you think that Luke was trying to draw invidious associations in your mind.
Luke is also the author of The Acts of the Apostles which nowhere acknowledges the existence of Mary Magdalene. Instead the function of Acts is to draw Paul into the story, Paul who never knew Jesus in his lifetime but proclaimed himself an apostle on the basis of having had a vision known only to himself; yet Paul’s vision of the risen Jesus becomes the reality of Acts while Mary Magdalene’s experience at the crucifixion, burial and resurrection is totally suppressed. For some reason the Evangelist Luke feels the need to manipulate his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles to diminish and even eliminate Mary Magdalene.
The author of John’s gospel is seemingly more forthcoming. The woman who anoints Jesus at Bethany is identified as Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus. And at the resurrection John’s gospel will have Jesus appear to Mary Magdalene in an intimate and moving scene. But John will not have Mary Magdalene prepare spices and ointments nor bring them to the tomb to anoint Jesus; Nicodemus will have done that when the body of Jesus is placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea – thereby breaking the link between Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene, or so it seems, for as we shall see John leaves us with other clues.
Anointing has two primary purposes in the Bible; it can be personal, to beautify and soothe the body, and sometimes it is a way of honouring a special guest. Or anointing can be performed as part of a religious rite. Kings and priests are anointed, and also the messiah. In the Bible anointing means imparting the Divine Spirit. Messiah is Hebrew for the anointed one; in Greek the word is Christ. If Mary Magdalene is anointing Jesus and imparting the Divine Spirit, what does that make Mary Magdalene?
You could be forgiven for thinking that the gospels have been edited so that that question does not occur to you. But the words of Jesus remain. ‘She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her’ (Mark 14:9; Matthew 26:13).
The Cross
‘They crucified him’, say Mark 15:25 and Luke 23:33, preferring the bare understatement of fact to any description of what crucifixion involved; and the other gospels are the same; they led Jesus away ‘to crucify him’ says Matthew 27:31, ‘to be crucified’ says John 19:16. But the Evangelists are conspicuous in saying next to nothing about the nature of Jesus’ crucifixion. Historical records outside the New Testament hardly say more; a vast silence hangs over the topic of crucifixion and with good reason. The humiliating and grotesque slow death of crucifixion was terrifying and repellant.
Jesus is
stripped naked before being nailed to the cross. The loin cloth shown in depictions of the crucifixion is for the sake of the viewers’ modesty. But the Romans thought otherwise. Stripping the man naked, hanging him up in a public place and exposing his mutilated body to jeers and flies was all part of the Romans’ purpose to inflict the greatest possible pain and humiliation on the condemned. Woodcut by Eric Gill, English, 1917.
Jesus Stripped by Eric Gill. The Engravings, by Eric Gill, edited by Christopher Skelton, London 1990.
Decapitation by the sword, burning and crucifixion were the three common forms of Roman execution, but crucifixion was the worst, reserved for traitors, pirates, brigands and slaves; being put into the arena and torn apart by wild animals was considered a better death because it came more quickly.
The crucifixion of a Roman citizen was forbidden by law. Even the subject was avoided. ‘The very word “cross”’, said Cicero, the first-century BC statesman, ‘should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears.’ Josephus called it as ‘the most wretched of deaths’. Cicero described crucifixion as ‘supplicium crudelissimum taeterrimumque’, a disgusting and cruel punishment.
Roman executions were preceeded by scourging, which meant that Jesus’ back was torn open by the braided leather thongs of a whip at the end of which small iron balls and sharp pieces of sheep bone were sewn. The condemned was then made to carry his cross to the place of execution, and according to the gospel of John this is what happened; Jesus was made to carry his cross to Golgotha. But Matthew, Mark and Luke all say that a man in the crowd called Simon of Cyrene was made to carry the cross for him; his lacerated back meant that Jesus was almost certainly suffering from circulatory shock. An entire cross would have been too heavy to carry, let alone for a man who had just received the ‘half death’, as scourging was called, and so this would have been just the cross-piece, probably weighing fifty to a hundred pounds.
