CHAPTER XXIV.

ARREST AND TRIAL OF JESUS.

It was quite dark when they left the room. Jesus, as was his wont, passed through the valley of Kedron; and, accompanied by his disciples, went to the garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives. He sat down there. Overawing his friends by his great superiority, he watched and prayed. They were sleeping near him, when suddenly an armed troop appeared bearing lighted torches. It was the guards of the temple, armed with staves, a kind of brigade of police under the control of the priests; they were supported by a detachment of Roman soldiers with their swords; the order for the arrest emanated from the high priest and the Sanhedrim. Judas, knowing the habits of Jesus, had indicated this place as that where he might most easily be surprised. According to the unanimous tradition of the earliest times, Judas accompanied the detachment himself; according to some, he carried his hateful conduct even to the length of betraying him with a kiss. Be that as it may, certain it is that there was some show of resistance on the part of the disciples. One of them (Peter, according to eye-witnesses) drew his sword, and wounded one of the servants of the high priest, named Malchus, on the ear. Jesus put a stop to this resistance, and surrendered himself to the soldiers. Weak and incapable of acting with effect, especially against authorities with so much prestige, the disciples took to flight and became dispersed. Peter and John alone did not lose sight of their Master. Another unknown young man (probably Mark), wrapped in a light garment, 227followed him. The authorities sought to arrest him, but the young man fled, leaving his tunic in the hands of the guards.

The course which the priests had resolved to pursue in regard to Jesus was quite in conformity with the established law. The procedure against the “corrupter” (mésith), who sought to attaint the purity of religion, is explained in the Talmud, with details the naïve impudence of which provokes a smile. A judicial ambush is therein erected into an essential part of the examination of criminals. When a man was accused of being a “corrupter,” two witnesses were suborned who were concealed behind a partition. It was arranged to bring the accused into a contiguous room, where he could be heard by these two witnesses without his perceiving them. Two candles were lighted near him, in order that it might be satisfactorily proved that the witnesses “saw him.” He was then made to repeat his blasphemy; next, urged to retract it. If he persisted, the witnesses who had heard him conducted him to the tribunal, and he was stoned to death. The Talmud adds that this was the manner in which they treated Jesus; that he was condemned on the faith of two witnesses who had been suborned, and that the crime of “corruption” is, moreover, the only one for which the witnesses are thus prepared.

In fact, the disciples of Jesus inform us that the crime with which their Master was charged was that of “corruption;” and, apart from some minutiæ, the offspring of the rabbinical imagination, the narrative of the Gospels corresponds exactly with the procedure described by the Talmud. The plan of the enemies of Jesus was to convict him, by the testimony of witnesses and by his own avowals, of blasphemy and of outrage against the Mosaic religion, to condemn him to death according 228to law, and then to get the condemnation sanctioned by Pilate. The priestly authority, as we have already seen, was in reality entirely in the hands of Hanan. The order for the arrest in all probability emanated from him. It was to the residence of this powerful personage that Jesus was first taken. Hanan questioned him in regard to his doctrine and his disciples. Jesus, with justifiable pride, declined to enter into long explanations. He referred Hanan to his teachings, which had been public; he maintained that he had never held any secret doctrine; and requested the ex high priest to interrogate those who had listened to him. This was a perfectly natural response; but the idolatrous respect which surrounded the old priest made it appear audacious; and one of those present replied to it, it is said, by a blow.

Peter and John had followed their Master to the residence of Hanan. John, who was known in the house, was admitted without difficulty; but Peter was stopped at the entrance, and John was obliged to beg the porter to let him pass. The night was cold. Peter remained in the antechamber, and approached a brazier, around which the servants were warming themselves. He was soon recognised as a disciple of the accused. The unfortunate man, betrayed by his Galilean accent, and pursued by questions from the servants, one of whom was a kinsman of Malchus and had seen him at Gethsemane, denied thrice that he had ever had the slightest connection with Jesus. He imagined that Jesus could not hear him, and never dreamt that this dissimulated cowardice was exceedingly dishonourable. But his better nature soon revealed to him the fault he had committed. A fortuitous circumstance, the crowing of the cock, recalled to him a remark that Jesus had made. Touched to the heart, he went out and wept bitterly.

Hanan, although the real author of the judicial murder about to be committed, had not power to pronounce sentence upon Jesus, so he sent him to his son-in-law, Kaïapha, who bore the official title. This man, the blind instrument of his father-in-law, naturally ratified everything required of him by Hanan. The Sanhedrim was assembled at his house. The inquiry commenced; and several witnesses, well instructed beforehand, according to the inquisitorial process described in the Talmud, appeared before the tribunal. The fatal sentence which Jesus had really uttered, “I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days,” was cited by two witnesses. To blaspheme the temple of God was, according to the Jewish law, equivalent to blaspheming God Himself. Jesus remained silent, and refused to explain the incriminating speech. If we may believe one version, the high priest then adjured him to say if he were the Messiah; Jesus confessed it, and proclaimed before the assembly the near approach of his heavenly reign. The courage of Jesus, who had resolved to die, did not require this. It is more probable that here, as when before Hanan, he remained silent. This was in general, during his last moments, his rule of conduct. The sentence was determined on; and they only sought for pretexts. Jesus perceived this, and did not undertake a useless defence. From the orthodox Judaism point of view, he was truly a blasphemer, a destroyer of the established worship, and these crimes were punishable by the law with death. With one voice, the assembly declared him guilty of a capital crime. The members of the council, who had a secret penchant for him, were absent or did not vote. The usual frivolity of old-established aristocracies did not permit the judges to reflect long upon the consequences of the sentence they had 230rendered. Human life was at that time very lightly sacrificed; the members of the Sanhedrim could not, of course, dream that their sons would have to render account to an angry posterity for the sentence pronounced with such flippant disdain.

The Sanhedrim had not the right to execute a sentence of death. But in the confusion of powers which then prevailed in Judæa, Jesus was, from that moment, none the less condemned. He remained the rest of the night exposed to the wicked treatment of an infamous pack of servants, who spared him no affront.

In the morning the chief priests and the elders again assembled. The question was, how to get Pilate to ratify the condemnation pronounced by the Sanhedrim, whose powers, since the occupation of the Romans, were no longer sufficient. The procurator was not invested, like the imperial legate, with the power of life and death. But Jesus was not a Roman citizen: it only required the authorisation of the governor in order that the sentence pronounced against him should take its course. As always happens when a political people subjects a nation amongst which the civil and the religious laws are confounded, the Romans had been led to give to the Jewish law a sort of official support. The Roman law was not applicable to Jews. The latter remained under the canonical law which we find recorded in the Talmud, just as the Arabs in Algeria are still governed by the code of Islamism. Although neutral in religion, the Romans thus very often sanctioned penalties inflicted for religious faults. The situation was nearly that of the sacred cities of India under the English dominion, or rather that which would be the state of Damascus if to-morrow Syria were conquered by a European nation. Josephus pretends, though the 231assertion may be doubted, that if a Roman ventured beyond the pillars which bore inscriptions forbidding Pagans to advance, the Romans themselves would have delivered him to the Jews to be put to death.

The agents of the priests therefore bound Jesus and led him to the judgment-hall, which was the former palace of Herod, adjoining the Tower of Antonia. It was the morning of the day on which the Paschal lamb was to be eaten (Friday the 14th of Nisan, our 3rd of April). The Jews would have been defiled by entering the judgment-hall, and would not have been able to share in the sacred feast, and therefore remained without. Pilate, apprised of their presence, ascended the bima or tribunal, situated in the open air, at the place named Gabbatha, or in Greek, Lithostrotos, on account of the pavement which covered the ground.

Hardly had he been informed of the accusation before he manifested his annoyance at being mixed up in the affair. He then shut himself up in the judgment-hall with Jesus. There a conversation took place, the precise details of which are lost, no witness having been able to repeat it to the disciples, but the tenor of which appears to have been happily conjectured by the fourth Evangelist. His narrative, at least, is in perfect accord with what history teaches us of the respective positions of the two interlocutors.

The procurator, Pontius, surnamed Pilate, doubtless on account of the pilum or javelin of honour with which he or one of his ancestors was decorated, had hitherto had no relation with the new sect. Indifferent to the internal quarrels of the Jews, he only saw in all these sectarian movements the effects of a diseased imagination and disordered brain. In general, he did not like the Jews. The Jews, on their part, detested him still more. They 232considered him harsh, scornful, and passionate, and accused him of improbable crimes. Jerusalem, the centre of a great national fermentation, was a very seditious city, and an insupportable abode for a foreigner. The enthusiasts pretended that it was a fixed design of the new procurator to abolish the Jewish law. Their narrow fanaticism, their religious hatreds, shocked that broad sentiment of justice and of civil government which the humblest Roman carried everywhere with him. All the acts of Pilate which are known to us attest him to have been a good administrator. In the earlier period of the exercise of his charge, he had had difficulties with those subject to him which he had solved in a very brutal manner; but it seems that on the whole he was right. The Jews must have appeared to him a very backward people; he doubtless judged them as a liberal prefect formerly judged the Bas-Bretons, who rebelled for such a simple matter as a new road, or the establishment of a school. In his best projects for the good of the country, notably in those relating to public works, he had encountered an impassable obstacle in the Law. The Law narrowed life to such a point that it was opposed to all change and to all amelioration. The Roman structures, even the most useful ones, were, on the part of zealous Jews, objects of great antipathy. Two votive escutcheons with inscriptions, which Pilate had set up at his residence, which was near the sacred precincts, provoked a still more violent storm. Pilate at first cared little for these susceptibilities; and he thus was soon seen engaged in sanguinary repressions, which afterwards culminated in his removal. The experience of so many conflicts had rendered him very prudent in his relations with an intractable people, who avenged themselves upon their governors by compelling the latter to use towards them rigorous 233severities. The procurator, with extreme displeasure, saw himself led to play a cruel part in this new affair, by a law he hated. He knew that religious fanaticism, when it has obtained some power from civil governments, is afterwards the first to throw the responsibility upon the latter, almost accusing them of being the author of their own excesses. What could be more unjust? for the true culprit is, in such cases, the instigator!

Pilate, then, would have liked to save Jesus. Perhaps the calm and dignified attitude of the accused made an impression upon him. According to a tradition, Jesus found a supporter in the procurator's own wife. She may have seen the gentle Galilean from some window of the palace, which overlooked the courts of the temple. Perhaps she had seen him again in her dreams; and the blood of this beautiful young man, which was about to be spilt, had given her nightmare. Certain it is that Jesus found Pilate prepossessed in his favour. The governor questioned him kindly, with the desire of finding out by what means he could send him away pardoned.

The title of “King of the Jews,” which Jesus had never taken upon himself, but which his enemies represented as the sum and substance of his acts and pretensions, was naturally that by which they might be able to excite the suspicions of the Roman authority. He was accused of sedition, and of being guilty of treason against the government. Nothing could be more unjust; for Jesus had always recognised the Roman empire as the established power. But conservative religious bodies are not accustomed to shrink from calumny. In spite of all his explanations they drew certain conclusions from his teaching; they made him out to be a disciple of Judas the Gaulonite; they 234pretended that he forbade the payment of tribute to Cæsar. Pilate asked him if he was really the King of the Jews. Jesus did not dissimulate his belief. But the great ambiguity of speech which had been the source of his strength, and which, after his death, was to establish his kingship, did not serve him on this occasion. An idealist, that is to say, not distinguishing the spirit from the substance, Jesus, whose words, to use the image of the Apocalypse, were as a two-edged sword, never completely satisfied the powers of earth. If we may believe John, he did avow his royalty, but coupled it with this profound sentence: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Then he explained the nature of his kingdom, which consisted entirely in the possession and proclamation of truth. Pilate knew nothing of this grand idealism. Jesus doubtless appeared to him as being an inoffensive dreamer. The total absence of religious and philosophical proselytism among the Romans of this epoch made them regard devotion to truth as a chimera. Such discussions annoyed them, and appeared to them devoid of meaning. Not perceiving the element of danger to the empire that lay hidden in these new speculations, they had no reason to employ violence against them. All their displeasure fell upon those who asked them to inflict punishment for vain subtleties. Twenty years after, Gallio still followed the same course towards the Jews. Until the fall of Jerusalem, the rule which the Romans adopted in administration was to remain completely indifferent to the quarrels those sectarians had among themselves.

An expedient suggested itself to the mind of the governor by which he could reconcile his own feelings with the demands of the fanatical people, whose resentment he had already so often felt. It was the custom to deliver a prisoner to the people 235at the time of the Passover. Pilate, knowing that Jesus had only been arrested in consequence of the jealousy of the priests, tried to obtain for him the benefit of this custom. He appeared again upon the bima, and proposed to the multitude to release the “King of the Jews.” The proposition, made in these terms, though ironical, was characterised by a degree of liberality. The priests saw the danger of it. They acted promptly, and, in order to combat the proposition of Pilate, they suggested to the crowd the name of a prisoner who enjoyed great popularity in Jerusalem. By a singular coincidence he also was called Jesus, and bore the surname of Bar-Abba, or Bar-Rabban. He was a well-known personage, and had been arrested for being mixed up in a disturbance which had been accompanied by murder. A general clamour was raised, “Not this man; but Jesus Bar-Rabban;” and Pilate was obliged to release Jesus Bar-Rabban.

His embarrassment increased. He feared that too much indulgence to a prisoner, to whom was given the title of “King of the Jews,” might compromise him. Fanaticism, moreover, constrains all powers to make terms with it. Pilate felt himself obliged to make some concession; but still hesitating to shed blood, in order to satisfy men whom he detested, wished to turn the thing into a jest. Affecting to laugh at the pompous title they had given to Jesus, he caused him to be scourged. Flagellation was the usual preliminary of crucifixion. Perhaps Pilate wished it to be believed that this sentence had already been pronounced, hoping that the preliminary would suffice. Then took place, according to all the narratives, a revolting scene. The soldiers put a scarlet robe on the back of Jesus, a crown of thorny branches upon his head, and a reed in his hand. Thus attired, he was led to the tribunal in front of the 236people. The soldiers defiled before him, striking him in turn, and knelt to him, saying, “Hail! King of the Jews,” Others, it is said, spit upon him, and bruised his head with the reed. It is difficult to understand that Roman dignity could lend itself to acts so shameful. True, Pilate, in the capacity of procurator, had scarcely any but auxiliary troops under his command. Roman citizens, as the legionaries were, would not have stooped to such indignities.

Did Pilate think by this display to shield himself from responsibility? Did he hope to turn aside the blow which threatened Jesus by conceding something to the hatred of the Jews, and by substituting for the tragic denouement a grotesque termination, whence would seem to follow that the affair merited no other issue? If such were his idea, it did not succeed. The tumult increased, and became an actual riot. The cry “Crucify him! Crucify him!” resounded on all sides. The priests, assuming a tone of more and more urgency, declared the law to be in peril if the corrupter were not punished with death. Pilate saw clearly that in order to save Jesus he would have to put down a furious riot. He still tried, however, to gain time. He returned to the judgment-hall, and ascertained from what country Jesus came, seeking a pretext to free him from adjudicating. According to one tradition, he even sent Jesus to Antipas, who it is said was then at Jerusalem. Jesus encouraged but little these benevolent efforts; he maintained, as he had done at the house of Kaïapha, a grave and dignified silence which astonished Pilate. The cries from without became more and more menacing. The people had already begun to denounce the lack of zeal of the functionary who shielded an enemy of Cæsar. The greatest adversaries of the Roman rule were found to be transformed into loyal subjects 237of Tiberius, so as to have the right of accusing the too tolerant procurator of treason. “We have no king,” said they, “but Cæsar. If thou let this man go thou art not Cæsar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.” The feeble Pilate yielded; he foresaw the report that his enemies would send to Rome, in which they would accuse him of having favoured a rival of Tiberius. Already the Jews, in the matter of the votive escutcheons, had written to the emperor, and their action had been approved. He feared for his office. By a condescension, which was to hold up his name to the lash of history, he yielded, throwing, it is said, all the responsibility of what was about to happen upon the Jews. The latter, according to the Christians, fully accepted it by exclaiming, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

Were these words really uttered? It is open to doubt. They nevertheless are the expression of a profound historical truth. Considering the attitude which the Romans had taken up in Judæa, Pilate could scarcely have acted otherwise than he did. How many sentences of death dictated by religious intolerance have forced the hand of the civil power! The king of Spain, who, in order to please a fanatical clergy, delivered hundreds of his subjects to the stake, was more blamable than Pilate, for he was the representative of a more absolute power than were the Romans at Jerusalem. When the civil power becomes persecuting or meddlesome at the solicitation of the priesthood, it demonstrates its weakness. But let the government that is without sin in this respect throw the first stone at Pilate. The “secular arm,” behind which clerical cruelty shelters itself, is not the culprit. No one is justified in saying that he has a horror of blood when he causes it to be shed by his servants.

It was, then, neither Tiberius nor Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic Law. According to our modern ideas, there is no transmission of moral demerit from father to son; each one has to account to human or divine justice for that which he himself has done. Consequently, every Jew who suffers to-day for the murder of Jesus has a right to complain, for he might have been a Simon the Cyrenean, or at least not have been one of those who cried “Crucify him!” But nations, like individuals, have their responsibilities. Now, if ever a crime was the crime of a nation, it was the death of Jesus. This death was “legal” in the sense that it was primarily caused by a law which was the very soul of the nation. The Mosaic Law, it is true, in its modern yet accepted form, pronounced the penalty of death against all attempts to change the established worship. Now, there is no doubt that Jesus attacked this worship, and hoped to destroy it. The Jews expressed this to Pilate with truthful simplicity: “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die; because he has made himself the Son of God.” The law was detestable, but it was the law of ancient ferocity; and the hero who attempted to abrogate it had first of all to endure its penalty.

Alas! it has taken more than eighteen hundred years for the blood that he shed to bear its fruits. For ages tortures and death have been inflicted in the name of Jesus on thinkers as noble as himself. Even to-day, in countries which call themselves Christian, penalties are pronounced for religious derelictions. Jesus is not responsible for these errors. He could not foresee that people with mistaken ideas would one day imagine him to be a frightful Moloch, greedy of burnt victims. Christianity has been intolerant, but intolerance is 239not essentially a Christian monopoly. It is Jewish, in the sense that it was Judaism which first raised the theory of the absolute in religion, and laid down the principle that every innovator, even if he brings miracles in support of his doctrine, ought without trial to be stoned. The Pagan world has as undoubtedly also had its religious violences. But if it had had this law, how would it have become Christian? The Pentateuch has thus been in the world the first code of religious terrorism. Judaism has given the example of an immutable dogma armed with the sword. If, instead of pursuing the Jews with a blind hatred, Christianity had abolished the order of things which killed its founder, how much more consistent would it not have been—how much better would it not have deserved of the human race!