§ 131 Jesus before Pilate and Herod
According to all the Evangelists it was in the morning when the Jewish magistrates, after having declared Jesus worthy of death,101 caused him to be led away to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate (Matt. xxvii. 1 ff. parall.; John xviii. 28). According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus was bound preparatory to his being conducted before Pilate, according to John xviii. 12, immediately on his arrest in the garden; Luke says nothing of his being bound. To this measure of sending him to Pilate they were compelled, according to John xviii. 31, by the circumstance that the Sanhedrim was deprived of the authority to execute the punishment of death (without the concurrence of the Roman government):102 but at all events the Jewish rulers must in this instance have been anxious to call in the agency of the Romans, since only their power could afford security against an uproar among the people θόρυβος ἐν τῷ λαῷ, which the former feared as a result of the execution of Jesus during the feast time (Matt. xxvi. 5 parall.).
Arrived at the Prætorium, the Jews, according to the representation of the fourth gospel, remained without, from fear of Levitical defilement, but Jesus was led into the interior of the building: so that Pilate must alternately have come out when he would speak to the Jews, and have gone in again when he proceeded to question Jesus (xviii. 28 ff.). The synoptists in the sequel represent Jesus as in the same locality with Pilate and the Jews, for in them Jesus immediately hears the accusations of the Jews, and answers them in the presence of Pilate. Since they, as well as John, make the condemnation take place in the open air (after the condemnation they represent Jesus as being led into the Prætorium, Matt. xxvii. 27, and Matthew, like John, xix. 13, describes Pilate ascending the judgment seat βῆμα, which according to Josephus103 stood in the open air), without mentioning any change of place in connexion with the trial: they apparently conceived the whole transaction to have passed on the outer place, and supposed, in divergency from John, that Jesus himself was there.
The first question of Pilate to Jesus is according to all the gospels: Art thou the king of the Jews? σὺ εἶ ὁ βασιλεύς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, i.e. the Messiah? In the two first Evangelists this question is not introduced by any accusation on the part of the Jews (Matt. v. 11; Mark v. 2); in John, Pilate, stepping out of the Prætorium, asks the Jews what accusation they have to bring against Jesus (xviii. 29), on which they insolently reply: If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee: an answer by which they could not expect to facilitate their obtaining from the Roman a ratification of their sentence,104 but only to embitter him. After Pilate, with surprising mildness, has rejoined that they may take him and judge him according to their law—apparently not supposing a crime involving death—and the Jews have opposed to this permission their inability to administer the punishment of death: the procurator re-enters and addresses to Jesus the definite question: Art thou the king of the Jews? which thus here likewise has no suitable introduction. This is the case only in Luke, who first adduces the accusations of the Sanhedrists against Jesus, that he stirred up the people and encouraged them to refuse tribute to Cæsar, giving himself out to be Christ a king, Χριστὸν βασιλέα (xxiii. 2).
If in this manner the narrative of Luke enables us to understand how Pilate could at once put to Jesus the question whether he were the king of the Jews; it leaves us in all the greater darkness as to how Pilate, immediately on the affirmative answer of Jesus, could without any further inquiries declare to the accusers that he found no fault in the accused. He must first have ascertained the grounds or the want of grounds for the charge of exciting the populace, and also have informed himself as to the sense in which Jesus claimed the title of king of the Jews, before he could pronounce the words: I find no fault in this man. In Matthew and Mark, it is true, to the affirmation of Jesus that he is the king of the Jews is added his silence, in opposition to the manifold accusations of the Sanhedrists—a silence which surprises Pilate: and this is not followed by a precise declaration that no fault is to be found in Jesus, but merely by the procurator’s attempt to set Jesus at liberty by coupling him with Barabbas; still what should move him even to this attempt does not appear from the above gospels. On the other hand, this point is sufficiently clear in the fourth gospel. It is certainly surprising that when Pilate asks whether he be really the King of the Jews, Jesus should reply by the counter-question, whether he say this of himself or at the suggestion of another. In an accused person, however conscious of innocence, such a question cannot be held warrantable, and hence it has been sought in every possible way to give the words of Jesus a sense more consonant with propriety: but the question of Jesus is too definite to be a mere repulse of the accusation as absurd,105 and too indefinite to be regarded as an inquiry, whether the Procurator intended the title βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων in the Roman sense (ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ) or in the Jewish (ἄλλοι σοι εἶπον).106 And Pilate does not so understand it, but as an unwarrantable question to which it is a mark of his indulgence that he replies;—in the first instance, it is true, with some impatience, by the second counter-question, whether he be a Jew, and thus able of himself to have information concerning a crime so specifically Jewish; but hereupon he good-naturedly adds that it is the Jews and their rulers by whom Jesus has been delivered to him, and that he is therefore at liberty to speak more particularly of the crime which these lay to his charge. Now on this Jesus gives Pilate an answer which, added to the impression of his whole appearance, might certainly induce in the Procurator a conviction of his innocence. He replies, namely, that his kingdom βασιλεία is not of this world ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, and adduces as a proof of this, the peaceful, passive conduct of his adherents on his arrest (v. 36). On the further question of Pilate, whether, since Jesus has thus ascribed to himself a kingdom, although no earthly one, he then claims to be a king? he replies that certainly he is so, but only in so far as he is born to be a witness to the truth: whereupon follows the famous question of Pilate: What is truth? τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια; Although in this latter reply of Jesus we cannot but be struck by its presenting the peculiar hue of thought which characterizes the author of the fourth gospel, in the use of the idea of truth ἀλήθεια, as we were before surprised at the unwarrantable nature of the counter-question of Jesus; still this account in John renders it conceivable how Pilate could immediately step forth and declare to the Jews that he found no fault in Jesus. But another point might easily create suspicion against this narrative of John. According to him the trial of Jesus went forward in the interior of the Prætorium, which no Jew would venture to enter; who then are we to suppose heard the conversation of the Procurator with Jesus, and was the informant who communicated it to the author of the fourth gospel? The opinion of the older commentators that Jesus himself narrated these conversations to his disciples after the resurrection is renounced as extravagant; the more modern idea that perhaps Pilate himself was the source of the information concerning the trial, is scarcely less improbable, and rather than take refuge, with Lücke, in the supposition that Jesus remained at the entrance of the Prætorium, so that those standing immediately without might with some attention and stillness (?) have heard the conversation, I should prefer appealing to the attendants of the Procurator, who would scarcely be alone with Jesus. Meanwhile it is easily conceivable that we have here a conversation, which owes its origin solely to the Evangelist’s own combination, and in this case we need not bestow so much labour in ascertaining the precise sense of Pilate’s question: what is truth? since this would only be an example of the fourth Evangelist’s favourite form of dialogue, the contrast of profound communications on the part of Jesus, with questions either of misapprehension or of total unintelligence on the part of the hearers, as xii. 34, the Jews ask who is this Son of man? τίς ἐστιν οὗτος ὁ υἱὸς τ. α.? so here Pilate: what is truth? τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια?107
Before the introduction of Barabbas, which in all the other Evangelists comes next in order, Luke has an episode peculiar to himself. On the declaration of Pilate that he finds no guilt in the accused, the chief priests and their adherents among the multitude persist in asserting that Jesus stirred up the people by his agency as a teacher from Galilee to Jerusalem: Pilate notices the word Galilee, asks whether the accused be a Galilean, and when this is confirmed, he seizes it as a welcome pretext for ridding himself of the ungrateful business, and sends Jesus to the Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, at that time in Jerusalem in observance of the feast; perhaps also designing as a secondary object, what at least was the result, to conciliate the petty prince by this show of respect for his jurisdiction. This measure, it is said, gave great satisfaction to Herod, because having heard much of Jesus, he had long been desirous to see him, in the hope that he would perhaps perform a miracle. The Tetrarch addressed various questions to him, the Sanhedrists urged vehement accusations against him, but Jesus gave no answer; whereupon Herod with his soldiers betook themselves to mockery, and at length, after arraying him in a gorgeous robe, sent him back to Pilate (xxiii. 4 ff.). This narrative of Luke’s, whether we consider it in itself or in its relation to the other gospels, has much to astonish us. If Jesus as a Galilean really belonged to the jurisdiction of Herod, as Pilate, by delivering the accused to him, appears to acknowledge: how came Jesus (and the question is equally difficult whether we regard him as the sinless Jesus of the orthodox system, or as the one who in the history of the tribute-penny manifested his subjection to the existing authorities) to withhold from him the answer which was his due? and how was it that Herod, without any further procedures, sent him away again from his tribunal? To say, with Olshausen, that the interrogation before Herod had elicited the fact that Jesus was not born in Nazareth and Galilee, but in Bethlehem, and consequently in Judæa, is on the one hand an inadmissible appeal to the history of the birth of Jesus, of the statements in which there is no further trace in the whole subsequent course of Luke’s gospel; and on the other hand, a totally accidental birth in Judæa, such as that represented by Luke, the parents of Jesus, and even Jesus himself, being both before and after resident in Galilee, would not have constituted Jesus a Judæan; but above all we must ask, through whom was the Judæan origin of Jesus brought to light, since it is said of Jesus that he gave no answer, while according to all the information we possess, that origin was totally unknown to the Jews? It would be preferable to explain the silence of Jesus by the unbecoming manner of Herod’s interrogation, which manifested, not the seriousness of the judge, but mere curiosity; and to account for his being sent back to Pilate by the fact, that not only the arrest, but also a part of the ministry of Jesus had occurred within the jurisdiction of Pilate. But why do the rest of the Evangelists say nothing of the entire episode? Especially when the author of the fourth gospel is regarded as the Apostle John, it is not easy to see how this omission can be explained. The common plea, that he supposed the fact sufficiently known from the synoptists, will not serve here, since Luke is the sole Evangelist who narrates the incident, and thus it does not appear to have been very widely spread; the conjecture, that it may probably have appeared to him too unimportant,108 loses all foundation when it is considered that John does not scorn to mention the leading away to Annas, which nevertheless was equally indecisive; and in general, the narrative of these events in John is, as Schleiermacher himself confesses, so consecutive that it nowhere presents a break in which such an episode could be inserted. Hence even Schleiermacher at last takes refuge in the conjecture that possibly the sending to Herod may have escaped the notice of John, because it happened on an opposite side to that on which the disciple stood, through a back door; and that it came to the knowledge of Luke because his informant had an acquaintance in the household of Herod, as John had in that of Annas: the former conjecture, however, is figuratively as well as literally nothing more than a back door; the latter, a fiction which is but the effort of despair. Certainly if we renounce the presupposition that the author of the fourth gospel was an apostle, we lose the ground of attack against the narrative of Luke, which in any case, since Justin knows of the consignment to Herod,109 is of very early origin. Nevertheless, first, the silence of the other Evangelists in a portion of their common history, in which, with this exception, there prevails an agreement as to the principal stages in the development of the fate of Jesus; and secondly, the internal difficulties of the narrative, remain so suspicious, that it must still be open to us to conjecture, that the anecdote arose out of the effort to place Jesus before all the tribunals that could possibly be gathered together in Jerusalem; to make every authority not hierarchical, though treating him with ignominy, still either explicitly or tacitly acknowledge his innocence; and to represent him as maintaining his equable demeanour and dignity before all. If this be probable with respect to the present narrative, in which the third Evangelist stands alone, a similar conjecture concerning the leading away to Annas, in which we have seen that the fourth Evangelist stands alone, would only be warded off by the circumstance that this scene is not described in detail, and hence presents no internal difficulties.
After Jesus, being sent back by Herod, was returned upon his hands, Pilate, according to Luke, once more called together the Sanhedrists and the people, and declared, alleging in his support the judgment of Herod as accordant with his own, his wish to dismiss Jesus with chastisement; for which purpose he might avail himself of the custom of releasing a prisoner at the feast of the passover.110 This circumstance, which is somewhat abridged in Luke, is more fully exhibited in the other Evangelists, especially in Matthew. As the privilege to entreat the release of a prisoner belonged to the people, Pilate, well knowing that Jesus was persecuted by the rulers out of jealousy, sought to turn to his advantage the better disposition of the people towards him; and in order virtually to oblige them to free Jesus, whom, partly out of mockery of the Jews, partly to deter them from his execution as degrading to themselves, he named the Messiah or King of the Jews, he reminded them that their choice lay between him and a notable prisoner, δέσμιος ἐπίσημος, Barabbas,111 whom John designates as a robber, λῃστής, but Mark and Luke as one who was imprisoned for insurrection and murder. This plan however failed, for the people, suborned, as the two first Evangelists observe, by their rulers, with one voice desired the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus.
As a circumstance which had especial weight with Pilate in favour of Jesus, and moved him to make the proposal relative to Barabbas as urgently as possible, it is stated by Matthew that while the procurator sat on his tribunal, his wife,112 in consequence of a disturbing dream, sent to him a warning to incur no responsibility in relation to that just man (xxvii. 19). Not only Paulus, but even Olshausen, explains this dream as a natural result of what Pilate’s wife might have heard of Jesus and of his capture on the preceding evening; to which may be added as an explanatory conjecture, the notice of the Evangelium Nicodemi, that she was pious, θεοσεβὴς, and judaizing, ἰουδαΐζουσα.113 Nevertheless, as constantly in the New Testament, and particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, dreams are regarded as a special dispensation from heaven, so this assuredly in the opinion of the narrator happened non sine numine; and hence it should be possible to conceive a motive and an object for the dispensation. If the dream were really intended to prevent the death of Jesus, taking the orthodox point of view, in which this death was necessary for the salvation of man, we must be led to the opinion of some of the ancients, that it may have been the devil who suggested that dream to the wife of the procurator, in order to hinder the propitiatory death;114 if on the contrary, the dream were not intended to prevent the death of Jesus, its object must have been limited to Pilate or his wife. But as far as Pilate was concerned, so late a warning could only aggravate his guilt, without sufficing to deter him from the step already half taken; while that his wife was converted by means of this dream, as many have supposed,115 is totally unattested by history or tradition, and such an object is not intimated in the narrative. But, as the part which Pilate himself plays in the evangelical narrative is such as to exhibit the blind hatred of the fellow-countrymen of Jesus in contrast with the impartial judgment of a Gentile; so his wife is made to render a testimony to Jesus, in order that, not only out of the mouth of babes and sucklings (Matt. xxi. 16), but also out of the mouth of a weak woman, praise might be prepared for him; and to increase its importance it is traced to a significant dream. To give this an appearance of probability, similar instances are adduced from profane history of dreams which have acted as presentiments and warnings before a sanguinary catastrophe:116 but the more numerous are these analogous cases, the more is the suspicion excited that as the majority of these, so also the dream in our evangelical passage, may have been fabricated after the event, for the sake of heightening its tragical effect.
When the Jews, in reply to the repeated questions of Pilate, vehemently and obstinately demand the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus, the two intermediate Evangelists represent him as at once yielding to their desire; but Matthew first interposes a ceremony and a colloquy (xxvii. 24 ff.). According to him Pilate calls for water, washes his hands before the people, and declares himself innocent of the blood of this just man. The washing of the hands, as a protestation of purity from the guilt of shedding blood, was a custom specifically Jewish, according to Deut. xxi. 6 f.117 It has been thought improbable that the Roman should have here intentionally imitated this Jewish custom, and hence it has been contended, that to any one who wished so solemnly to declare his innocence nothing would more readily suggest itself than the act of washing the hands.118 But that an individual, apart from any allusion to a known usage, should invent extemporaneously a symbolical act, or even that he should merely fall in with the custom of a foreign nation, would require him to be deeply interested in the fact which he intends to symbolize. That Pilate, however, should be deeply interested in attesting his innocence of the execution of Jesus, is not so probable as that the Christians should have been deeply interested in thus gaining a testimony to the innocence of their Messiah: whence there arises a suspicion that perhaps Pilate’s act of washing his hands owes its origin to them alone. This conjecture is confirmed, when we consider the declaration with which Pilate accompanies his symbolical act: I am innocent of the blood of this just man, ἀθῶός εἰμι ἀπὸ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ δικαίου τούτου. For that the judge should publicly and emphatically designate as a just man, δίκαιος, one whom he was nevertheless delivering over to the severest infliction of the law,—this even Paulus finds so contradictory that he here, contrary to his usual mode of exposition, supposes that the narrator himself expresses in these words his own interpretation of Pilate’s symbolical act. It is surprising that he is not also struck by the equal improbability of the answer which is attributed to the Jews on this occasion. After Pilate has declared himself guiltless of the blood of Jesus, and by the addition: see ye to it, has laid the responsibility on the Jews, it is said in Matthew that all the people πᾶς ὁ λαὸς, cried: His blood be on us and on our children, τὸ αἷμα αὐτοῦ ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ τὰ τέκνα ἡμῶν. But this is obviously spoken from the point of view of the Christians, who in the miseries which shortly after the death of Jesus fell with continually increasing weight on the Jewish nation, saw nothing else than the payment of the debt of blood which they had incurred by the crucifixion of Jesus: so that this whole episode, which is peculiar to the first gospel, is in the highest degree suspicious.
According to Matthew and Mark, Pilate now caused Jesus to be scourged, preparatory to his being led away to crucifixion. Here the scourging appears to correspond to the virgis cædere, which according to Roman usage preceded the securi percutere, and to the scourging of slaves prior to crucifixion.119 In Luke it has a totally different character. While in the two former Evangelists it is said: When he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified, τὸν δὲ Ἰ. φραγελλώσας παρέδωκεν ἵνα σταυρωθῇ: in Luke, Pilate repeatedly (v. 16 and 22) makes the proposal: having chastised him I will let him go, παιδεύσας αὐτὸν ἀπολύσω: i.e. while there the scourging has the appearance of a mere accessory of the crucifixion, here it appears to be intended as a substitute for the crucifixion: Pilate wishes by this chastisement to appease the hatred of the enemies of Jesus, and induce them to desist from demanding his execution. Again, while in Luke the scourging does not actually take place,—because the Jews will in nowise accede to the repeated proposal of Pilate: in John the latter causes Jesus to be scourged, exhibits him to the people with the purple robe and the crown of thorns and tries whether his pitiable aspect, together with the repeated declaration of his innocence, will not mollify their embittered minds: this, however, proving also in vain (xix. 1 ff.). Thus there exists a contradiction between the Evangelists in relation to the scourging of Jesus, which is not to be conciliated after the method of Paulus, namely by paraphrasing the words τὸν Ἰ. φραγελλώσας παρέδοκεν ἵνα σταυρωθῇ in Matthew and Mark thus: Jesus, whom he had already before scourged in order to save him, suffered this in vain, since he was still delivered over to crucifixion. But, acknowledging the difference in the accounts, we must only ask, which of the two has the advantage as regards historical probability? Although it is certainly not to be proved that scourging before crucifixion was a Roman custom admitting no exception: still, on the other hand, it is a purely harmonistic effort to allege, that scourging was only made to precede crucifixion in cases where the punishment was intended to be particularly severe,120 and that consequently Pilate, who had no wish to be cruel to Jesus, can only have caused him to be scourged with the special design which Luke and John mention, and which is also to be understood in the narratives of their predecessors. It is far more probable that in reality the scourging only took place as it is described by the two first Evangelists, namely, as an introduction to the crucifixion, and that the Christian legend (to which that side of Pilate’s character, in virtue of which he endeavoured in various ways to save Jesus, was particularly welcome as a testimony against the Jews) gave such a turn even to the fact of the scourging as to obtain from it a new attempt at release on the part of Pilate. This use of the fact is only incipient in the third gospel, for here the scourging is a mere proposal of Pilate: whereas in the fourth, the scourging actually takes place, and becomes an additional act in the drama.
With the scourging is connected in the two first gospels and the fourth, the maltreatment and mockery of Jesus by the soldiers, who attired him in a purple robe, placed a crown of thorns on his head,121 put, according to Matthew, a reed in his hand, and in this disguise first greeted him as King of the Jews, and then smote and maltreated him.122 Luke does not mention any derision on the part of the soldiers here, but he has something similar in his narrative of the interrogation of Jesus before Herod, for he represents this prince with his men of war, σύν τοῖς στρατεύμασιν αὐτοῦ, as mocking Jesus, and sending him back to Pilate in a gorgeous robe, ἐσθὴς λαμπρά. Many suppose that this was the same purple robe which was afterwards put on Jesus by the soldiers of Pilate; but it must rather have been thrice that Jesus had to wear this disguise, if we take the narrative of John into the account and at the same time refuse to attribute error to any of the synoptists: first in the presence of Herod (Luke); secondly, before Pilate brought Jesus forth to the Jews, that he might excite their compassion with the words: Behold the man, ἴδε ὁ ἄνθρωπος (John); thirdly, after he was delivered to the soldiers for crucifixion (Matthew and Mark). This repetition is as improbable as it is probable that the one disguising of Jesus, which had come to the knowledge of the Evangelists, was assigned by them to different places and times, and ascribed to different persons.
While in the two first gospels the process of trial is already concluded before the scourging, and in the third, on the rejection of his proposal to scourge and release Jesus by the Jews, Pilate forthwith delivers him to be crucified: in the fourth Evangelist the scene of the trial is further developed in the following manner. When even the exhibition of Jesus scourged and disguised avails nothing, but his crucifixion is obstinately demanded, the procurator is incensed, and cries to the Jews, that they may take him and crucify him themselves, for he finds no fault in him. The Jews reply that according to their law he must die, since he had made himself the Son of God υἱὸς θεοῦ; a remark which affects Pilate with a superstitious fear, whence he once more leads Jesus into the Prætorium, and inquires concerning his origin (whether it be really heavenly), on which Jesus gives him no answer, and when the procurator seeks to alarm him by reminding him of the power which he possesses over his life, refers to the higher source from whence he had this power. Pilate, after this reply, seeks (yet more earnestly than before) to release Jesus; but at last the Jews hit upon the right means of making him accede to their will, by throwing out the intimation that, if he release Jesus who has opposed himself to Cæsar as an usurper, he cannot be Cæsar’s friend. Thus, intimidated by the possibility of his being calumniated to Tiberius, he mounts the tribunal, and, since he cannot prosecute his will, betakes himself to derision of the Jews in the question, whether they then wish that he should crucify their king? Whereupon they, keeping to the position which they had last taken with such evident effect, protest that they will have no king but Cæsar. The procurator now consents to deliver Jesus to be crucified, for which purpose, as the two first Evangelists remark, the purple mantle was removed, and he was again attired in his own clothes.