Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

We can best understand the whole situation if we assume, with many interpreters and on the basis of John 18:31, that at that time the Roman occupying power denied the Jews the power to impose capital punishment.¹⁴ That is, they no longer had the right to carry out a death sentence; according to some exegetes they even lacked the right to pass a formal sentence of death. If the Jews had possessed the right at that time to execute Jesus according to their own legal system he would not have been crucified; he would have been stoned, for the method of execution by crucifixion, widespread in antiquity and especially characteristic of the Romans, was practiced by Jews only in a very few exceptional situations.

That the Jewish officials handed Jesus over to Pilate shows quite clearly that they considered him convicted of a capital crime, one that in their view could only be punished by death. In this case they had to let the matter pass from their own hands and allow the Roman prefect to investigate the guilt of the accused by his own judicial process and then pass sentence according to Roman law. The formal decision made by the Council toward the end of the night must have been one that formulated Jesus’ guilt and ordered that he be handed over. It is obvious that Pilate could not avoid a process that was developed in this way; it most definitely put pressure on him to act.

But the Sanhedrin’s decision probably had another meaning as well: by this means the members of the Council could justify to themselves the manner in which they presented their accusation of Jesus before the Roman prefect. After having carried out their own process of determining guilt they could say that Jesus was quite definitely a criminal deserving death, even if his condemnation by Pilate could only be achieved by highly questionable and by no means immaculate methods. We must now discuss these questionable methods used in presenting the accusation to Pilate.

The Council had condemned Jesus for blasphemy or, more precisely, had determined the fact of his having blasphemed. It is highly probable that the accusation of leading the people astray had also played a significant role in the trial. Within the Jewish legal system both were capital crimes. But if an accusation was to be brought against a Jew in a Roman court, both blasphemy and leading the people astray would count as crimes against Jewish religion, and no Roman judge could condemn a Jew to death merely for violating the internal laws of the Jewish religion. The Council saw this point very clearly; therefore, in a quite consistent strategy, it brought the “Jesus case” before the Romans under a different aspect. No more is said about “blasphemy,” but fomenting unrest is still there. The Sanhedrin makes the religious seducer of the people into a political-messianic revolutionary. That is the only way to understand Pilate’s ironic question to Jesus, namely, whether he was the “king of the Jews” (Mark 15:2), and that is the only way we can comprehend how Jesus was ultimately executed under a placard that read “the king of the Jews” (Mark 15:26).

The accusation that Jesus pretended to be the messianic king was so effective because during the Roman occupation every messianic movement almost inevitably fell under suspicion of being a national uprising against the Romans. “Messianic king” was pretty much the equivalent of “freedom fighter” and “rabble rouser”—and the Romans were inclined to react very quickly and effectively against anything bearing the scent of “sedition” (seditio). It is true that when Jesus was accused before Pilate of being a political messiah it was possible—in a superficial way—to appeal to his temple action and his confession of himself as Messiah, but in reality this was a distortion and perversion of Jesus’ claim. After all, he had expressed himself clearly enough against any kind of revolt (cf. Mark 12:13-17), and he did not understand his temple action as a signal for a political uprising.

So with this accusation a second process, a political trial, began. The issue was now nothing less than “treason” (perduellio). How did Pilate react to the charge brought against Jesus? He apparently hesitated to accept it on its face. All four evangelists agree on that. Reasons for his hesitation can certainly be found.

First, as a Roman official Pilate could not be content to accept vague accusations. He was authorized to apply the death sentence only if Jesus could be proved to have committed a capital crime. He needed genuine proof that Jesus had called for political upheaval or participated actively in an uprising. Apparently such proof could not be produced, and Pilate probably saw that very quickly. It is likely that after a brief confrontation with Jesus he no longer took seriously the statement that the accused was a political revolutionary.