Jesus accused with false testimonies.

by K.W. Leslie, 05 April 2023

Mark 14.55-59, Matthew 26.59-61,
Luke 22.66, John 2.18-22.

All my life I’ve heard preachers claim Jesus’s trial wasn’t just irregular, but downright illegal. What basis do they have for saying so? Next to none.

It’s because they interpret history wrong. They point to rulings in the second-century Mishna and the fifth-century Talmud. They assume the first-century Jewish senate actually followed these rulings. They’d be entirely wrong. The Mishna consists of Pharisee rulings and traditions. The Talmud is a Pharisee commentary on the Mishna. Now, who ran the senate in Jesus’s day? The head priests… who were Sadduccees. And the Sadducees believed Pharisee teachings were extrabiblical, which they were; and therefore irrelevant.

So when the Mishna declares trials shouldn’t take place at night (although Luke actually says it took place during daytime Lk 22.66), and declares there shouldn’t be same-day rulings, preachers nowadays declare, “Aha! This proves Jesus’s trial was illegal!” Just the opposite: It proves Sadducees did such things. The Pharisee rulings were created because they objected to the way Sadducees ran things. They were meant to correct what they considered Sadducee injustice. But Sadducee injustice was still legal.

Jesus’s trial convicted an innocent man, so of course we’re gonna agree with Pharisee teachings which claim this was an improper trial. But the teachings are from the wrong time and the wrong people. They don’t apply, much as we’d like ’em to. The Sadducees followed their own procedure properly.

Procedure is still no guarantee there won’t be miscarriages of justice just the same.

Well anyway. On to Jesus’s trial.

Luke 22.66 KWL
Once it becomes day, the people’s elders gathered
with the head priests and scribes,
and they lead Jesus into their senate.

Within the temple structure, on the western side, the Judean συνέδριον/synédrion, “senate” (KJV “council,” CSB “Sanhedrin”) met in a stone hall arranged much like the Roman senate: Stone bleachers were arranged in a half-circle so they could all face a throne. In Rome the emperor sat on it. In Jerusalem, the head priest.

For a trial, the Pharisees dictated two scribes should write everything down, though there’s no evidence the Sadducees did any such thing. Scribes and students sat on the floor. Plaintiffs and defendants stood. The Pharisees declared the defendant oughta go first, but in all the trials in Acts, it looks like the reverse happened. Ac 4.5-12, 5.27-32, etc. Either way Jesus didn’t care to say anything, so his accusers went first. And they committed perjury. Yeah, perjury was banned in the Ten Commandments. Dt 5.20 Well, perjurers still show up in court anyway.

Mark and Matthew relate that part of the trial.

Mark 14.55-59 KWL
55 The head priests and the whole senate
are seeking witnesses against Jesus to put him to death,
and are finding no one,
56 for many are perjuring themselves about Jesus,
and the testimonies aren’t alike.
57 Some who stand to perjure themselves about Jesus
were saying 58 this:
“We hear Jesus saying this:
‘I’ll destroy this shrine, made by hand,
and in three days I’ll build another, not made by hand.’ ”
59 And not even this testimony is alike.
 
Matthew 26.59-61 KWL
59 The head priests and the whole senate
are seeking perjurers against Jesus so they might put him to death,
60 and they find nothing,
though many perjurers come.
Two finally come, 61 saying, “This Jesus says,
‘I’m able to destroy God’s shrine
and within three days rebuild it.’ ”

Now you might recall Jesus did say something like this. Wasn’t told correctly, though. We find that story in John.

John 2.18-22 KWL
18 So in reply, the Judeans tell Jesus,
“What sign are you showing us so you can do this?”
19 In reply Jesus tells them, “Break down this shrine.
In three days I’ll re-raise it.”
20 So the Judeans say, “This shrine takes 46 years to build,
and in three days you’ll re-raise it?”
21 Jesus is speaking about the shrine of his body,
22 so when Jesus is raised from the dead,
his students remember he’s saying this,
and believe the scriptures, and the word Jesus says.

We know it’s all the same story, ’cause in John Jesus used the word ναόν/naón, “shrine,” instead of the usual word ἱερόν/yerón, “temple.” He wasn’t talking about knocking down the whole temple campus, nor even the main temple building. He meant if they broke him down—if they killed him—he’d rise from the dead within three days. Jn 2.21-22

The other gospels didn’t provide Jesus’s proper context. And if we didn’t have John, we might think the perjurers were wholly making up the story completely; that Jesus never said anything remotely like it… or they were twisting that bit he said about there not being a stone left standing on one another. Christians would forever debate it.

But thanks to John, we know it was a misquote. Jesus did say something like it. Which the perjurers misinterpreted greatly.

Listening to perjurers.

Back to the preachers who claim Jesus’s trial was illegal. They like to point to the fact more than one ψευδομάρτυρ/psevdomártyr, “perjurer,” literally “fake witness,” was permitted to testify in Jesus’s trial. What’s up with that? Why weren’t these guys prosecuted for perjury? According to the Law, if you committed perjury and were caught, you were to receive the same sentence you were hoping to have inflicted on the defendant. Dt 19.19 If it was a capital crime, like the one Jesus was accused of, they should receive the death penalty too. Try to get him killed; get killed themselves.

Thing is, it’s only the authors of the bible who called them perjurers. That’s because they knew it was false testimony. The senate, not so much. Maybe the people who found these witnesses knew they were frauds; maybe not. Lots of people had an axe to grind about Jesus, and plenty of ’em could’ve come forward with the claim, “I heard Jesus say [something incriminating]”—true or not.

What the senate needed for conviction was for two of these witnesses to have independent, matching testimonies. What happened, however, was out of all the witnesses they brought in, only two sorta matched: The guys who said they heard Jesus threaten to knock a shrine over. Nothing else could be corroborated. So, according to the Law, nothing else could be admitted as evidence. Dt 19.15 No matter how many witnesses they scraped together.

We don’t know how long Jesus’s trial was. We know it was still πρωΐ/proí, “early,” when they took him to Pontius. Jn 18.28 So, still part of the morning watch, which lasted for the first three hours after sunrise—between 5:25 a.m. and 8:33 a.m. (I’m being way more precise than John was; maybe Jesus’s trial extended into the second watch. But I doubt it.) Maybe Jesus didn’t have to stand through three full hours of false witnesses; maybe only the two. Even so: It’s no fun to stand there, silent, as person after person stands up and accuses you of things you neither said nor did.

And even though none of the testimonies were enough to get Jesus sentenced on their own, the fact many people were willing to stand up and denounce Jesus would still poison the mindset of the senators against him. That’s just human nature. If your mind isn’t yet made up, when we hear enough negativity, we start to get negative. Political pundits count on this. Hear enough accusations, and we start to wonder whether there is something to all these accusations. Jesus couldn’t be convicted of any of this stuff, but it’d still feel to them like he was a bad hombre, and maybe they oughta convict him on any evidence they could find, no matter how small. Maybe some odd comment about knocking down the shrine.

Jesus, who knows how people’s minds work, Jn 2.24 didn’t need to be told this. He could watch the senate’s attitudes turn against him.

Plus it’s no fun to get verbally ripped apart, especially when you know they’re lying—but even if it’s all true. If you’ve ever experienced that sort of bullying, you know how frustrating it can be. It likely took a lot for Jesus to keep his mouth shut. Yet he did. Mk 14.61, Mt 26.63 He knew it wouldn’t make any difference; he knew the day would end badly.>