When you read the gospel of John, but skip the other three gospels—
Jesus gets arrested. - He’s taken right to the former head priest Annas’s house
for an unofficial trial. - From there, to Joseph Caiaphas’s house.
- Then
to Pontius Pilate’s fortress. - Then to Golgotha.
No conviction, no sentence; just interviews followed by execution. Same as would be done in any country with no formal judicial system: They catch you, they interrogate you, they free or shoot you.
But both Judea and Rome did have a formal system. John doesn’t show it because the other gospels do. John was written to fill in the gaps in the other gospels’ stories—which include Jesus’s formal trials. There were two: The one before the Judean senate, and the other before the Roman prefect.
Was Jesus guilty of blasphemy? Only if he weren’t actually
Either way, Jesus actually was guilty of sedition. I know, I know: Christians wanna insist Jesus is absolutely innocent. He never sinned y’know. But this “sedition” has nothing to do with sin.
To leadership today it still is. Many of them don’t realize this, ’cause they don’t think of Jesus as any real threat to their power. Especially after they neuter him, by convincing his supporters he’d totally vote for them and their party—and his so-called followers buy it, and follow their parties instead of Jesus. So it stands to reason our leadership isn’t worried about Jesus.
But in the year 33, Jesus was tangibly standing on the earth, in a real position to upend the status quo, and was therefore a real threat to the lords of Israel at the time. Whether we’re talking emperors, prefects, tetrarchs, senators, synagogue presidents, or
Following Jesus instead of these other lords: Sedition. Still is. But not against God’s Law. It’s only against human customs, so Jesus isn’t guilty of sin in God’s eyes; stil totally sinless. Relax.
Thing is, Christians don’t wanna think of Jesus as guilty of anything. We wanna defend him against everything. We don’t wanna think of his conviction and trials as valid. We don’t wanna imagine his execution was a function of a corrupt system; worse, that perhaps our own existing systems are just as corrupt, and if his first coming had taken place today, we’d’ve killed him too. Nor do we wanna recognize sentencing him to death is in any way parallel to the way we depose him as the master of our lives,
This is why, every Easter, you’re gonna hear various Christians claim Jesus’s trial wasn’t legal. That the Judeans had broken all their own laws in order to arrest him and hold his trial at night, get him to testify against himself, and get him killed before anyone might find out what they were up to. It certainly feels illegal: If you ever heard tell of a suspect arrested at midnight, tried and convicted at 2
Jesus’s claim to the throne.
First of all, Christians make a big to-do about Jesus’s lineage.
Okay. First of all, all this stuff about heredity is nonsense.
If you’ve ever read the Old Testament, you’ll remember David ben Jesse wasn’t the descendant of kings; he was the descendant of whores and foreigners. Same with his predecessor Saul ben Kish, the descendant of rapists. The throne of Israel was new. There were no dynasties to draw royalty from, so these guys became king because the L
So Jesus didn’t have to be descended from anybody to be king. Simon Maccabee wasn’t. Antipater Herod wasn’t. Augustus Caesar (even though he called himself divi filius/“son of God” because the Roman senate had declared his adoptive father Julius Caesar a god) wasn’t. And debatably even Jesus wasn’t. Go look at his two genealogies again, and y’might notice both of them link Jesus to David through
Secondly even if Jesus is the scion of the house of David, that house was overthrown. Nabúkhudurriuchur binu Nabúaplauchur of Babylon deposed the last Davidite king nearly six centuries before. Other than Zerubbabel ben Shealtiel, the Davidites hadn’t ruled since. When the monarchy was reestablished, it was by the Hasmonean head priests, not the Davidites. And they were overthrown by Herod; and the Herods were overthrown by Caesar while Jesus was still a little boy.
So. Imagine the current, most direct descendant of Louis 17 declaring he should be ruling France instead of the Fifth Republic. We’d laugh it off. Yet the Bourbons were ruling France far more recently than the Davidites had ruled Jerusalem in Jesus’s day.
The people of Jesus’s day would laugh off any such claim too. So why’d they take all the “son of David” statements so seriously? Because according to
“Chapter and verse, please.”
I’ve heard this claim a bunch of times, all my life: “It was illegal to try cases at night.” Supposedly the Judeans had a law which forbade any legal activity, any binding decisions, from being made at any time other than in the daylight, when members of the public could come in, observe the proceedings, and keep leadership accountable.
Okay. Where in the bible does it state this?
See, if the Judeans had any law, any actual law, they’d’ve got it from bible. Same bible we have. It’s the only legal code they were allowed to have:
Now yeah, our judges don’t make laws, but they do interpret ’em in all sorts of imaginative ways, and sometimes these interpretations have all the effect of new laws. The Judeans could do the very same—and absolutely did. They could twist the Law, warp it, and create loopholes in it.
So no, it’s not in the bible. There’s no
Some preachers will totally admit it’s not bible, but claim there were certain nonbiblical “laws” which Pharisees followed same as the Law: The “oral Law,” passed down from Pharisee to Pharisee orally, instead of written down in the scriptures. “True, it’s not found chapter-and-verse in the bible, but it’s definitely part of Pharisee tradition.” And yes, such oral traditions totally did exist; we have a copy of them in the Talmud, called the Mishna.
But regardless of Pharisee customs: Who ran the Judean senate? Wasn’t Pharisees.
The head priest was the president of the senate. He ran the meetings, appointed the officers (usually choosing family members), and made the final rulings. Was the head priest a Pharisee? Nope;
Yep, you can find passages in the Mishna which forbid nighttime trials. But the Mishna ain’t Law. It’s a second-century Pharisee collection of traditions and “oral Laws.” It’s nothing a Sadducee would follow if he didn’t care to. Its passages might not even have been written in Jesus’s day. They might’ve been written a century after his trial, after someone whom Pharisees didn’t want dead, was convicted in a nighttime trial before they could put a stop to it. It’s not even proof Jesus’s trial was uncustomary: We don’t ban actions unless people have already done it! And possibly done it a lot.
So these preachers who claim Jesus’s nighttime trial was illegal: They’re just quoting other preachers who claim Jesus’s nighttime trial was illegal. They never investigated whether the other preachers were correct. It feels correct, so that’ll do them.
Other “illegal” behaviors.
“It was illegal to sentence a convict on the same day as the trial,” is another claim preachers like to make. And again, there’s no such law in the bible. In fact, if a man wanted to invalidate his woman’s oath, he didn’t get a day to think about it; if he waited, it meant her oath stood.
“It was illegal to try someone the day before Sabbath.” This claim is based on the previous claim: If you can’t give sentence till the next day, and the next day is Sabbath, supposedly this rules out Friday trials. (What, you can’t skip a day and sentence ’em the day after Sabbath?) But again: This is Pharisee custom. Not Law.
“It was illegal to recruit witnesses.” Well, it’s illegal to invent witnesses, instead of people who actually did witness something. But that’s not what happened. It looks like the witnesses actually did see Jesus do and say stuff, ’cause he totally did
“It was illegal to hear the testimony of false witnesses.” Okay yes; if your witnesses commit perjury, the Law declares their testimony invalid, and says they need to suffer the same penalty as they were trying to inflict on the defendant.
“It was illegal to make Jesus testify against himself.” No it wasn’t. The bible has a number of instances of self-incrimination. Joshua obligated Achan ben Kharmi to testify against himself,
“It was illegal to convict on only one witness’s testimony; Jesus and someone else had to testify.” This is a warping of the Law’s ban against convicting on a single testimony.
“It was illegal for the judges to be biased against the defendant.” Not only does the Law never make such a requirement, it’s kinda impossible to make such a requirement. Everybody’s biased. (Even God; he’s totally anti-sin.) Certainly if you were the judge in a trial against a mass murderer, and he killed lots of your friends, you’re gonna personally want him dead. But the L
“It was illegal to convict on anything but a unanimous verdict.” Because Luke comments Joseph of Arimathea didn’t agree to convict Jesus,
Totally legal trial. Not all that ethical, though.
So yeah, Jesus’s trial fulfilled the letter of the Law… but it killed a righteous man, who never violated God’s Law, and was only guilty of declaring who he really is to a roomful of unbelievers. It’s a textbook miscarriage of justice.
That’s not good enough for many Christians. They much prefer the idea this was an illegal trial; that “the Pharisees” hated Jesus so much, they thought nothing of tossing aside their own rules to get him killed. It makes ’em look
But that’s not historically accurate. The Judeans didn’t break any rules to convict Jesus. They followed the rules—knowing just how to manipulate ’em in ways which got them what they wanted. They’d been jumping through loopholes all their lives. And we do the very same things with our own procedures and standards. We know how to violate the spirit of every institution; we do it all the time.
That’s why we have to follow the spirit of the Law more so than its letter; to follow God’s intent instead of merely his words.
