The Trial of Jesus from a Lawyer's Standpoint Volume I Part 20

Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus--MATT. i. 24, 25.

(3) _That the Messiah was to spring from the house of David_:

PROPHECY--Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.--JER. xxiii. 5, 6.

FULFILLMENT--He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord G.o.d shall give unto him the throne of his father David.--LUKE i. 32.

But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.--MATT. i. 20.

(4) _That the Messiah should not come until the scepter had departed from Judah and the lawgiver from between his feet_:

PROPHECY--The Sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.--GEN. xlix. 10.

FULFILLMENT--And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto G.o.d the things that are G.o.d's.--MATT. xxii. 20, 21.

Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.--JOHN xviii. 31.

(5) _That a forerunner like unto Elijah should prepare the way of the Messiah_:

PROPHECY--Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.--MAL. iii. 1.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our G.o.d.--ISA. xl. 3.

FULFILLMENT--In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.--MATT.

iii. 1-3.

This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist.--LUKE vii. 27, 28.

(6) _That the Messiah should begin to preach in Galilee_:

PROPHECY--In Galilee of the nations, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.--ISA. ix. 1, 2.

FULFILLMENT--Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, He departed into Galilee.... The people which sat in darkness, saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. From that time, Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.--MATT. iv. 12-17.

(7) _That the Messiah should perform many miracles:_

PROPHECY--Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.--ISA. x.x.xv. 5, 6.

FULFILLMENT--Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb, and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.--MATT. xii. 22.

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins (he said unto the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house. And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying G.o.d.--LUKE v. 24, 25.

Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.--MATT. xi. 4, 5.

(8) _That the Messiah should make his public entry into Jerusalem riding upon an a.s.s:_

PROPHECY--Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an a.s.s, and upon a colt the foal of an a.s.s.--ZECH. ix. 9.

FULFILLMENT--And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, And brought the a.s.s, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great mult.i.tude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strewed them in the way. And the mult.i.tudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.--MATT. xxi. 6-9.

(9) _That the Messiah should be betrayed by one of his followers for thirty pieces of silver which would finally be thrown into the potter's field:_

PROPHECY--Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.--PSA.

xli. 9.

And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.--ZECH. xi. 12, 13.

FULFILLMENT--Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.--MATT. xxvi. 14, 15.

Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.--MATT. xxvii. 3-8.

(10) _That the Messiah should be a man of poverty and of suffering; and should be despised and rejected of men:_

PROPHECY--He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.--ISA. liii. 3.

FULFILLMENT--And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.--LUKE ix. 58.

And they smote him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon him, and bowing their knees worshipped him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple from him, and put his own clothes on him, and led him out to crucify him.--MARK xv. 19, 20.

Through reasonable diligence, witnesses might have been secured to testify to a majority, at least, of the points above enumerated, touching Messianic prophecy and fulfillment. Besides these are many others too numerous to mention in a treatise of this kind.

The question then arises at once: Admitting that all the evidence above suggested, marked "Prophecy" and "Fulfillment," could have been introduced in evidence at the trial before the Sanhedrin; were the judges morally and legally bound to acquit and release Jesus, if they believed this testimony to be true? We answer unhesitatingly, yes; as far as the count in the accusation relating to Messiahship was concerned. But we must remember that the charge against Jesus was not limited to His claims to Messiahship. The indictment against Him was that He claimed to be "the Christ, the Son of G.o.d." "Christ" is the English form of the Greek translation of the word meaning "Messiah." The real nature of the charge against the prisoner, then, was that He claimed to be not only the Messiah but also the Son of G.o.d. We have seen that "Son of G.o.d" conveyed to the Sanhedrin the notion of divine origin and of equality with Jehovah. Even to-day there is no dispute between Jews and Christians in regard to this construction. Jews charge that Jesus made such a claim and Christians agree with them. They are compelled to do so, indeed, or else abjure the fundamental dogma of their faith--the doctrine of the Trinity.

Now we approach the consideration of a phase of the subject where theology and law meet and blend. It has been sought to ridicule the contention that Jesus should have been heard on the charge of being the Son of G.o.d, in the sense that He was G.o.d Himself, because such a claim was not only ridiculous and frivolous as a plea, but because it was blasphemous upon its face; as being opposed, by bare a.s.sertion, to the most fundamental and sacred precept of the Mosaic Code and of the teachings of the Prophets: that G.o.d was purely and wholly spiritual; that He was not only incorporeal but invisible, indivisible, and incomprehensible. The advocates of this theory declare that Jesus a.s.serted, in the face of this primary belief of the Hebrews, a plurality of G.o.ds of which He was a member, and that this a.s.sertion destroyed the very cornerstone of Judaism, founded in the teaching of the celebrated pa.s.sage: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our G.o.d is one Lord." They further declare that when Jesus presented Himself in the flesh, and declared that He was G.o.d, He insulted both the intelligence and religious consciousness of His judges by a complete anthropomorphism; and that when He did this, He was not ent.i.tled to be heard.

One of the most radical of this cla.s.s is Rabbi Wise who, in "The Martyrdom of Jesus," says: "Had Jesus maintained before a Jewish court to be the Son of G.o.d, in the trinitarian sense of the terms, viz., that He was part, person, or incarnation of the Deity, He must have said it in terms to be understood to that effect, as ambiguous words amount to nothing. But if even clearly understood, the court could only have found Him insane, but not guilty of any crime." This is strong language, indeed, and deserves serious consideration. It means nothing less than that Jesus, upon His confession of equality and ident.i.ty with G.o.d, should have been committed as a lunatic, and not tried as a criminal.

And the real meaning of this too extreme view is that the claims of Jesus, being a man in the flesh, to membership in a plurality of G.o.ds was such an outrageous and unheard-of thing that it amounted to insanity; and that an insane person was not one to be listened to, but to be committed and protected. The purpose of the distinguished Hebrew theologian was to show by the absurdity of the thing that Jesus was never tried before a Hebrew court; that He never claimed to be the Son of G.o.d, and that the Evangelical narratives are simply false. The same writer thus continues in the same connection: "Mark reports furthermore, that Jesus did not simply affirm the high priest's question but added: 'And ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' Jesus cannot have said these words. Our reasons are: they are not true; none of the judges and witnesses present ever did see him either sitting on the right hand of power or coming in the clouds of heaven. These words could have originated only after the death of Jesus, when the Jewish Christians expected his immediate return as the Messiah and restorer of the kingdom of heaven, so that those very men could see him coming in the clouds of heaven. Besides, Jesus, the Pharisean Jew, could not have entertained the anthropomorphism that G.o.d had a _right hand_."[326] It is only necessary to add that Rabbi Wise may be right, if the Gospel writers were untruthful men. Suffice it to say that we have said enough in support of the veracity of the Evangelists in Part I of this volume. If we are right that they were truthful historians when they published these biographies to the world, Rabbi Wise is wrong; for according to these writers the Sanhedrin did not take the view that Jesus was a crazy man, but that He was a criminal. They accordingly tried Him to the extent of bringing an accusation against Him and of supporting it with a certain kind and amount of testimony, and by then leading Him away to be crucified by the Romans. Our contention is that the trial was not complete, in that His judges did not consider the merits of the defense of Jesus in the proceedings which they conducted against Him.

It would be entirely consistent with the plan of this treatise and of the special treatment of this theme to ignore completely the question of the divinity of Jesus; since we have announced a legal and not a theological consideration of the subject. But we repeat that the theological and the legal are inseparably interwoven in a proper handling of Point XII. If Rabbi Wise and others are right that the anthropomorphic pretensions of Jesus robbed Him of the protection of the law, in the sense that His claims to be G.o.d in the flesh were not worthy of consideration by a Hebrew court, then we are wrong in making the point that the merits of His defense should have been considered.

Our contention is that the claims of Jesus were not so strange and shocking as to place Him without the pale of the law and to deny Him its ordinary protection; that His pretensions were not those of an insane man; that if He was not the Son of G.o.d He was guilty of blasphemy; and that if He was the Son of G.o.d He was innocent. We further contend that all these things were subjects of legitimate judicial examination by Hebrew judges under Hebrew law, and that Jesus should have had His day in court.

A very brief examination of the question of anthropomorphism in its connection with the claims of Jesus will demonstrate the fallacy of the arguments of Rabbi Wise and of those who agree with him. Candor compels us to admit that the Jewish conception of Jehovah at the time of the crucifixion was very foreign to the notion of a G.o.d of flesh and bone.

Hebrew monotheism taught the doctrine of one G.o.d who was purely spiritual, and therefore invisible, intangible, and unapproachable.

Judaism delighted to lift its deity above the sensual, material, and corporeal things of earth, and to represent Him as a pure and sinless spirit in a state of awful and supreme transcendence. Our first impression, then, is that this dogma of divine unity and spirituality must have received a dreadful shock when Jesus, a carpenter of Nazareth, whose mother, father, brothers, and sisters were known, confronted the high priest and declared to him that He was G.o.d. But the shock was certainly not so great that Caiaphas and his colleagues, after a moment's composure and reflection, could not have concluded that the pretensions of Jesus were not wholly at variance with the revelations of Hebrew theology in the earlier years of the Commonwealth of Israel. They might have judged His claims to be unfounded, but they were certainly not justified in p.r.o.nouncing Him insane, or in ignoring His rights under the law to be heard and to have His defense considered. Their arrest and trial of the prisoner was the consummation of a number of secret meetings in which the astounding personality and marvelous performances of Jesus were debated and discussed with fear and trembling. The raising of Lazarus from the dead had created a frightful panic among the Sadducean oligarchy. Far from regarding Him as an obscure person whose claims were ridiculous and whose mind was unbalanced, the priests feared lest all men might believe on Him, and boldly declared that such was the influence of His deeds that His single life might be balanced against the existence of a whole nation.[327]

What the judges of the Sanhedrin should have done in examining the merits of the defense of Jesus was: (1) To consider whether, in the light of Hebrew scripture and tradition, a G.o.d of flesh and bone, representing the second person of a Duality or a Trinity of G.o.ds, was possible; (2) to weigh thoroughly the claims of Jesus, in the light of testimony properly adduced at the trial, that He was this second person of a Duality or Trinity of G.o.ds.

In making this examination, let us bear in mind, the members of the court were not to look forward, but backward. They were to examine the past, not the future, in reference to the present. Furthermore, they were not to consider so much a Trinity as a Duality of G.o.ds; for it must be remembered that the Holy Ghost was not a feature of the trial. The Athanasian creed and the proceedings of the Nicene Council were not binding upon Caiaphas and his fellow-judges. Nor were the teachings of the New Testament scriptures published to the world more than a generation after the trial. They were to consider the divine pretensions of Jesus in the light of the teachings and revelations of the Law and the Prophets. They were to measure His claims by these standards in the light of the evidence adduced before them.

With a view to a thorough and systematic examination of the merits of the defense of Jesus, Caiaphas, as presiding officer of the Sanhedrin, should have propounded to his fellow-judges the following initial questions: (1) Do the Law and the Prophets reveal the doctrine of a plurality of G.o.ds among the Israelites? That is, has Jehovah ever begotten, or has He ever promised to beget, a Son of equal divinity with Himself? Was this Son to be, or is He to be born of a woman; and to have, therefore, the form of a man and the attributes of a human being?

Was this Son to be, or is He to be at any time identical with the Father? Do the Law and the Prophets tell us unmistakably that Jehovah ever appeared upon the earth in human form and exhibited human attributes? Do they contain a promise from the Father that He would send His Son to the earth to be the Redeemer of men and the Regenerator of the world? (2) Do the credentials of Jesus, the prisoner at the bar, in the light of the evidence before us, ent.i.tle Him to be considered this Son and Amba.s.sador of G.o.d, sent from the Father to redeem mankind?

It follows logically and necessarily that if affirmative answers were not given to the first set of questions an examination of the second would be useless. Let us conceive, then, that the judges of the Sanhedrin had employed this method. What answers, we may ask, would they have developed to these questions from the Sacred Books?

At the outset it is safe to say that negative answers would have been given, if the judges had considered the claims of Jesus with reference alone to the prevailing Pharisaic teachings of the days of Jesus. And in this connection let us note that the Hebrew conception of Jehovah had materially changed in the time intervening between the Mosaic dispensation and the coming of the Christ. The spiritual growth of the nation had been characterized at every step by marked aversion to anthropomorphism--the ascription to G.o.d of human form and attributes. In the Pentateuch there is a prevailing anthropomorphic idea of Jehovah. He is frequently talked about as if He were a man. Human pa.s.sions and emotions are repeatedly ascribed to Him. This was inevitable among a primitive people whose crude religious consciousness sought to frame from the a.n.a.logy of human nature a visible symbol of the Deity and a sensible emblem of religious faith. All early religions have manifested the same anthropomorphic tendencies. Both Judaism and Christianity have long since planted themselves upon the fundamental proposition that G.o.d is a spirit. But both these systems of religion have in all ages been compelled to run the gantlet of two opposing tendencies: one of which sought by a living, personal communion with G.o.d through Moses and through Christ, by means of human attributes and symbols, an intimate knowledge and immediate benefit of the divine nature; the other, from a horror of anthropomorphism, tending to make G.o.d purely pa.s.sionless and impersonal, thus reducing Him to a bare conception without form or quality, thus making Him a blank negation.

The successive steps in the progress of weeding out anthropomorphisms from the Pentateuch may be clearly traced in later Hebrew literature.