All eyes shifted from Antipas to Jesus. The chief priests were apprehensive, for Herod’s tone was serious, not taunting. What would he do if their prisoner actually performed a bit of magic—declare him a true prophet and free him? But they need not have been concerned. Jesus made no move whatever, other than shutting his eyes in inner concentration and then opening them.
“Come now, Yeshu,” said Herod, “I know you once called me a ‘fox,’ and for the shrewdness implied, why, I thank you for the compliment.” This raised a bit of laughter from Antipas’s guards. “But my request has no further slyness than this: you’re either a true prophet or a false one. The latter achieves wonders by tricks; the former by the power of God. Now I believe that I can see through tricks. So if you perform an actual sign for us, wouldn’t that demonstrate that you are a true prophet?”
Jesus said nothing, did nothing.
“Look, don’t just stand there, man!” Herod was losing his temper. “You haven’t much of a bargaining position, and no one’s speaking in your defense. I’m showing you a way out. Do a miracle! Even a simple one…say…have those fetters break off your wrists.”
Jesus was silent.
“Well, if you can’t do anything, can you say something?” Herod glared, starting to lose all sympathy for the prisoner. The tetrarch of Galilee was simply not disobeyed, especially not by one on trial, and yet here was a defendant mocking him by his silence.
But Jesus held his peace. Antipas might have known he would stage no spectacle for a man who had executed his close friend, forerunner, and cousin, John. He would not entertain the fox.
At this point, the chief priests and scribal lawyers quite logically broke into the silence, vigorously pressing their case against Jesus. “Do you know why he won’t perform any wonders, noble Tetrarch?” asked Jonathan. “Because he can’t! The signs ascribed to him are merely tricks—hoaxes.”
“And according to your own flawless logic,” Ananias added, “Yeshu must therefore be a false prophet.”
Much affirmative head-nodding supported that observation. Antipas let the accusatores speak on to a summation. Then he addressed Jesus a final time. “No defense, Nazarene?” After the now-expected silence, Antipas broke into derisive laughter. “Of course there’s no defense for a charlatan—a fraud! I must marvel at the people of Judea and Galilee—to consider this one a prophet. Ridiculous! At least the Baptizer had the courage to speak out, even in prison. But the Nazarene can’t even find his tongue. Guards, I think it’s time for you to show due reverence to our Messiah-king here.”
Antipas’s troops converged on the prisoner for a round of mockery and ridicule. Playfully they dropped to their knees or bowed deeply. Several fell flat on their faces before him and pounded the floor. Trumpeters blew a fanfare directly into his ears. Then they dressed him in a brilliant white robe, one of Antipas’s discards, for the Messiah was expected to wear such.
“All right. That’s enough,” Herod directed. “Now take this magnificent prophet-Messiah-monarch back to Pontius Pilate.”
The Sanhedrists thought they had not heard correctly, and Helcias asked, “Did the tetrarch say ‘back to Pilate’?”
“He did. I herewith waive my jurisdiction over this subject. Since most of your accusations focus on events in Judea, let the prefect of Judea judge him.”
“But Excellency,” protested Rabbi Zadok, “the prefect remanded this case to your tribunal, and—”
“And I’m referring it back to his. Do you suggest I don’t have this prerogative? My Galileans are judiciable in Judea if they break the law here. Besides, those charges of yours which involve Yeshu calling himself king are something for Rome to adjudicate, not I.”
Finally Caiaphas himself, who had remained silent throughout Antipas’s hearing, approached his throne and said, “Worthy Tetrarch, you have protected our most holy faith in the past. You have defended our cause admirably, as in the appeal to Tiberius regarding the golden shields, and on other occasions. Why do you now fail to condemn this arch-heretic who blasphemes the name of our Holy God by calling himself His Son?”
“Most Honorable Pontiff Caiaphas, I think this tongue-tied wretch deserves our sympathy, not our stoning. Today we’ve proven him a hoax. How could he possibly have a following after this? But if you think he deserves punishment, just remember this: I didn’t set him free. I might have acquitted him entirely, rather than returning the case to Pilate. As it is, you can simply resume his trial before the prefect at the point where you left off.”
Caiaphas was about to reply, but Antipas ended the hearing by standing to announce, “This court is adjourned.”
Slowly, the chief priests filed out, followed by members of the Sanhedrin, the temple guard surrounding Jesus, and then all the rest who had crowded into the atrium of the Hasmonean palace. The parade of accusers headed back to the Roman praetorium. But now it was almost nine A.M.
Surrounded again by his wife and relatives, Antipas watched them leave. He knew he had been less than candid with Caiaphas in posing as something of the forgiving humanitarian. This was only to mask the real motive behind his failure to judge the case. Many of his Galilean subjects believed in Jesus, and some of them were in Jerusalem at the time, camped on the surrounding hills. Even if riots did not break out, were he to condemn the Nazarene, he could still look forward to reaping a fine harvest of hatred upon his return to Galilee, for then he would have killed his second prophet. Besides, two of those who believed in the man were standing very close to his own tribunal during the hearing: Chuza, his chief steward; and Manaen, his close friend and adviser. Antipas was man enough to taunt Jesus before people who believed in him, but not to have him stoned.
And why should he relieve Pilate of this thorny case? Let Rome and Rome’s prefect bear the odium for prophet-killing, if it came to that. But it was decent of Pilate to make such a conciliatory gesture as deferring to his tribunal; very decent, in fact, especially after the shields altercation. Perhaps Pilate was basically a good man after all, and he had been misjudging him all these years.
Antipas took a stylus, prepared a note for Pilate, and sent it to the Herodian palace by a courier who was told to reach the prefect before the multitude returned. The message commended Pilate for having referred the case of Jesus of Nazareth to him, but he thought in view of the forum delicti, the mood of the Sanhedrin in having approached the Roman tribunal in the first instance, and the political implications of some of the charges, that Pilate’s would be the more appropriate court. He herewith waived his jurisdiction over Jesus. Nevertheless, he appreciated Pilate’s kind gesture, and could he and Procula come over to the Hasmonean palace the following Tuesday evening for a dinner party?
The communication reached Pilate at his inner tribunal. He read it with only moderate surprise. A political sixth sense had told him Antipas might react as he did. With a renewed frown, he rose from his ivory sella, postponing the remaining cases, and went out to face the crowds, which by now had largely reconvened in the palace square. There, again, were the chief priests, the Sanhedrin, Jesus, the masses—the same unpleasant cast which had confronted him earlier in what evidently had been merely Act I of a Greek tragedy played by Jewish actors before a Roman judge.
This time, without waiting for the prosecution to enter a formal request for a reopening and continuation of the trial, Pilate seized the initiative and announced, “You brought the defendant before this tribunal on a charge of subversion. But, after personally and publicly examining him, I did not find this man guilty of any of your prime charges against him. Neither did the tetrarch Herod Antipas, for he has referred the case back to me. Even if he committed infractions of your religious law, Jesus of Nazareth has done nothing to deserve death.”