Pilate witnessed the scene, half hoping that the stripes would bring Jesus sufficiently to his senses to make a better defense of himself. Playing on human behavior, he also intended the scourging to win the people’s sympathy for the accused.
Then it came time for a Roman magistrate to turn his back on a prisoner’s punishment while the soldiers played their games of mockery with him, a barbaric custom which Rome had not shaken off from her ancient past. The only charge against Jesus which had registered with the troops was the claim that this unlikely figure should be a king in any sense, and of the Jews in particular. As anti-Semites, they found the idea doubly humorous. So their mockery focused on this theme. A sneering centurion who had located a purple lictor’s mantle draped it around Jesus’ shoulders and his men broke into lusty laughter. One hulking veteran with fat calluses covering his hands tore out several branches from thorn bushes growing in the courtyard and braided these into a prickly crown which he solemnly planted on Jesus’ head in a sham coronation. A reed shoved into his right hand as scepter completed the royal ensemble. The whole rowdy company of troops now fell on their knees and jeeringly saluted him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then, one by one, they filed by to do him honor, slapping his cheeks and spitting in his face. When Jesus refused to hold the reed and dropped it, the centurion picked it up and used it to beat the crown of thorns into his scalp. Bleeding from scourge and thorn, Jesus said nothing.
Pilate reappeared in the courtyard and halted the mock homage. Then he led Jesus out to the tribunal and exhibited him to the multitude. “Here he is,” said Pilate. “I bring him out to let you know that I find no crime in him, but this scourging has punished him for offending you. Look at him! You charged him with claiming to be king. Well, here’s your king…wearing the purple, but crowned with thorns.”
The soldiers started laughing, and Pilate encouraged it, hoping that mockery might slake the crowd’s thirst for blood. It was one thing to demand execution of a healthy and unharmed prisoner, quite another to insist on it for a defenseless, beaten, and ridiculed wretch.
“Behold the man,” said Pilate, in a tone of condescending compassion.
“Crucify! Crucify!” the chief priests and the elders exclaimed. At first the shouting came only from the comparatively small knot of prosecutors below the tribunal, since some sympathy for the beaten Jesus had been generated in the mass assembly. But soon more and more took up the chant, and the general mood was once again galvanized for condemning Jesus.
Pilate was losing his patience. “You crucify him,” he snarled. “Take him and crucify him yourselves, for I’ve found no case against him.”
This invitation went begging, of course, for it was merely angry sarcasm. At this point, Pilate was preparing to announce final acquittal and the closing of court.
The chief priests took quick counsel. Then Caiaphas walked up to the tribunal and spoke with Pilate face to face. “We have a law, Honorable Prefect, and according to our law this man ought to die, because he has claimed to be the Son of God.”
“The Son of God?” asked Pilate, plainly disturbed, but also irritated.
“Yes. This is the greatest offense in Hebrew law, the worst blasphemy.”
While a ripple of superstition was aroused in Pilate by the new information, his juridical sense was infuriated. The prosecution was introducing an entirely new charge, a religious one, which was apparently unrelated to the previous political indictments. In fairness to the judge, the court, and the defendant, it should have been cited much earlier. However, Pilate understood why it had not been: the Sanhedrin feared that he would not adjudicate in matters religious. Now, however, backed against the wall by his refusal to condemn, the prosecution was honest enough to supply what had undoubtedly been their main charge against Jesus at the Sanhedral hearing.
Scowling at the plaintiffs, Pilate finally grumbled, “This is an entirely new charge. You should have raised it when I called for accusations at the start of the trial. Now I’ll have to hold a private hearing on this alleged claim to be…‘Son of God.’” With that, Pilate had Jesus brought back again into the palace.
A claim to divinity was always a bit unnerving for Romans. Fundamentally, they were a rather religious—or at least superstitious—breed, even if, like Pilate, they thought themselves enlightened skeptics.
He began his careful probe into Jesus’ alleged claim to divinity with a frankly metaphysical question. “Where have you come from?”
Jesus did not reply.
“You won’t speak to me? Don’t you know that I have the authority to release you or to crucify you?”
“You would have no authority at all over me if it had not been given you from above,” Jesus responded. “Therefore the prosecution has the greater sin.”
The inscrutable language, the reference to higher, possibly fatalistic powers, for which he was evidently a tool, convinced Pilate that further conversation with Jesus would lead nowhere. The man seemed resolved not to enter any defense for himself.
Pilate left Jesus inside the praetorium while he returned to his tribunal. He then realized that for the second time Jesus had in fact mentioned something in his defense. It was only a sentence, like the first occasion (“My kingship is not of this world”). He had said, “The prosecution has the greater sin.” The last word also meant “failure” or “error.” Pilate knew, and clearly Jesus also knew, that the legal process now taking place was “sin…error…failure.”
Pilate’s conscience would not allow him to condemn an innocent man, so he now renewed his efforts to release Jesus, despite the uncompromising attitude of the people. He wondered to what extent they were a hired claque rounded up by the prosecution.
The prefect of Judea cajoled, debated, argued, and finally threatened. The prosecution countered that because this was a case involving religious offense, Pilate need not have reopened the trial. He should simply have countersigned the execution order of the Sanhedrin, for it had supreme jurisdiction over all religious questions affecting Jews. If Rome had not removed the jus gladii from that body, the prefect would not even have had the unpleasant task of trying to fathom Jewish law to understand why such supreme blasphemy could be punished only by death.
Pilate found it difficult to answer that argument. He had private reservations about the motives which led Caiaphas and the priests to seek Jesus’ death. To what extent were they based on the alleged blasphemy? Or did they stem also from envy at Jesus’ success? Or was this merely a case of retaliation for his attacks on them? But it was impossible to debate such motives publicly, for that would have impugned the veracity of the Jewish authorities before their own people, an offense which would have terminated Pilate’s usefulness in Judea.
It was while he was hesitating that the leaders of the prosecution pressed their final attack. Rabbi Ananias was chosen to voice the decisive appeal. “Noble Prefect,” he said, “our very beliefs, our way of life, our religious future, are at stake in this trial. If this deceiver is released, he will subvert our nation and also our most holy faith. If such cardinal blasphemy which we have all heard with our own ears is not punished, then Israel is lost. However, Tiberius Caesar has charged you to uphold all our religious customs.” He paused to lend emphasis to what would follow, raising his voice at the same time. “Therefore, if you let this man go free, you are not Caesar’s friend. Furthermore, anyone who would make himself a king treasonably defies Caesar!”
There it was, a linking of the religious and political charges against Jesus raised to the highest level of appeal, that of the emperor himself. Pilate was beaten. He had lost. The priests were victorious, though it took him some moments to recognize that fact in all its fullness.