CHAPTER 17 (PAGES 216–224)
TWO WITNESSES NECESSARY FOR PROSECUTION: Deuteronomy 19:15.
A BROKEN LEG ON THE SABBATH: Shabbath (Mishnah), xxii, 6.
THE ARREST AND RELIGIOUS TRIAL OF JESUS: Matthew 26:47 ff.; Mark 14:43 ff.; Luke 22:47 ff.; John 18:1 ff. For the judicial procedure of the Sanhedrin, see the Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin, iv, 1 to v, 5. A list of further irregularities at the Sanhedral hearing is provided by A. Taylor Innes. The Trial of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh, 1905), pp. 55–59. Indeed, because of the various irregularities in this case, scholars still argue over whether there was in fact any formal Jewish trial at all before Caiaphas, or simply an informal hearing, a grand-jury action to prepare for the final and determinative Roman trial.
PROCEDURE FOR STONING: Sanhedrin, vi, 1–4.
CHAPTER 18 (PAGES 225–249)
THE DATE OF THE CRUCIFIXION: This is clearly of decisive importance to any consideration of Pilate’s role at the trial of Jesus. Briefly, the years 29, 30, or 33 A.D. are most commonly proposed in the vast scholarly literature on this question, but the earlier datings seem to raise more problems than they solve. The most precisely given “anchor date” in the Gospels is Luke 3:1–2, where it is stated that John the Baptist began his public ministry “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,” i.e., 28–29 A.D. Allowing a half to one full year for John’s independent ministry and three to three and one-half for Jesus’ would seem to require 32–33 A.D. (The usual explanation that Tiberius shared a co-regency with Augustus from 12 A.D. so that the fifteenth year of Tiberius could fall as early as 26 founders on the facts of Roman history: the princeps never dated his reign from a time when the great Augustus was still alive, nor do our sources for this era, Tacitus, Suetonius, or Dio. Moreover, coinage in the Tiberian era dates his reign only from the death of Augustus.)
There is also this evidence from Roman history. The indirect threat of the prosecution at the trial of Jesus to appeal to Caesar against Pilate would not have been likely before the fall of the anti-Semite Sejanus in October of 31, and Tiberius’s pro-Jewish policy which would have entertained such an appeal did not begin until after that time. Therefore the Passover of 32 or 33 would seem the best options for dating the crucifixion. April 3, 33, is the preferable date, because it best answers the requirements for Nisan 14 falling on a Friday in the Jewish calendar. A brilliant discussion in support of 33 A.D., involving also astronomical calculation, is provided by Richard W. Husband, The Prosecution of Jesus (Princeton, 1916), pp. 34–69. A. D. Doyle posits the very probable thesis that the four sons of Herod complained about the golden shields—after the fall of Sejanus—at the Passover of 32 when they would naturally be together in Jerusalem, with the Crucifixion thus taking place a year later. See his “Pilate’s Career and the Date of the Crucifixion,” The Journal of Theological Studies 42 (1941), 190–93. The 33 A.D. dating is favored also by Cambridge Ancient History, X, 649; J. K. Fotheringham, “The Evidence of Astronomy and Technical Chronology for the Date of the Crucifixion,” The Journal of Theological Studies 35 (1934), 146–62; et al.
Finally, there is the direct patristic evidence of Eusebius. In his Chronicon, ii (ed. Migne, XIX, 535), he stated that Christ suffered “in the 19th year of the reign of Tiberius,” i.e., 33 A.D., and he cites Phlegon’s reference to the abnormal solar eclipse (see below) as taking place in the “fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad,” which extended from July 1, 32, to June 30, 33 A.D. Since Christ was crucified at the time of the Passover, i.e., spring, 33 would be the year.
For further discussion, see my article, “Sejanus, Pilate, and the Date of the Crucifixion,” Church History 37 (March 1968), 3–13.
ROMAN PENALTIES FOR SEDITION: Justinian, Corpus Iuris Civilis, Digestae, xlviii, 8, iii, 4–5.
THE CHARGE OF SORCERY: While the New Testament does not cite sorcery as a particular charge raised against Jesus, this indictment is plausibly mentioned in the Acta Pilati, i, and specifically in the early rabbinical traditions concerning “Yeshu Hannosri” in Sanhedrin 43a (Babylonian Talmud).
ANTIPAS “THAT FOX”: Luke 13:32.
THE HEARING BEFORE HEROD ANTIPAS: Luke 23:6–12. CHUZA: Luke 8:3. MANAEN: Acts 13:1, though the NT does not mention whether or not Chuza and Manaen accompanied Antipas to Jerusalem at this time. But since his wife Joanna was definitely there for this Passover (Luke 24:10), it is more than probable that Chuza was there as well.
THREE OPPORTUNITIES GIVEN THE DEFENSELESS: see A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), p. 25.
THE ROMAN TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS: Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; and John 18:28–19:42. For legal aspects, see also Sherwin-White, op. cit., pp. 22 ff., and A. H. M. Jones, Studies in Roman Government and Law (Oxford, 1960).
CHAPTER 19 (PAGES 250–259)
“THE INNOCENT MAN”: Plato, The Republic, ii, 5. The “innocent” or “just” man (ho dikaios) was the term used by both Plato and Pilate’s wife.
“SANHEDRIN…A SLAUGHTERHOUSE”: or “destructive tribunal,” according to Makkoth 7a (Babylonian Talmud). Other rabbis said “once in seventy years.”
THE GUARD AT THE TOMB: There is some controversy as to whether the Jewish temple police or Pilate’s Roman auxiliaries were used to guard the sepulcher. The Greek of Matthew 27:65 cites Pilate’s statement simply as: “You have a guard,” though grammatically this could also be translated, “You may have a guard.” But the first interpretation seems preferable, since the watch reported the empty tomb directly to the chief priests rather than Pilate (Matthew 28:11), which the temple police would certainly have done. Pilate’s auxiliaries would clearly have reported to him, and only to him. Tertullian, Apologeticus, xxi, 20, also speaks of a Jewish military guard at the tomb.
THE FULL MOON: This was rather a time for lunar, not solar, eclipse. In point of fact, on the evening of Friday, April 3, A.D. 33, a partial eclipse of the moon did take place, which would have been visible in Jerusalem for some minutes after sundown. See Fotheringham, loc. cit.
CHAPTER 20 (PAGES 260–271)
JESUS SPEARED: John 19:34. The phenomenon of separated blood and water flowing from Jesus’ body has led some pathologists to conclude that the lance had most likely penetrated the pericardium, liberating extravasated blood which had separated into its two constituents of red cells and plasma, possibly indicating a heart previously ruptured from intense agony.
THE RESURRECTION ACCOUNTS: Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20–21; 1 Corinthians 15:4 ff. Malchus’s role in this chapter is only assumed. Several Jewish writings acknowledged that the tomb was empty on Sunday morning; see the discussion on the Toledoth Jeshu in Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902), pp. 45, 58 ff.
CHAPTER 21 (PAGES 272–289)
EVENTS AT ROME IN 33 A.D.: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 20 ff.
ACTIVITIES OF THE DISCIPLES: Acts 1–5.
THE DARKNESS AT THE CRUCIFIXION: This phenomenon, evidently, was visible in Rome, Athens, and other Mediterranean cities. According to Tertullian, Apologeticus, xxi, 20, it was a “cosmic” or “world event.” Phlegon, a Greek author from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137 A.D., reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (i.e., 33 A.D.) there was “the greatest eclipse of the sun,” and that “it became night in the sixth hour of the day [i.e., noon] so that stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea.”—Fragment from the 13th book of Phlegon, Olympiades he Chronika, ed. Otto Keller, Rerum Naturalium Scriptores Graeci Minores, I (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877), p. 101. Trans. mine.