The Trials before the Council and Pilate

Those who arrested Jesus took him to the high priest; John says that he was led first to Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, and then to Caiaphas, the high priest that year (John 18:13, 24). In Mark the chief priests, elders and scribes gathered that night and looked for testimony against him. The witnesses did not agree, and some said that he had spoken of destroying the temple (Mark 14:53–59). Then the high priest asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus answered, “I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky.” The high priest tore his clothes and called it blasphemy, and they all judged him to deserve death (Mark 14:61–64). In the courtyard below, Peter three times denied that he knew him (Mark 14:66–72).

In the morning the council handed Jesus over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor (Mark 15:1; Matthew 27:1–2). In John the accusers tell Pilate that they are not permitted to put anyone to death (John 18:31). Luke gives the charge as misleading the nation, forbidding the payment of taxes to Caesar and calling himself “Christ, a king” (Luke 23:2). Pilate asked, “Are you the King of the Jews?”, and Jesus answered, “So you say” (Mark 15:2). In John he adds, “My Kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Luke alone reports that Pilate, learning that Jesus was a Galilean, sent him to Herod Antipas, who was then in Jerusalem. Herod questioned him, mocked him and sent him back (Luke 23:6–12).

At the feast, Mark says, the governor used to release a prisoner (Mark 15:6). In Mark, Matthew and Luke a crowd asked for Barabbas, whom Mark and Luke describe as held for insurrection and murder, and shouted for Jesus to be crucified; Mark and Matthew say that the chief priests stirred the crowd up (Mark 15:7–14; Matthew 27:15–23; Luke 23:18–21). In John the same demands come from “the Jews” and from the chief priests and their officers (John 18:38–40; 19:6, 15). Luke and John have Pilate declare that he finds no case against him (Luke 23:4; John 19:6). In John the accusers warn him, “If you release this man, you aren’t Caesar’s friend” (John 19:12). In Matthew he washes his hands before the crowd, and the people answer, “May his blood be on us, and on our children!” (Matthew 27:24–25). Pilate released Barabbas, had Jesus flogged and handed him over to be crucified (Mark 15:15).

Both judges are known from outside the New Testament. Josephus records the appointment and removal of Joseph Caiaphas (Josephus, Antiquities 18.33–35) (Josephus, Antiquities 18.89, 95), and an ossuary found in Jerusalem bears the name “Joseph son of Caiaphas” (Caiaphas ossuary). An inscription from Caesarea preserves most of Pilate’s name and of his title, prefect of Judea; the first letters of each are restored (Pilate Stone lines 2–3). Philo, his contemporary, quotes a letter that calls him inflexible and merciless and says that he removed some gilded shields from Jerusalem only on the order of Tiberius (Philo, Embassy to Gaius 299–305). Josephus describes his clashes with the people over military standards and temple funds (Josephus, Antiquities 18.55–62) (Josephus, Jewish War 2.169–177). None of these passages mentions the trial of Jesus; on Josephus’s notice of Jesus see the Crucifixion.

The first letter to Timothy remembers Jesus as the one who “before Pontius Pilate testified the good confession” (1 Timothy 6:13), and Pilate’s name passed into the creed: “crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate” (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed). The people’s answer in Matthew was later read as a judgment on the Jewish people and their descendants. Tertullian, early in the third century, takes it as a condemnation that they called down on themselves and their children and that God then carried out (Tertullian, Against Marcion 2.15). In 1965 the Second Vatican Council rejected the charge of collective guilt. Its declaration Nostra aetate says that, although Jewish authorities and those who followed them pressed for the death of Christ, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, without distinction, or against the Jews of today, and that Jews are not to be presented as rejected or accursed by God as if this followed from Scripture. It deplores hatred, persecution and antisemitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone (Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate 4). The Catechism of the Catholic Church applies this to the verse: the crowd’s cry does not extend responsibility to Jews of other times and places (Catechism of the Catholic Church 597).