Historical Tradition in the Trial Narrative?
Historical Tradition in the Trial Narrative?
Some have assailed the historicity of Mark’s “trial” narrative;135 others have shown that the arguments against authenticity are at best inconclusive and at worst fallacious.136 We may quickly and initially dispense with one argument that could be adduced on the issue. Rabbinic sources acknowledge the Jewish trial of Jesus yet not the Roman trial;137 but the former acknowledgement probably derives from a response to Jewish Christian polemic whereas the latter silence may derive from embarrassment for the need for Roman intervention138 or from the same polemic. These sources, centuries later than Mark’s account of Jesus’ trial, cannot be given equal weight with it.
More often considered are claims that the Gospel accounts violate the Sanhedrin’s legal procedures or, more compelling, that the Jesus movement would lack access to any information about what would have occurred in any such meeting of Jerusalem’s aristocrats.