The Roman Trial
THE ROMAN TRIAL
MARK 15:1-15
The guilty went free and the innocent died instead.
Business began very early in the day in the ancient world, and it would have been no more than about 6 a.m. when the Sanhedrin met officially to confirm its previous night’s informal proceedings. The prisoner had then to be handed over to the Roman government for confirmation and execution of the sentence. Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Judea, was in Jerusalem for his customary visit during the Passover festival, and Jesus was brought before him. The charge against him had now to be reframed and presented in a way that would make out Jesus to be a political danger to the Roman government. It was, therefore, as a pretender to the throne that Jesus appeared before Pilate.
C.H. Dodd has illuminated the non-committal answer of Jesus to Pilate by quoting from Scott’s Old Mortality. Lauderdale, trying the Covenanter Ephraim Macbriar as a rebel asks: “Were you at the battle of Bothwell Bridge?” “I was.” “Were you armed?” “I was not—I went in my calling as a preacher of God’s word, to encourage them that drew the sword in his cause.” “In other words, to aid and abet the rebels?” “Thou hast said it.” So Jesus’ answer was a disclaimer, although of course, in a deeper sense than Pilate could understand, the answer was “Yes” (John 18:33-38).
The chief priests then made further accusations, to which Jesus offered no reply, and Pilate probably realized that they were trumped-up charges. His plan to release Jesus misfired because the chief priests incited the crowd to seek the release of Barabbas, a revolutionary.
The flagrant disregard for justice shown by Pilate can easily be paralleled from the behavior of other Roman governors: one has only to think of the picture of Verres in Sicily painted by Cicero. But many have felt that Pilate shows here a weak vacillating character quite out of harmony with the description of “inflexible, merciless and obstinate” given to him by a contemporary. It is, however, by no means unlikely that Pilate should have baited the Jews over their desire to have him execute an innocent man and then adopted the course which seemed likely to cause least disturbance; in any case human life was cheap. It was a perfectly ordinary act of injustice, only this time it was the Son of God who suffered in person, as he does indirectly when the innocent are wronged (Matthew 25:41-46).