GENERALLY speaking the Sanhedrin were not a sanguinary tribunal. They shuddered at the necessity of bloodshed, and tried to obviate its necessity by innumerable regulations. So great was their horror at putting an Israelite to death, that any means of avoiding it seemed desirable. Simeon Ben Shatach is the only conspicuous Rabbi who, for his cruelty in deciding causes, is said “to have had hot hands.” Josephus expressly marks it as disgraceful to the Sadducees that, unlike the rest of their nation, they were savage in their punishments. We are told that if even once in seven years— Rabbi Eleazar Ben Azariah went so far as to say that if once in seventy years—a Sanhedrin inflicted capital punishment it deserved the opprobrious title of “sanguinary.”1 The migration of the Sanhedrin forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem, from their “Hall of Squares,” which was beside the great Court of the Temple to the Chanujôth or “shops” which were under two cedars on the Mount of Olives, is expressly stated to have been due to their desire to get to a greater distance from the sacred precincts, in order that they might not feel it so sternly incumbent upon them to inflict the strict punishments of the Law.2 But if, after strict and solemn voting, a man was condemned to any of the four capital punishments, the utmost care was taken to remove from the punishment all semblance of vindictive haste. In the case of a convicted blasphemer the death assigned by the Law was stoning, and in Leviticus it is ordained that the witnesses should lay their hands upon his head, and all the congregation should stone him.3 In Deuteronomy we read the further regulations that the hand of the witnesses was first to be upon him4— and this horrible duty was one of the deterrents from false or frivolous accusation. But if we may accept the authority of the Mishna, the process was an elaborate one. On pronunciation of the sentence the condemned was handed over to the Shoterım̂ or Lictors of the Sanhedrin, and led to the place of execution. An official stood at the door of the Judgment Hall5 holding in his hand a handkerchief; a second on horseback was stationed just in sight of the first, and if, even at the last moment, any witness could testify to the innocence of the condemned, the first shook his handkerchief, and the second galloped at full speed to bring back the accused, who was himself allowed to be led back as many as four or five times if he could adduce a single solid proof in his own favour. Failing this he was led on with a herald preceding him, who proclaimed his name, his crime, and the witnesses on whose testimony he had been condemned. At ten paces’ distance from the place of death he was bidden to confess, because Jewish no less than Roman law valued the certainty derived from the “confitentem reum,” and the Jews deduced from the story of Achan that his punishment would be, as regards the future world, a sufficiently complete expiation of his crime.6 A bitter draught containing a grain of frankincense was then given him to stupefy his senses and take away the edge of terror. At four cubits, distance from the fatal spot he was stripped bare of his upper garments, and according to the older and simpler plan of procedure was then stoned, the witnesses simultaneously hurling the first stones.7 But the later custom seems to have been more elaborate. The place of execution8 was twelve feet high, and one of the witnesses flung the criminal down, back foremost, from the top, the other immediately hurling a heavy stone upon his chest. If this failed to produce death, all who were present joined in stoning him, and his body was subsequently hung by the hands on a tree until the fall of evening.9
We may be quite sure that none of these elaborate prescriptions were followed in the martyrdom of Stephen. He was murdered in one of those sudden outbursts of fury to which on more than one occasion the life of our Lord had been nearly sacrificed.