THE POWER OF THE SANHEDRIN TO INFLICT DEATH

A QUESTION has often been raised how the Sanhedrin at this time had the power of inflicting death at all? The well–known passage of St. John, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” has been asserted to be in direct contradiction to the narrative. The explanation of that passage to mean “it is not lawful at the time of the feast” is both philologically and historically untenable, and there seems to be little doubt that there is truth in the statement of the Talmud that about forty years—a well–known vague term in Jewish writers—before the fall of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin had relinquished—it would be truer to say, had been deprived of—the power of death.1 That deprivation was due to the direct interference of the Romans, who would not extend the highest judicial functions to men so likely to abuse them for seditious ends. It is, perhaps, only an attempt of the Rabbis to veil their national humiliation, when they attribute the diminished glories of their “House of Judgment” to their own leniency; to their reluctance to shed the blood of a descendant of Abraham; to the consequent increase of crimes; and to the migration from the Hall of Squares to the “Shops” of the Benî Hanan. But, on the other hand, we know the astute connivance which the Romans were always ready to extend to acts which were due to religious excitement and not to civil rebellion.2 They rarely interfered with national superstitions. Even Pilate, though by no means void of a sense of justice, had been quite willing to hand over Jesus to any extreme of ecclesiastical vengeance, provided only that the direct responsibility did not fall upon himself. Further than this, there is every reason to believe that St. Stephen’s martyrdom finds its counterpart in the murder of James, the Lord’s brother. That was brought about by the younger Hanan during a High Priesthood of only three months’ duration, in which he seized his opportunity, and availed himself of a brief interregnum which followed on the death of Festus, and preceded the arrival of his successor Albinus. It was at just such an interregnum that the death of Stephen is believed to have taken place. Pontius Pilate had been sent to Rome by his official chief, Vitellius, the Præfect of Syria, to answer to the Emperor for the complaints of cruelty and insult brought against him by the inhabitants of every division of his Procuratorship. Before his arrival the Emperor Tiberius died. An event of this magnitude relaxed the sternness of government in every province of the Empire,3 and though Vitellius appointed Marcellus as a brief temporary locumtensns until the arrival of Marullus, who was appointed Procurator by Gaius,4 the Sanhedrin may have met while there was no Procurator at all, and in any case would have found it easy to persuade a substitute like Marcellus, or a new–comer like Marullus, that it would be useless to inquire into a mere riot which had ended in the richly deserved punishment of a blaspheming Hellenist. In short, we find that the possibility of tumultuous outbreaks which might end in a death by stoning is constantly recognised in the New Testament;5 and it would have been easy for the Sanhedrin to represent the stoning of St. Stephen in such a light.