According to Yale Religious Studies Professor Dale B. Martin it is more than probable that there never was a trial of Jesus at all. As he writes in his Yale University monograph (Introduction to New Testament History and Literature, p. 181 )
"The Romans did not need to try a troublesome Jewish peasant in order to kill him."
In other words the entire trial tableaux - while not manufactured out of whole cloth - was clearly constructed by later copyists, scriptural writers who desired a particular representation. This would be to aggressively promote belief in a Messiah.
As Prof. Martin relates (ibid.), the Romans stoned or crucified troublesome, nameless lower class people all the time. In the case of Jesus, who "had caused a disturbance in the Temple and made radical pronouncements" the Romans would have "simply taken him by force and crucified him the next day" with a few other nameless others. Adding:
"There was no need for any trial much less two or more different 'courts'. It would have been more trouble than a Roman governor needed for the desired result."
"Moreover even if there were any kind of trial there is no way any information about it would have been transmitted to his disciples so they could then pass the stories along so they could be recorded in the gospels."
Further there is no way any lower class peasant follower - say Peter- could have gained access to any actual hearings. Indeed, more than 30 years separated the events at the time from the first recorded scriptures associated with the particular gospels. The end effect is that all the related accounts, irrespective of which quadriform gospel - were confections, or creations. Myths if you will or "fiction" short stories in today's parlance. Or in the words of Prof. Martin (p. 184):
"Any narrative of any trial is purely the product of later Christian imagination which thought that since Jesus was the most important man in history there must have been significant trials before his execution."
Prof. Martin is careful on the next page, however, to emphasize that this "historical Jesus" is in no way dependent on the Christian faith. So one can still believe (as a Christian) and have faith in Jesus but ignore the elaborate biblical mythology erected around him. One can also choose to believe these stories, but ought to know or realize there is no exegetical (or historical) support for them.
All of which conforms with the conclusion of the Catholic Scriptural historian, the Rev. Thomas Bokenkotter, who wrote in his monograph (A Concise History of the Catholic Church), p. 17:
"The Gospels were not meant to be a historical or biographical account of Jesus. They were written to convert unbelievers to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, or God.”
One central problem for the conventional Christian believer inevitably arises in all these exegetical discussions: how to reconcile his/her faith in a 'God-Man/Savior' Jesus, with the actual historical person. This historical person was more a radical, "liberal" freedom-fighter against the Roman state than a God-man.
John Dominic Crossan in his remarkable monograph :The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, offers a hint ('Epilogue', p. 423):
"Is an understanding of the historical Jesus of any permanent relevance to Christianity itself? I propose that at the heart of any Christianity there is always, covertly or overtly, a dialectic between a historically read Jesus and a theologically read Christ. Christiany is always, in other words, a Jesus/Christ/ianity."
And finally (ibid.)
"This book challenges the reader on the level of formal method, material investment, and historical interpretation. It presumes there will always be divergent historical Jesuses, that there will always be divergent Christs built upon them, but above all, it argues that the structure of a Christianity will always be: *this is how we see Jesus as Christ now*."
Words to bear in mind today, and over this weekend.
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