The Trial Before Pilate

185:0.1Shortly af­ter six o’clock on this Fri­day morn­ing, April 7, A.D. 30, Je­sus was brought be­fore Pi­late, the Ro­man procu­ra­tor who gov­erned Judea, Samaria, and Idumea un­der the im­me­di­ate super­vi­sion of the lega­tus of Syria. The Mas­ter was taken into the pres­ence of the Ro­man gov­er­nor by the tem­ple guards, bound, and was ac­com­pa­nied by about fifty of his ac­cusers, in­clud­ing the San­hedrist court (prin­ci­pally Sad­duceans), Ju­das Is­car­iot, and the high priest, Cai­a­phas, and by the Apos­tle John. An­nas did not ap­pear be­fore Pi­late.

185:0.2Pi­late was up and ready to re­ceive this group of early morn­ing callers, hav­ing been in­formed by those who had se­cured his con­sent, the pre­vi­ous evening, to em­ploy the Ro­man sol­diers in ar­rest­ing the Son of Man, that Je­sus would be early brought be­fore him. This trial was ar­ranged to take place in front of the prae­to­rium, an ad­di­tion to the fortress of An­to­nia, where Pi­late and his wife made their head­quar­ters when stop­ping in Je­ru­sa­lem.

185:0.3Though Pi­late con­ducted much of Je­sus’ ex­am­i­na­tion within the prae­to­rium halls, the pub­lic trial was held out­side on the steps lead­ing up to the main en­trance. This was a con­ces­sion to the Jews, who re­fused to en­ter any gen­tile build­ing where leaven might be used on this day of prepa­ra­tion for the Pass­over. Such con­duct would not only ren­der them cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean and thereby de­bar them from par­tak­ing of the af­ter­noon feast of thanks­giv­ing but would also ne­ces­si­tate their sub­jec­tion to pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies af­ter sun­down, be­fore they would be el­i­gi­ble to par­take of the Pass­over sup­per.

185:0.4Al­though these Jews were not at all both­ered in con­science as they in­trigued to ef­fect the ju­di­cial mur­der of Je­sus, they were nonethe­less scrupu­lous re­gard­ing all these mat­ters of cer­e­mo­nial clean­ness and tra­di­tional reg­u­lar­ity. And these Jews have not been the only ones to fail in the rec­og­ni­tion of high and holy obli­ga­tions of a di­vine na­ture while giv­ing metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to things of tri­fling im­por­tance to hu­man wel­fare in both time and eter­nity.