Antonia, fortress of

• Antonia, fortress of

183:2.3When they failed to find Je­sus in the up­per cham­ber, Ju­das asked the cap­tain of the guard to re­turn to the tem­ple. By this time the rulers had be­gun to as­sem­ble at the high priest’s home prepara­tory to re­ceiv­ing Je­sus, see­ing that their bar­gain with the traitor called for Je­sus’ ar­rest by mid­night of that day. Ju­das ex­plained to his as­so­ciates that they had missed Je­sus at the Mark home, and that it would be nec­es­sary to go to Geth­sem­ane to ar­rest him. The be­trayer then went on to state that more than three­score de­voted fol­low­ers were en­camped with him, and that they were all well armed. The rulers of the Jews re­minded Ju­das that Je­sus had al­ways preached non­re­sis­tance, but Ju­das replied that they could not de­pend upon all Je­sus’ fol­low­ers obey­ing such teach­ing. He re­ally feared for him­self and there­fore made bold to ask for a com­pany of forty armed sol­diers. Since the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties had no such force of armed men un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, they went at once to the fortress of An­to­nia and re­quested the Ro­man com­man­der to give them this guard; but when he learned that they in­tended to ar­rest Je­sus, he promptly re­fused to ac­cede to their re­quest and re­ferred them to his su­pe­rior of­fi­cer. In this way more than an hour was con­sumed in go­ing from one au­thor­ity to an­other un­til they fi­nally were com­pelled to go to Pi­late him­self in or­der to ob­tain per­mis­sion to em­ploy the armed Ro­man guards. It was late when they ar­rived at Pi­late’s house, and he had re­tired to his pri­vate cham­bers with his wife. He hes­i­tated to have any­thing to do with the en­ter­prise, all the more so since his wife had asked him not to grant the re­quest. But inas­much as the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer of the Jew­ish San­hedrin was pres­ent and mak­ing per­sonal re­quest for this as­sis­tance, the gov­er­nor thought it wise to grant the pe­ti­tion, think­ing he could later on right any wrong they might be dis­posed to com­mit.

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.

162:4.2This was the feast of feasts, since any sac­ri­fice not made at the other fes­ti­vals could be made at this time. This was the oc­ca­sion of the re­cep­tion of the tem­ple of­fer­ings; it was a com­bi­na­tion of va­ca­tion plea­sures with the solemn rites of re­li­gious wor­ship. Here was a time of racial re­joic­ing, min­gled with sac­ri­fices, Levit­i­cal chants, and the solemn blasts of the sil­very trum­pets of the priests. At night the im­pres­sive spec­ta­cle of the tem­ple and its pil­grim throngs was bril­liantly il­lu­mi­nated by the great can­de­labras which burned brightly in the court of the women as well as by the glare of scores of torches stand­ing about the tem­ple courts. The en­tire city was gaily dec­o­rated ex­cept the Ro­man cas­tle of An­to­nia, which looked down in grim con­trast upon this fes­tive and wor­ship­ful scene. And how the Jews did hate this ever-pres­ent re­minder of the Ro­man yoke!

189:2.4As they made ready to re­move the body of Je­sus from the tomb prepara­tory to ac­cord­ing it the dig­ni­fied and rev­er­ent dis­posal of near-in­stan­ta­neous dis­so­lu­tion, it was as­signed the sec­ondary Uran­tia mid­way­ers to roll away the stones from the en­trance of the tomb. The larger of these two stones was a huge cir­cu­lar af­fair, much like a mill­stone, and it moved in a groove chis­eled out of the rock, so that it could be rolled back and forth to open or close the tomb. When the watch­ing Jew­ish guards and the Ro­man sol­diers, in the dim light of the morn­ing, saw this huge stone be­gin to roll away from the en­trance of the tomb, ap­par­ently of its own ac­cord—with­out any vis­i­ble means to ac­count for such mo­tion—they were seized with fear and panic, and they fled in haste from the scene. The Jews fled to their homes, af­ter­ward go­ing back to re­port these do­ings to their cap­tain at the tem­ple. The Ro­mans fled to the fortress of An­to­nia and re­ported what they had seen to the cen­tu­rion as soon as he ar­rived on duty.