Jerusalem temple guards

188:2.3When Pi­late heard this re­quest of the San­hedrists, he said: “I will give you a guard of ten sol­diers. Go your way and make the tomb se­cure.” They went back to the tem­ple, se­cured ten of their own guards, and then marched out to Joseph’s tomb with these ten Jew­ish guards and ten Ro­man sol­diers, even on this Sab­bath morn­ing, to set them as watch­men be­fore the tomb. These men rolled yet an­other stone be­fore the tomb and set the seal of Pi­late on and around these stones, lest they be dis­turbed with­out their knowl­edge. And these twenty men re­mained on watch up to the hour of the res­ur­rec­tion, the Jews car­ry­ing them their food and drink.

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.

183:5.1Be­fore they started away from the gar­den with Je­sus, a dis­pute arose be­tween the Jew­ish cap­tain of the tem­ple guards and the Ro­man cap­tain of the com­pany of sol­diers as to where they were to take Je­sus. The cap­tain of the tem­ple guards gave or­ders that he should be taken to Cai­a­phas, the act­ing high priest. The cap­tain of the Ro­man sol­diers di­rected that Je­sus be taken to the palace of An­nas, the for­mer high priest and fa­ther-in-law of Cai­a­phas. And this he did be­cause the Ro­mans were in the habit of deal­ing di­rectly with An­nas in all mat­ters hav­ing to do with the en­force­ment of the Jew­ish ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal laws. And the or­ders of the Ro­man cap­tain were obeyed; they took Je­sus to the home of An­nas for his pre­lim­i­nary ex­am­i­na­tion.

182:2.13While all this was in prog­ress at the Mas­ter’s camp, Ju­das Is­car­iot was in con­fer­ence with the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards, who had as­sem­bled his men prepara­tory to set­ting out, un­der the lead­er­ship of the be­trayer, to ar­rest Je­sus.

183:2.1Af­ter Ju­das so abruptly left the ta­ble while eat­ing the Last Sup­per, he went di­rectly to the home of his cousin, and then did the two go straight to the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards. Ju­das re­quested the cap­tain to as­sem­ble the guards and in­formed him that he was ready to lead them to Je­sus. Ju­das hav­ing ap­peared on the scene a lit­tle be­fore he was ex­pected, there was some de­lay in get­ting started for the Mark home, where Ju­das ex­pected to find Je­sus still vis­it­ing with the apos­tles. The Mas­ter and the eleven left the home of Eli­jah Mark fully fif­teen min­utes be­fore the be­trayer and the guards ar­rived. By the time the ap­pre­hend­ers reached the Mark home, Je­sus and the eleven were well out­side the walls of the city and on their way to the Oli­vet camp.

184:4.1The Jew­ish law re­quired that, in the mat­ter of pass­ing the death sen­tence, there should be two ses­sions of the court. This sec­ond ses­sion was to be held on the day fol­low­ing the first, and the in­ter­ven­ing time was to be spent in fast­ing and mourn­ing by the mem­bers of the court. But these men could not await the next day for the con­fir­ma­tion of their de­ci­sion that Je­sus must die. They waited only one hour. In the mean­time Je­sus was left in the au­di­ence cham­ber in the cus­tody of the tem­ple guards, who, with the ser­vants of the high priest, amused them­selves by heap­ing ev­ery sort of in­dig­nity upon the Son of Man. They mocked him, spit upon him, and cru­elly buf­feted him. They would strike him in the face with a rod and then say, “Proph­esy to us, you the De­liv­erer, who it was that struck you.” And thus they went on for one full hour, re­vil­ing and mis­treat­ing this un­re­sist­ing man of Gal­i­lee.

190:1.2When the apos­tles re­fused to be­lieve the re­port of the five women who rep­re­sented that they had seen Je­sus and talked with him, Mary Mag­da­lene re­turned to the tomb, and the oth­ers went back to Joseph’s house, where they re­lated their ex­pe­ri­ences to his daugh­ter and the other women. And the women be­lieved their re­port. Shortly af­ter six o’clock the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea and the four women who had seen Je­sus went over to the home of Nicode­mus, where they re­lated all these hap­pen­ings to Joseph, Nicode­mus, David Zeb­e­dee, and the other men there as­sem­bled. Nicode­mus and the oth­ers doubted their story, doubted that Je­sus had risen from the dead; they con­jec­tured that the Jews had re­moved the body. Joseph and David were dis­posed to be­lieve the re­port, so much so that they hur­ried out to in­spect the tomb, and they found ev­ery­thing just as the women had de­scribed. And they were the last to so view the sepul­chre, for the high priest sent the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards to the tomb at half past seven o’clock to re­move the grave cloths. The cap­tain wrapped them all up in the linen sheet and threw them over a near-by cliff.