praetorium

• addition to fortress of Antonia; Jesus’ trial in

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.

• addition to fortress of Antonia; Jesus’ trial in

185:5.1When the guards had brought Je­sus back to Pi­late, he went out on the front steps of the prae­to­rium, where his judg­ment seat had been placed, and call­ing to­gether the chief priests and San­hedrists, said to them: “You brought this man be­fore me with charges that he per­verts the peo­ple, for­bids the pay­ment of taxes, and claims to be king of the Jews. I have ex­am­ined him and fail to find him guilty of these charges. In fact, I find no fault in him. Then I sent him to Herod, and the tetrarch must have reached the same con­clu­sion since he has sent him back to us. Cer­tainly, noth­ing wor­thy of death has been done by this man. If you still think he needs to be dis­ci­plined, I am will­ing to chas­tise him be­fore I re­lease him.”

• addition to fortress of Antonia; Jesus’ trial in

186:4.1Af­ter Pi­late had washed his hands be­fore the mul­ti­tude, thus seek­ing to es­cape the guilt of de­liv­er­ing up an in­no­cent man to be cru­ci­fied just be­cause he feared to re­sist the clamor of the rulers of the Jews, he or­dered the Mas­ter turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers and gave the word to their cap­tain that he was to be cru­ci­fied im­me­di­ately. Upon tak­ing charge of Je­sus, the sol­diers led him back into the court­yard of the prae­to­rium, and af­ter re­mov­ing the robe which Herod had put on him, they dressed him in his own gar­ments. These sol­diers mocked and de­rided him, but they did not in­flict fur­ther phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment. Je­sus was now alone with these Ro­man sol­diers. His friends were in hid­ing; his en­e­mies had gone their way; even John Zeb­e­dee was no longer by his side.

• addition to fortress of Antonia; Jesus’ trial in

187:0.4It was just be­fore nine o’clock this morn­ing when the sol­diers led Je­sus from the prae­to­rium on the way to Gol­go­tha. They were fol­lowed by many who se­cretly sym­pa­thized with Je­sus, but most of this group of two hun­dred or more were ei­ther his en­e­mies or cu­ri­ous idlers who merely de­sired to en­joy the shock of wit­ness­ing the cru­ci­fix­ions. Only a few of the Jew­ish lead­ers went out to see Je­sus die on the cross. Know­ing that he had been turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers by Pi­late, and that he was con­demned to die, they bus­ied them­selves with their meet­ing in the tem­ple, whereat they dis­cussed what should be done with his fol­low­ers.