Roman centurion of Jerusalem

183:3.4Je­sus made one last ef­fort to save Ju­das from ac­tu­ally be­tray­ing him in that, be­fore the traitor could reach him, he stepped to one side and, ad­dress­ing the fore­most sol­dier on the left, the cap­tain of the Ro­mans, said, “Whom do you seek?” The cap­tain an­swered, “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.” Then Je­sus stepped up im­me­di­ately in front of the of­fi­cer and, stand­ing there in the calm majesty of the God of all this cre­ation, said, “I am he.” Many of this armed band had heard Je­sus teach in the tem­ple, oth­ers had learned about his mighty works, and when they heard him thus boldly an­nounce his iden­tity, those in the front ranks fell sud­denly back­ward. They were over­come with sur­prise at his calm and ma­jes­tic an­nounce­ment of iden­tity. There was, there­fore, no need for Ju­das to go on with his plan of be­trayal. The Mas­ter had boldly re­vealed him­self to his en­e­mies, and they could have taken him with­out Ju­das’s as­sis­tance. But the traitor had to do some­thing to ac­count for his pres­ence with this armed band, and be­sides, he wanted to make a show of car­ry­ing out his part of the be­trayal bar­gain with the rulers of the Jews in or­der to be el­i­gi­ble for the great re­ward and hon­ors which he be­lieved would be heaped upon him in com­pen­sa­tion for his prom­ise to de­liver Je­sus into their hands.

183:3.9When Je­sus had been bound, the cap­tain, fear­ing that the fol­low­ers of the Mas­ter might at­tempt to res­cue him, gave or­ders that they be seized; but the sol­diers were not quick enough since, hav­ing over­heard the cap­tain’s or­ders to ar­rest them, Je­sus’ fol­low­ers fled in haste back into the ravine. All this time John Mark had re­mained se­cluded in the near-by shed. When the guards started back to Je­ru­sa­lem with Je­sus, John Mark at­tempted to steal out of the shed in or­der to catch up with the flee­ing apos­tles and dis­ci­ples; but just as he emerged, one of the last of the re­turn­ing sol­diers who had pur­sued the flee­ing dis­ci­ples was pass­ing near and, see­ing this young man in his linen coat, gave chase, al­most over­tak­ing him. In fact, the sol­dier got near enough to John to lay hold upon his coat, but the young man freed him­self from the gar­ment, es­cap­ing naked while the sol­dier held the empty coat. John Mark made his way in all haste to David Zeb­e­dee on the up­per trail. When he had told David what had hap­pened, they both has­tened back to the tents of the sleep­ing apos­tles and in­formed all eight of the Mas­ter’s be­trayal and ar­rest.

187:1.10This man Si­mon had come all the way from Cyrene, in north­ern Africa, to at­tend the Pass­over. He was stop­ping with other Cyre­ni­ans just out­side the city walls and was on his way to the tem­ple ser­vices in the city when the Ro­man cap­tain com­manded him to carry Je­sus’ cross­beam. Si­mon lin­gered all through the hours of the Mas­ter’s death on the cross, talk­ing with many of his friends and with his en­e­mies. Af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion and be­fore leav­ing Je­ru­sa­lem, he be­came a valiant be­liever in the gospel of the king­dom, and when he re­turned home, he led his fam­ily into the heav­enly king­dom. His two sons, Alexan­der and Ru­fus, be­came very ef­fec­tive teach­ers of the new gospel in Africa. But Si­mon never knew that Je­sus, whose bur­den he bore, and the Jew­ish tu­tor who once be­friended his in­jured son, were the same per­son.

187:4.4The Apos­tle John told about the cru­ci­fix­ion as he re­mem­bered the event two thirds of a cen­tury af­ter its oc­cur­rence. The other rec­ords were based upon the recital of the Ro­man cen­tu­rion on duty who, be­cause of what he saw and heard, sub­se­quently be­lieved in Je­sus and en­tered into the full fel­low­ship of the king­dom of heaven on earth.

187:5.4The sand­storm grew in in­ten­sity and the heav­ens in­creas­ingly dark­ened. Still the sol­diers and the small group of be­liev­ers stood by. The sol­diers crouched near the cross, hud­dled to­gether to pro­tect them­selves from the cut­ting sand. The mother of John and oth­ers watched from a dis­tance where they were some­what shel­tered by an over­hang­ing rock. When the Mas­ter fi­nally breathed his last, there were pres­ent at the foot of his cross John Zeb­e­dee, his brother Jude, his sis­ter Ruth, Mary Mag­da­lene, and Re­becca, one­time of Sep­pho­ris.

187:3.5When Je­sus saw them eat and drink, he looked down upon them and said, “I thirst.” When the cap­tain of the guard heard Je­sus say, “I thirst,” he took some of the wine from his bot­tle and, putting the sat­u­rated sponge stop­per upon the end of a javelin, raised it to Je­sus so that he could moisten his parched lips.

187:5.3The last re­quest which the mor­tal Je­sus made of his fel­lows was about half past one o’clock when, a sec­ond time, he said, “I thirst,” and the same cap­tain of the guard again moist­ened his lips with the same sponge wet in the sour wine, in those days com­monly called vine­gar.

188:1.3At about half past four o’clock the burial pro­ces­sion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth started from Gol­go­tha for Joseph’s tomb across the way. The body was wrapped in a linen sheet as the four men car­ried it, fol­lowed by the faith­ful women watch­ers from Gal­i­lee. The mor­tals who bore the ma­te­rial body of Je­sus to the tomb were: Joseph, Nicode­mus, John, and the Ro­man cen­tu­rion.

188:1.5Af­ter plac­ing the body in the tomb, the cen­tu­rion sig­naled for his sol­diers to help roll the door­stone up be­fore the en­trance to the tomb. The sol­diers then de­parted for Gehenna with the bod­ies of the thieves while the oth­ers re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, in sor­row, to ob­serve the Pass­over feast ac­cord­ing to the laws of Moses.

187:0.1Af­ter the two brig­ands had been made ready, the sol­diers, un­der the di­rec­tion of a cen­tu­rion, started for the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. The cen­tu­rion in charge of these twelve sol­diers was the same cap­tain who had led forth the Ro­man sol­diers the pre­vi­ous night to ar­rest Je­sus in Geth­sem­ane. It was the Ro­man cus­tom to as­sign four sol­diers for each per­son to be cru­ci­fied. The two brig­ands were prop­erly scourged be­fore they were taken out to be cru­ci­fied, but Je­sus was given no fur­ther phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment; the cap­tain un­doubt­edly thought he had al­ready been suf­fi­ciently scourged, even be­fore his con­dem­na­tion.

187:1.2Ac­cord­ing to cus­tom the cap­tain led the pro­ces­sion, car­ry­ing small white boards on which had been writ­ten with char­coal the names of the crim­i­nals and the na­ture of the crimes for which they had been con­demned. For the two thieves the cen­tu­rion had no­tices which gave their names, un­der­neath which was writ­ten the one word, “Brig­and.” It was the cus­tom, af­ter the vic­tim had been nailed to the cross­beam and hoisted to his place on the up­right tim­ber, to nail this no­tice to the top of the cross, just above the head of the crim­i­nal, that all wit­nesses might know for what crime the con­demned man was be­ing cru­ci­fied. The leg­end which the cen­tu­rion car­ried to put on the cross of Je­sus had been writ­ten by Pi­late him­self in Latin, Greek, and Ara­maic, and it read: “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth—the King of the Jews.”

141:3.5Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was in­deed a strong and force­ful per­son­al­ity; he was an in­tel­lec­tual power and a spir­i­tual stronghold. His per­son­al­ity not only ap­pealed to the spir­i­tu­ally minded women among his fol­low­ers, but also to the ed­u­cated and in­tel­lec­tual Nicode­mus and to the hardy Ro­man sol­dier, the cap­tain sta­tioned on guard at the cross, who, when he had fin­ished watch­ing the Mas­ter die, said, “Truly, this was a Son of God.” And red-blooded, rugged Galilean fish­er­men called him Mas­ter.

188:1.1When Joseph and Nicode­mus ar­rived at Gol­go­tha, they found the sol­diers tak­ing Je­sus down from the cross and the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the San­hedrin stand­ing by to see that none of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers pre­vented his body from go­ing to the crim­i­nal burial pits. When Joseph pre­sented Pi­late’s or­der for the Mas­ter’s body to the cen­tu­rion, the Jews raised a tu­mult and clam­ored for its pos­ses­sion. In their rav­ing they sought vi­o­lently to take pos­ses­sion of the body, and when they did this, the cen­tu­rion or­dered four of his sol­diers to his side, and with drawn swords they stood astride the Mas­ter’s body as it lay there on the ground. The cen­tu­rion or­dered the other sol­diers to leave the two thieves while they drove back this an­gry mob of in­fu­ri­ated Jews. When or­der had been re­stored, the cen­tu­rion read the per­mit from Pi­late to the Jews and, step­ping aside, said to Joseph: “This body is yours to do with as you see fit. I and my sol­diers will stand by to see that no man in­ter­feres.”

187:4.3Dur­ing this episode of the con­ver­sion and re­cep­tion of the thief into the king­dom by Je­sus, the Apos­tle John was ab­sent, hav­ing gone into the city to bring his mother and her friends to the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Luke sub­se­quently heard this story from the con­verted Ro­man cap­tain of the guard.

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.

184:0.1Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of An­nas had se­cretly in­structed the cap­tain of the Ro­man sol­diers to bring Je­sus im­me­di­ately to the palace of An­nas af­ter he had been ar­rested. The for­mer high priest de­sired to main­tain his pres­tige as the chief ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity of the Jews. He also had an­other pur­pose in de­tain­ing Je­sus at his house for sev­eral hours, and that was to al­low time for legally call­ing to­gether the court of the San­hedrin. It was not law­ful to con­vene the San­hedrin court be­fore the time of the of­fer­ing of the morn­ing sac­ri­fice in the tem­ple, and this sac­ri­fice was of­fered about three o’clock in the morn­ing.