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Providing an account of the trial of Jesus presents challenges unlike that for any of the other trials on the Famous Trials Website. First, there is the challenge of determining what actually happened nearly 2,000 years ago before the Sanhedrin and the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate. The task is daunting because almost our entire understanding of events comes from five divergent accounts, each of which was written by a Christian (who did not witness the final days of Jesus directly) for a distinct audience from thirty-five to seventy years after the trial. Second, there is the challenge that comes from knowing that readers of this account are likely to have prior understandings of trial events that come from their own religious training--and that any account of the trial provided here that varies substantially from these prior understandings may not be easily accepted. Nonetheless, I believe the trial of Jesus merits analysis for the simple reason that no other trial in human history has so significantly affected the course of human events.
In 63 B.C.E. the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem, and in so doing put an end both to the independent Jewish state of Palestine and eight decades of rule by the Hasmonean dynasty of high priests. Rome began appointing the high priests that served the Temple in Jerusalem. High priests from then on juggled the religious interests of Jews and the political interests of Rome, at whose pleasure they served.
Seven decades after Rome assumed control of Palestine, in 6 C.E., growing Jewish opposition to Roman laws relating to the census, taxation, and heathen traditions boiled over. Especially despised was the Roman imposition of a census of property for tax purposes. Ancestral land held an exalted position in Jewish ideology and many Jews feared that the new laws would lead to its appropriation by Rome. Jewish uprisings in protest of the laws led to the crucifixion of over 2,000 Jewish insurgents and the selling into slavery of perhaps 20,000 more. The most intense opposition to Rome came from an area of Palestine called Galilee, which was the center of an armed resistance movement called the Zealots.
The riots of 6 C.E. and recurring outbreaks that followed caused Roman officials to see Jewish nationalism and religious fervor as threatening to law and order. When Herod Antipas, the Roman ruler of Galilee, constructed a new capital city, Tiberius, on the western shore of Galilee in 19 C.E., he might have expected trouble from the peasant population forced to meet heavier tax burdens to pay for it. In any event, trouble came, as two significant Jewish religious movements were born in the next decade in the region of northern Palestine under his rule.
The first important movement to arise in Galilee was led by the apocalyptic visionary, John the Baptist. The Baptist called upon his followers to confess their sins, live an ascetic lifestyle, and prepare for the imminent coming of an avenging God. To the purification process offered in the Temple, he presented a radical new alternative: a ritual immersion in the waters of the Jordan River.
John the Baptist's growing popularity among the peasant population alarmed Herod Antipas, who likely feared that the new movement, with its promise of apocalyptic intervention, could lead to rioting. Antipas made a preemptive strike. He arrested and executed--beheaded, according to Biblical accounts--the Baptist. The execution of John the Baptist may have deeply influenced one of his early disciples, a young man from Nazareth that he had baptized in the Jordan river (Mark 1:9-11), Jesus.
The execution of John the Baptist is likely to have had a profound effect on Jesus. God's non-intervention might have caused Jesus to modify the apocalyptic vision of John the Baptist--which was probably a product of the perceived hopelessness of the peasants' plight--to one that emphasized change in the structure of political and religious institutions. The teachings of Jesus, who began his ministry around 28 or 29 C.E., describe an ideal world, a world that might exist if God--and not Caesar or the high priests--had his way. Jesus spoke primarily of the need to change the here and now, and less of need to ready oneself for the arrival of an avenging God. Needless to say, a religious program of the sort presented by Jesus would likely be seen as threatening by powerful beneficiaries of the status quo, from Roman leaders to Temple officials.
